Book Cover & Spine Calculator
The Book Cover and Spine Calculator provide the exact, print-ready measurements required by global printers.
Other tools
- Publishing Calculator: Know how much it costs to publish your book.
- ISBN Validator: Confirm if your ISBN is valid, generate barcode & book details, etc
How it Works
Creating a book cover is more than just designing a beautiful image; it is an engineering task. To ensure your book looks perfect when printed and bound, our tool calculates three critical factors:
1. The Spine Width (The Thickness): The spine is the most variable part of a book. Its width is determined by the Page Count and the Paper PPI (Pages Per Inch).
2. The Bleed (The Safety Buffer): Printers print on large sheets of paper and then trim them down to your book’s size. Because the blades can shift by a fraction of a millimeter, we add “Bleed” to every outer edge.
- This tool automatically adds the bleed to the top, bottom, and sides of your total layout.
- Important: Your background color or image must extend all the way to this outer edge to avoid thin white lines after trimming.
3. The Full Spread (Total Width)
To create a single file for your cover, you must account for the back cover, the spine, and the front cover as one continuous image.
Why use this tool?
- Professional Finish: Ensure your spine text is perfectly centered and doesn’t “wrap” onto the front cover.
- Avoid Rejection: Automated systems at KDP and IngramSpark will reject files that are even $0.01\text{“}$ off.
- Designer-Ready: Copy and paste the exact dimensions directly into Canva, Photoshop, or InDesign.