A KDP-exact cover, math and all.
The cover is where most authors get stuck on Amazon's specs — spine widths, bleed, and full-wrap dimensions that have to be exact or KDP bounces the file. Inkbound does the geometry for you, and an AI art director turns a brief into a design to start from.
Exact specs, every time.
Pick your trim and paper stock and Inkbound computes the wrap — so what you export is what KDP accepts, front cover and full paperback alike.
- Exact spine-width math per paper stock and page count
- Full-wrap dimensions with bleed at 300 DPI
- AI art director turns a brief or your synopsis into a cover spec
- Export the eBook front cover and the complete paperback wrap
Pair it with a typeset interior, then head to publishing to export. New here? See how Inkbound works.
The cover is a spec sheet pretending to be art.
Readers judge a cover in about three seconds. But before it can sell anything, a paperback cover has to clear Amazon's geometry — and that geometry is unforgiving. A file that's a few hundredths of an inch off, or missing its bleed, gets rejected at upload. Inkbound takes that math off your plate so you can spend your attention on the part that matters: making people want to open the book.
The spine is a moving target
Spine width isn't a fixed number — it depends on your page count and your paper stock (white, cream, or color all have different thicknesses). Add a chapter and the spine grows; the front and back panels shift with it. Inkbound recalculates the spine and the full-wrap dimensions every time your book changes, using KDP's own formula, so the wrap is always correct the moment you export.
Bleed, safe zones, and the parts that get trimmed
Printing isn't pixel-perfect, so covers need 0.125 inches of bleed past every outer edge and a safe margin to keep text away from the trim. Inkbound builds those zones into the canvas and shows them as you design, so nothing important gets cut off and no white slivers appear at the edge.
An AI art director to start from
A blank cover canvas is its own kind of writer's block. Describe the book in a sentence — or hand over your synopsis — and the AI art director proposes a composition, type treatment, and palette to react to. You stay the designer; it just gets you past the empty page.
Two files, both upload-ready.
eBook front cover
A high-resolution front-cover image sized for Kindle and the other eBook stores — the thumbnail readers see first.
Paperback full wrap
Back, spine, and front as one print-ready PDF at 300 DPI with correct bleed and a spine sized to your exact page count.
Spine text, set right
Title and author auto-fit the spine, and lock out automatically when a low page count makes spine text too thin to print.
Your cover's spine width comes straight from your formatted interior's page count — so design the inside first, and the wrap math takes care of itself. When both are done, head to publishing to export everything together.
Cover design questions.
How does Inkbound calculate the spine width?
Does Inkbound make a full-wrap paperback cover?
What resolution and bleed does a KDP cover need?
I'm not a designer — can I still make a good cover?
Can I use my own cover artwork?
Design your cover in Inkbound.
Inkbound is free to write — no account needed. A one-time $129.99 license unlocks publishing (covers, audiobook, exports), and code EARLYACCESS takes 50% off during early access.