Book cover maker: join the front, spine and back into one print-ready cover

A paperback book wears its cover like a jacket. The jacket has three parts: the back, the thin spine in the middle, and the front. This tool takes your front picture and your back picture, puts a spine of the right width between them, and joins all three into one big picture that a printer can print and wrap around your book. It also adds tiny lines that show the binder where to fold.

Do five things, from top to bottom. 1) Add your front picture and your back picture (or one PDF). 2) Choose your book size, like A4 or A5. 3) Type how many pages your book has and how thick the paper is (GSM), so the tool knows how wide the spine should be. 4) Look at the live preview and fix anything you do not like. 5) Press Download JPG or Download PDF. That file is ready to print.

Hold a paperback book with the front facing you, then open the cover and lay it flat on a table, printed side up. The back cover lands on the left, the spine sits in the middle and the front cover lands on the right. Printers print the cover in exactly that order, so the tool lays it out the same way. You do not need to flip anything yourself.

No. There is no account, no payment, no watermark and nothing to install. Open the page, use the tool, download your file. It works in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari and Samsung Internet.

JPG, PNG and WebP pictures, or a PDF. If you add a PDF in the front box, the tool uses its first page. If you add a PDF in the back box, it uses the last page. Big, sharp pictures print best; a small blurry picture will still look blurry on paper, and the tool warns you when a picture is too small for good printing.

Tap + Add back, + Add spine or + Add front and choose a file, or drag a file onto the box. To take a picture out, press the small ✕ on that box. The live preview changes straight away.

No, it is optional. Most books have a plain coloured spine with the title written on it, and the tool can make that for you. Add a spine picture only if your designer made one. A sideways spine picture is turned the right way automatically.

Yes. Press Or take both covers from one PDF and choose your PDF. Page one becomes the front cover and the last page becomes the back cover, both at once. Two buttons then appear, Download front as JPG and Download back as JPG, if you want to keep those pages as pictures too.

A4 (210 × 297 mm), A5 (148 × 210 mm), B5 (176 × 250 mm), 6 × 9 inches, 5.5 × 8.5 inches, US Letter, or Custom size. Pick the size of one closed page of your book, not the open book. For Custom size, type the width and height in millimetres.

The spine is the narrow strip that shows when a book stands on a shelf. A book with many pages is fat, so its spine is wide. A thin book has a thin spine. If the spine on the cover is too narrow or too wide, the front picture slides onto the spine or the spine colour slides onto the front. Getting the width right keeps everything in its place.

Choose Work it out from pages. Type the number of pages, counting both sides of every sheet, and choose the paper GSM. The tool halves the page count to get the number of sheets, multiplies by how thick one sheet is (about 0.078 mm for 60 GSM, 0.09 mm for 70, 0.10 mm for 80, 0.11 mm for 90, 0.12 mm for 100 and 0.145 mm for 120), then adds 0.5 mm for glue. Example: 200 pages on 70 GSM is 100 sheets × 0.09 mm + 0.5 mm, about 9.5 mm.

Paper from different mills is a little thicker or thinner, so a calculation is only a very good guess. If your pages are already printed, squeeze the stack together, measure how thick it is with a ruler in millimetres, choose I measured the spine and type that number. A measured spine is always the most exact.

Count pages like the page numbers in a book. One sheet of paper has a front and a back, so it is 2 pages. A book with 100 sheets has 200 pages. If your PDF has 200 pages, type 200.

They decide what happens when your picture is not exactly the same shape as the book. Fit whole shows the entire picture and nothing is cut off; any empty space around it is filled with a colour. Fill and crop makes the picture cover the whole side with no empty space, but trims a little off the edges. Stretch pulls the picture to fit exactly, which can make faces and letters look a little squashed or wide.

It makes the front and back pictures a little smaller, the same amount on every side, and colours the space around them. Use it when words on your cover sit right at the edge, which often happens with AI-made covers, because the edges get cut and folded during binding. 5 to 10% is usually enough. Tick Shrink the front and Shrink the back to choose which covers shrink. The colour of the space is set under Fill in the Colours panel.

Yes. Under Picture size, choose Enlarge (make bigger), then type a number in Enlarge the pictures by (%), up to 60. The picture grows from its centre, like zooming in on a photo, so the empty gaps around it disappear. The parts that grow past the edge of the cover are cut off and never spill onto the spine, so check that no words go outside the blinking red safe-area line. Tick Enlarge the front and Enlarge the back to choose which covers grow. Enlarging does not add detail: a small, low-quality picture gets softer as it grows, and the tool warns you when it will print blurry.

When many covers are printed, the paper is cut with a big blade, and the blade can land a tiny bit off. Bleed is an extra 3 mm or 5 mm of picture added past the edge, so even if the cut wanders, you never see a thin white line. The tool makes bleed by stretching the outer edge of your picture outward. Choose None if your printer does not ask for bleed, or 3 mm if you are not sure.

Yes. Type the book name in Title on the spine and, if you like, a name in Author or publisher. Leave the title empty for a spine with no words. The text grows or shrinks by itself to fit the spine, and it is written on top of the spine picture if you added one. Spines thinner than about 5 mm are too narrow to read, so leave them without text.

Font lets you pick Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, Trebuchet or Impact. Text colour has Automatic, which picks black or white so the words stand out, or Black, White, or Choose… for any colour. Direction is Top to bottom, the way English books read when they lie face up, or Bottom to top, the way many European books read. Tick Bold for thicker letters.

It sits under the live preview. First tap what you want to colour: Back cover, Spine, Spine text or Fill (the space around shrunk or fitted pictures). Then pick a colour in any of three ways: tap one of the ready-made swatches, use the colour box, or press Pick from the cover and tap any spot on the preview to copy that exact colour. The swatches are made from your own front cover, so they already match.

The tool notices a white, empty back cover and fills it with a colour taken from your front cover, and it tells you it did that. For the back you can choose My picture, Solid colour, Gradient (one colour at the top fading into another at the bottom, set with the Back cover and Back bottom tabs), or Blurred front, which uses a soft, blurry copy of your front cover so the colours flow round the book.

Pick from the cover turns your finger or mouse into a colour dropper: tap any spot on the preview and that colour is copied. Pick from screen does the same for anything visible on your computer screen, such as your logo in another window; it appears in Chrome and Edge on computers, because other browsers do not offer it yet.

They are tiny black lines, 6 mm long and 1 point thick, printed outside the cover at the top and bottom, never on your artwork. Two of them line up with the left and right edges of the spine, where the binder folds the cover around the book. Two more line up with the fold lines on the front and back, 10 mm from the spine, where the cover bends when you open the book. They are like dotted 'fold here' lines on a paper craft.

Yes. Fold line from the spine (mm) moves the bending fold closer or farther; 8 to 12 mm suits most books, and thick books need a little more. Mark length (mm) makes the lines longer or shorter. Line thickness can be 0.5, 1, 1.5 or 2 points. Untick the crease marks box if you do not want them at all.

They are guides to help you see where the spine edges and the bleed or trim edges are. Guides only show on screen and are never printed. Untick Guides to hide them. The short black marks in the white border are different: those are the crease and trim marks, and they do print.

It marks the safe area. The line sits 12 mm (1.2 cm) in from every edge of the front cover and the back cover, and it blinks so you cannot miss it. Do not keep any text outside this line. Everything outside it is close to where the paper is cut and folded, so words there can be cut off or hidden in the fold. Pictures and background colours can still go right to the edge. The line is only shown on your screen and is never printed. Untick Safe area to hide it.

Press View larger above the preview. The cover opens over the whole screen. Fit to screen shows the whole cover as big as your screen allows, and Zoom 200% makes it twice as big so you can scroll around and check small text against the red safe line. Press Close or the Esc key to go back. Pick from the cover still works in the large view.

DPI means dots per inch: how many tiny dots of ink go into every inch. More dots means sharper small text. 300 DPI is the lowest good print quality, 600 DPI (recommended) matches laser printing presses and is the default, and 1200 DPI is extra sharp but very slow and makes a very large file.

Screens make colour from red, green and blue light (RGB). Printers make colour from cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink (CMYK). Choose CMYK when the file is going to a printer; the tool writes a true CMYK JPG in your browser. Choose RGB only if the cover is for a screen, like a website or an online shop listing. The conversion uses no colour profile, so for colour-critical jobs ask your printer for a printed proof.

JPG files are squeezed to keep them small. Print (92) squeezes a little and still looks perfect on paper. Maximum (97) squeezes even less, so the file is bigger. Print (92) is fine for almost every job.

Download JPG (1:1) gives one picture of the cover at its exact real size, ready to place in CorelDRAW, Photoshop or InDesign or to send to a printer. Download PDF puts the cover on a big print sheet with trim marks, ready to print straight away. If you are not sure, send your printer the PDF.

Yes. That is what 1:1 means. The DPI is written inside the JPG file in both the JFIF and Photoshop headers, so CorelDRAW, Photoshop and InDesign import it at exactly the cover size in millimetres, with no resizing.

Choose under PDF sheet. Automatic puts A5 covers on 13 × 19 inch sheets, two covers per sheet when both fit inside the 12.5 × 18.5 inch printable area, which works up to about a 21 mm spine, and one per sheet for thicker books. Other sizes use 12 × 18 or 13 × 19 and print two per sheet whenever two fit. You can also force 12 × 18, 13 × 19, or Exact cover size.

Trim marks are small lines at the four corners that show exactly where to cut the cover out of the bigger sheet. Tick Trim marks at the corners to add them. Tick JPG: add a white border to give the JPG a white frame so the crease and trim marks have room to sit outside the cover.

Yes. Type them in the Comments box under Export, up to 300 characters, for example the number of copies, lamination or a delivery date. When you press Download PDF, the comments print in small letters in the white space outside the cover, never on your artwork. If the sheet has lots of room they go below the cover; on a tight sheet, such as two A5 covers on 13 × 19, they go in the thin strips beside the crease marks. If the comments are too long for the free space, the tool tells you to shorten them. Use English letters, numbers and common symbols. Comments are not added to the JPG.

It is a second tool lower on the page. It turns pages of any PDF into JPG pictures, with the DPI written inside each file so they open at the right size. Choose your PDF, choose 150, 300 or 600 DPI, and press Convert to JPG.

Leave Pages empty to convert every page. To pick pages, type them with commas and dashes: 1 means only page 1; 3-5 means pages 3, 4 and 5; 8- means page 8 to the end. You can mix them, for example 1, 3-5, 8-.

Download JPG saves that one page. Use as front, Use as back and Use as spine send that page straight into the cover maker above, so you can build a cover from any page, not just the first and last. Download all as ZIP saves every converted page in one zip file.

Some PDFs do not carry their fonts inside them, or use a special font code. The reader needs a small 'alphabet key' file to understand those letters, and without it the letters come out as nonsense symbols. The tool now loads those key files automatically, so text should look right. If it still looks wrong, refresh the page with Ctrl + F5, or save the PDF again from Word or your PDF app with Embed fonts switched on, and try once more.

A different shape is fine: choose Fit whole to see all of it, or Fill and crop to fill the side. Too small means the picture does not have enough dots to print sharply at the cover size. Ask your designer for a bigger file, about 1800 × 2500 pixels or more for an A5 front cover.

Yes. Type 5 or 10 in Shrink the pictures by (%). The front and back shrink evenly on all sides, and the space around them is filled with the Fill colour you choose, so no words get cut off in trimming or hidden in the fold.

No. Fit whole shows the complete picture and fills any gap with the fill colour, Fill and crop covers the whole side and trims the edges, and Stretch fits it exactly. The summary under the preview warns you when a picture is a different shape or too low in resolution.

No. Everything happens inside your own browser, on your own phone or computer. Your pictures are never sent to our server or anyone else's, so unpublished covers stay private.

Yes, at 300 or 600 DPI. A 1200 DPI cover needs a lot of memory, so make it on a laptop or desktop.

Yes. BulkPrintouts.com prints books in Borivali West, Mumbai, with perfect binding from ₹50 per book at 50+ copies and hard binding from ₹250, covers on 300 GSM with gloss or matte lamination, and courier across India. Send your files on WhatsApp to +91 98201 69619.

No. Use the book cover maker as many times as you like, every day, with as many cover images and PDFs as you need. There is no daily limit, no file-count limit, no account and no paid plan.

Only your own device's memory (RAM). We set no size limit, because the work is done on your phone or computer and nothing is uploaded to us. A laptop or desktop can handle far bigger files than a phone. If a very large job slows down, close other tabs and apps, or use a computer.

Many online cover design websites upload your file to their server and limit free use by file size or number of tasks. The book cover maker works inside your own browser instead: no upload, no size cap set by us, no daily limit, no signup and no watermark, free for personal, school and business use.