You should send your cover designer the following information so that they can size your book cover correctly in order that your cover may be published. We advise checking with any cover designer that you are thinking of hiring that they have experience of book cover design as they needs to be absolutely exact in size and layout in order for your book to be published.
Important Note: If your book designer is designing a full front, back and spine image cover then should give your cover designer the final page count of your manuscript in the book size you have chosen to publish in - book sizes are either 5 inches wide x 8 inches high or 6 inches wide x 9 inches high -so that your designer may size your spine width correctly as outlined below. Finalise your manuscript first accordingly. Click on Book Manuscripts in the frequently asked questions for manuscript requirements and also correctly sized manuscript templates to paste your book into as required so that you may edit and prepare your completed manuscript for upload to the site.
You can choose to give the cover designer access to the cover creation step for your book to upload your cover to our system for you. To access the cover creation page after you have started to create a book, click Go next to your book title and view/change next to Cover Art. If a cover designer designs and uploads a cover for you, you should be sure to check the cover on the cover creation step of publishing so that you can see that it meets the design requirements you gave your cover designer before you approve it for publishing in the publishing steps. Login and click Edit next to your book title and view/change next to Cover Art to view your cover once uploaded, then send for site approval via the button on the cover creation page when ready. Note that you must have uploaded and approved your book manuscript in the book upload process before the spine image can be uploaded on the cover creation page. This is because the system then knows the correct spine width for your final page count.
The designer should size exactly to the correct sizes, specifications and ideal resolution of 300 dpi for cover images as outlined below. You or the cover designer can also email an all-in-one cover to us as a high resolution 300 dpi jpeg to covers@feedaread.com - but it must be the correct size as outlined below and in jpeg format without any crop or other marks on the cover or blank space outside of the cover and cover bleed area. If the cover received is an incorrect size for your book we will inform you and refer you back to this page. We cannot give any further information on cover design beyond this information, as how to size a book cover is outlined on this page and correct sizing is the role of the cover designer that you have chosen to design your cover.
Front Cover and Back Cover Images - information for Cover Designers:
5 x 8 books If you choose to publish at 5 inches wide x 8 inches high then the front cover and back cover image should each be 5.125 inch wide x 8.25 inch high and at a high resolution, ideally 300 dpi.
6 x 9 books If you choose to publish at 6 inches wide x 9 inches high then the front cover and back cover image should each be 6.125 inch wide x 9.25 inch high and at a high resolution, ideally 300 dpi.
Spine Image - information for Cover Designers:
Click here to view the spine width calculator for the final number of pages in the author's book which the author should have prepared in a 5 inches wide x 8 inches high manuscript or 6 inches wide x 9 inches high manuscript document depending on their chosen publishing size. The spine calculator will give the correct spine width for both 5 inch wide x 8 inch high books and 6 inch wide x 9 inch high books, as both sizes have the same width for individual pages in a book.
Cover text: Please ensure any cover text is a minimum of 13mm or .5 (half) inch from the outer sides of your cover. If you are uploading a cover as front, back and spine images on our cover creation page then the system shows you on the screen if you have done this correctly when uploading images during the cover creation process. To upload jpeg cover images, the author clicks to Login and clicks Edit next to their book title and then the view/change button next to Cover Art. There are simple buttons on the left hand menu of the cover creation page to upload front, back and spine images. The reason the cover creation page works by uploading individual images is that it ensures images are the correct size for publishing as this is the part that authors find most difficult.
Bleed Area: .125 inch of the very outer sides of the cover is the ‘bleed area’ - the printers safety margin for trimming and printing a book - and will not appear on the final cover. Our system displays this bleed area automatically to you when you upload a cover image on the cover creation step so you can see where it is on your cover, and automatically sizes your images correctly as above if you have difficulty sizing your images - as long as the manuscript uploaded by the author is their final manuscript and page count. The cover image should extend across the whole cover including the bleed area.
Cover Size and Resolution: Image(s) should be 300 dpi in resolution for the best print resolution quality.
CMYK Values: The overall combined percentage of CMYK values of artwork for our printer's presses should be less than 240%. For example, the 'rich black' they recommend would be 60% Cyan 40% Magenta 40% Yellow 100% Black (60+40+40+100=240%). All other colors in the artwork should remain less than 240% CMYK overall color density as well. You can upload your cover and if there are any issues re the above, which there usually aren’t, we will inform you when the printers process the book.
Back Cover Bar Code: Our printers will add a barcode and ISBN on the back cover for you after your cover is submitted for publishing. The cover creation page display clearly shows the space for the barcode and ISBN to you so be sure not to add text over it. Please don’t add a price to your cover at this stage, as this restricts the flexibility of altering your price in the future in line with changes to average retail prices and commercial demand. The printers recommend not adding a book price to the cover as most sales are online and this avoids you incurring cover revision fees in the future if average book prices change over a number of years.