PrintReadyCover

Canva Cover Size for KDP

Canva lets you set a custom design size, so the size is up to you. Enter your book's details to get the exact width and height for your Canva design, download a PNG guide to build on, and check the exported PDF.

Your book

Binding

Use your final interior page count. The spine changes with every page.

Check your finished cover

Waiting for a cover

  • Page size–
  • One page–
  • Text inside safe area–
  • Spine text–
  • Barcode area–
  • Image resolution–
  • Fonts embedded–
  • Artwork near trim–

Colour and transparency aren't checked yet, and text that's part of an image can only be checked near the trim.

Full cover width

12.700in

322.6 mm · 3,810 px

Full cover height

9.250in

234.9 mm · 2,775 px

Spine width

0.450in

11.4 mm · 135 px

Spine text

Allowed

80 pages or more

Your cover, to scale

Example artwork. Pixels are at 300 DPI.

A coastal town. A missing boat.

When the sea gives back what it took, one family must decide what the truth is worth.

The Long Tide

The Long Tide

Mira Calloway

Barcode
Bleed
Extra artwork past the cut. It gets trimmed away.
Trim
Where the printed book is cut.
Safe area
Keep words and logos inside this line.
Spine
Its width depends on your page count.

The size to type into Canva

A KDP cover is not a front cover. It is one flat design holding the back cover, spine and front cover side by side, plus 0.125 in of bleed at the top, bottom and outside edges. That is the size to enter in Canva, in inches.

Width is the bleed, back cover, spine, front cover and bleed added up. Height is the trim height plus 0.25 in of bleed. For a 6 x 9 paperback with 200 pages on white paper, that is 12.700 x 9.250 in.

The spine depends on your page count and paper, so the width changes with every page. Settle your final page count before you create the design.

Paperback sizes to enter

200 pages, black ink on white paper. Inches.

Trim sizeSpineCanva size
5 x 80.45010.700 x 8.250
5.5 x 8.50.45011.700 x 8.750
6 x 90.45012.700 x 9.250
7 x 100.45014.700 x 10.250
8.5 x 110.45017.700 x 11.250

Set up the cover in Canva, step by step

We ran a real Canva cover through this checker to test these steps. The tool's PNG template is the guide layer: it shows where the folds and safe areas fall.

  1. Work out the full cover size. Enter your trim size, page count and paper above. The width and height shown include the back, spine, front and bleed.
  2. Create a custom design. In Canva, choose a custom size in inches and type the full width and height, not the trim size.
  3. Add the template. Download the PNG template, upload it to Canva and stretch it to fill the page. It marks the bleed, trim, spine and safe areas.
  4. Design over it. Build your back, spine and front on top, keeping text inside the safe lines. Delete the template when you finish.
  5. Export as PDF Print. Turn Crop marks and bleed off. The size you set already includes the bleed.
  6. Check the PDF. Add it to the checker above before you upload it to KDP.

Exporting the PDF from Canva

Canva's export has an option that trips up many KDP covers. Leave Crop marks and bleed off, because the size you set already includes the bleed.

In our test, a Canva PDF export used the page size of the custom design, so a correctly sized design gave a correctly sized PDF. Turning on Crop marks and bleed made the PDF bigger. KDP doesn't want crop marks, trim marks or printer's marks, and the oversized page won't match the size KDP expects for your book.

The checker catches this. When the page is too big, it says so, and when the extra is the same on every side it names crop marks as the likely cause. It also suggests other causes of a wrong size: a front cover only, no bleed, the other binding, or a different page count.

The same Canva PDF kept live, selectable text, including rotated spine text. Live text lets the checker find words near the edges and the spine, which it can't do for text that has been turned into a picture.

Designing a hardcover in Canva

The steps are the same, but the size is larger because a hardcover wraps around a board. Choose Hardcover in the calculator above before you read the width and height.

A 6 x 9 hardcover with 200 pages on white paper needs a 14.214 x 10.417 in cover, against 12.700 x 9.250 in for the paperback. Don't resize a paperback design to fit. Start from the hardcover template, and keep text out of the hinge beside the spine. The hardcover calculator explains each figure.

Before you upload

Small mistakes in a Canva cover are easy to make and easy to miss on screen. Check the exported PDF, not the design.

Keep titles, author names and small print inside the safe area, at least 0.125 in inside the trim, and at least 0.0625 in from each side of the spine. Keep the barcode area on the back cover clear, since KDP covers it with a white box if you don't supply a barcode. Use text of 7 point or larger.

If your page count changes after you finish, the spine changes too. Make a new design at the new size rather than stretching the old one, and use the spine width calculator to see how much it moved.

The checker reads your PDF on your device and never uploads it. It doesn't check colour or transparency yet, and a clean result is a set of measurements, not a promise that KDP will accept the file. KDP reviews your files after you submit them, so always look at your cover in its print previewer.

More KDP cover guides

The same free tool, set up for other questions. Your files stay on your device.