Ebook Cover Size Guide: Exact Dimensions for KDP, Etsy & Every Store

Every marketplace will happily reject a beautiful cover for being the wrong size. And unlike design taste, cover dimensions aren't a matter of opinion — each store publishes a spec, and your file either meets it or it doesn't. This guide collects the current requirements for the stores self-publishers actually use, explains the two or three concepts (aspect ratio, trim, bleed) that make every spec suddenly make sense, and flags the mistakes that quietly cost sales even when a file is technically accepted.

The quick answer

If you only remember one number, make it KDP's: a portrait image 1,600 pixels wide by 2,560 pixels tall. It meets Amazon's recommendation exactly, and a cover designed at that size scales cleanly to almost every other ebook storefront.

Amazon KDP ebook covers: 1,600 × 2,560 px

Amazon recommends an ebook cover of 1,600 × 2,560 pixels — a height-to-width ratio of 1.6:1, the proportions of a standard paperback. Smaller images are accepted down to a minimum, but there's no reason to flirt with it: Kindle store pages zoom the cover, and an image uploaded at the recommended size stays sharp where a smaller one turns soft. Save as JPEG in RGB color, and keep the file comfortably under Amazon's size cap. The full requirements live on KDP's ebook cover guidelines page.

The ratio matters more than the resolution. A 1.6:1 cover reads as a book; a square or landscape image reads as a mistake, and Amazon may reject ratios far outside its accepted range. If your artwork doesn't fit, recompose it — never stretch it, which distorts type and faces in a way buyers notice instantly at any size.

Before uploading, do the thumbnail test. On a search results page your cover renders around 160 pixels tall, roughly the size of a postage stamp. Shrink your design to that size and check the title is still legible. Dimensions get a cover accepted; thumbnail legibility gets it clicked — the seven cover design rules cover that side of the job.

KDP paperback covers: trim, bleed, and the spine

Print covers don't have one fixed pixel size, because the file wraps around a physical book. Three concepts replace the single number. Trim is the finished page size — 6 × 9 inches is the most common choice for non-fiction. Bleed is extra artwork extending 0.125" beyond the trim edge, so that tiny cutting variations never leave a white sliver at the edge of your cover. And the spine sits between back and front cover, its width determined by page count and paper type — a 300-page book needs a visibly wider spine than a 100-page one.

Because spine width depends on your exact page count, the right cover size is calculated, not memorized. KDP's cover calculator takes your trim size, page count and paper type, and returns a template with the precise full-wrap dimensions and guide lines. Generate it after your interior is final — if the page count changes, the spine width changes with it, and an old template will be subtly wrong.

Etsy: the listing images do the selling

Etsy is different in kind: buyers never see your cover in a store shelf grid the way Kindle shoppers do. They see your listing images, and those images — not the ebook file itself — decide whether you make the sale. Square context shots around 2,000 × 2,000 px are the workhorse format: the cover propped in a styled scene, open spreads showing real pages, a graphic listing what's inside the bundle. Show the product the way a physical seller would photograph it, and check Etsy's Seller Handbook for the current photo guidance before finalizing a template.

The delivered file is still a normal ebook: a PDF at a standard page size (6 × 9" or US Letter for printable content), with the same 1.6:1 portrait cover as its first page. Keep the download small enough to upload directly — Etsy caps digital file sizes, and image-heavy PDFs hit that ceiling fast without compression.

Gumroad, Apple Books, and everywhere else

Gumroad is flexible about artwork: product images aren't validated against a book-specific spec, and a portrait cover around 1,280 × 1,810 px displays well. Apple Books and the library-focused aggregators each publish their own requirements, and they change often enough that copying numbers from a blog post is exactly the mistake to avoid — check the store's official spec (Apple's lives in its Books Partner documentation) at upload time.

The portable strategy: design one master cover at KDP's 1,600 × 2,560 px or larger, keep the layered source file, and export per store. A tall portrait cover with big type and one strong focal point survives every crop and every thumbnail. This is also the approach EbookCreator's cover designer takes — one design, exported at the right dimensions per marketplace.

The mistakes that actually cost sales

• Text too small at thumbnail — the #1 killer. A cover that's gorgeous at full size but illegible at 160 px loses the click before anyone sees the full-size version
• Wrong aspect ratio — stretching a square design to 1.6:1, or uploading a landscape image, distorts type and can trigger outright rejection
• Upscaling a small image — enlarging an undersized cover adds pixels, not detail; it will look soft exactly where Amazon zooms in
• Reusing the ebook cover for print as-is — a front-cover image has no bleed and no spine; the paperback needs the calculated full-wrap file
• Designing for one store — a cover with critical text at the edges gets clipped by another store's crop; keep titles inside the safe center area

Once the dimensions are right, pricing is the next lever — before you publish, run your planned price through the free KDP royalty calculator to see what each sale actually pays at 70% vs 35%. And if you're publishing your first book, the authors page walks through how EbookCreator handles the cover, interior and exports as one workflow.

Frequently asked questions