PENDRILO Help center
Get Pendrilo

Make your paperback cover with Cover Wrap, starting from Book → Make the Cover

Book → Make the Cover… sends your book's title, author, trim size and final page count to Pendrilo Cover Wrap, a separate program that makes the full print cover for a paperback. Cover Wrap lays out the back cover, spine and front on one sheet, sized from your page count and paper. Settle your book first, because the cover is sized from it.

You can also open Cover Wrap by itself and enter the details yourself under Book.

Before you make the cover

Finish the book's details and page count before you start. If the page count or trim size changes later, update the cover in Cover Wrap (see "When your page count changes" below).

  • Book Details: fill in the title, subtitle, author, publisher, print ISBN and description.
  • Print Settings: choose Paperback and the trim size. Cover Wrap makes paperback covers only. Hardcover (case laminate) covers aren't available in it yet.
  • Checks: fix the FIX items in the status bar. Click Show beside any item to go to it.
  • Generate Book: run it once. When it finishes, Your book is ready shows the number of Print pages.

Make the cover

  • 1. Open your book in Studio or the Formatter, and save it.
  • 2. Choose Book → Make the Cover….
  • 3. Cover Wrap opens with your book's title, author, trim size and final page count already filled in.
  • 4. In Cover Wrap, check the Book settings, add your artwork, style and place the back cover, and check the cover.

Under Book, choose the Paper, either Cream or White. Cream is a little thicker, so it makes a wider spine. Then choose the Printer, either KDP or IngramSpark.

Artwork

There are three ways to bring in pictures. Each has Choose Picture…, then Change Picture… or Remove.

  • Front cover: your cover art, cropped to fill the front and never stretched. Tick Print title and author on the front to set the title and author over it. Leave it unticked if the words are already part of your art.
  • Back cover: a picture behind the back cover's words. Without one, the back uses a colour. Tick Own background color to give it a colour of its own.
  • Full-wrap artwork: one picture for the back, spine and front together. When it's in use, the front and back pictures and colours are set aside. Remove it to bring them back.

Print needs sharp pictures. The Checks list warns when a picture will look soft.

Back cover words and photo

Under Back cover words and photo, fill in the headline or review quote, the blurb, an author photo and an author bio. Then pick a Layout, Classic or Modern, and the back cover's Text color. The layout gives each part a starting style and place.

Each part can have its own style. Open its Style to change the font, colour, size, bold or italic, alignment and line spacing. Click Back to the layout's style to undo your changes to that part. The author photo has its own Frame (Square, Rounded or Circle) and a border. To change the fonts for titles and spine, and for the blurb and bio, use Fonts near the bottom of the left side.

Move and resize the back cover parts

The headline, blurb, author photo and bio can go anywhere on the back cover. Point at a part on the cover and drag it. Drag its bottom-right corner to resize it.

To type an exact place, open the part's Position. Set the position by hand shows From left, From top, Width and Height in inches. Let the layout place it puts the part back where the layout wants it. A part you've moved stays where you put it, even when the page count changes the spine.

Back cover, spine and front

The cover is one sheet: the back is on the left, the spine in the middle and the front on the right. Every cover has 0.125 inch of bleed on every side, so no white edge shows after trimming. The red lines show where the paper is cut and folded. Keep words inside the dashed blue safe area. The guides never print; hide them with the Guides button.

The spine width follows your page count and paper. For KDP, it matches how KDP prints the book. For IngramSpark, paper thickness varies, so copy the spine width from IngramSpark's free cover template generator: tick Spine width from IngramSpark's template and type it in. For KDP, Use a spine width from KDP's template does the same if you'd rather match a template you downloaded.

KDP only allows words on the spine of books with more than 79 pages. For a thinner book, the spine is left blank, and the Checks list says why.

Barcode

For KDP, leave Print my own ISBN barcode unticked, because KDP prints the barcode in the white box for you. Tick it only if you have your own ISBN and want the barcode printed on the cover.

IngramSpark needs the barcode on the cover, so with IngramSpark, enter your Print ISBN. Show the US price adds the price to the barcode.

Check the cover

The Checks list on the right looks over the whole cover each time you change something. When nothing needs fixing, it says Ready for KDP.

  • A red dot is a problem KDP may reject, such as a missing picture, a wrong ISBN, or a part covering the barcode area.
  • A yellow dot is a warning worth fixing, such as a picture that will look soft or words outside the safe area.
  • A hollow dot is a note.

Click Show me under an item to light up the place on the cover it's about.

Page count and trim size

Enter the number of Pages in the finished book. The spine gets wider as the count goes up.

To fill in the page count and trim size from your finished interior, click Read from Book PDF… beside Pages. If the PDF's pages aren't a standard size, Cover Wrap uses the page count and asks you to choose the trim size.

A book file doesn't record its page count. If you open a .pendrilo file with File → Open in Cover Wrap, enter the count yourself or use Read from Book PDF….

Export the files

The Cover menu has the exports:

  • Export Print PDF… saves the cover you upload to KDP or IngramSpark: one PDF at the exact size, with bleed and without the guides. File → Export… does the same. If the Checks list still has problems, Cover Wrap says so but saves the PDF anyway.
  • Export Ebook Cover… saves the front cover alone as a JPEG, 2560 pixels tall, for your ebook on KDP and other ebook stores.
  • Save Proof Image… saves a picture of the whole cover with the guides, so you can check it or send it to someone before you upload.

To upload the print PDF to KDP:

  • 1. On your paperback's Paperback Content page, under Cover, choose Upload a cover you already have (print-ready PDF only).
  • 2. Upload the PDF.
  • 3. Use the same trim size, paper and page count you set in Cover Wrap. Otherwise, KDP's previewer will say the cover is the wrong size.

When your page count changes

The spine width depends on the page count. If you add or cut pages after you've made the cover, change Pages in Cover Wrap, or use Read from Book PDF… on the new interior PDF. You can also run Book → Make the Cover… again. To check a cover size before you start, use the KDP Cover Size Calculator at pendrilo.com/tools.

If Cover Wrap doesn't open

If Cover Wrap doesn't open, Pendrilo saves your book's details to a file instead. Open that file in Cover Wrap later to bring the details in. Then check the Pages field before you export.

For more on each part of Cover Wrap, see the Pendrilo Cover Wrap help.