eBook cover design: what works at thumbnail size

KDP's cover page gives the targets: ideal dimensions of 2,560 pixels high by 1,600 wide, a height-to-width ratio of at least 1.6:1, a minimum of 1,000 by 625 pixels, no dimension over 10,000, a file under 50 MB, JPEG or TIFF, and the RGB colour profile. It also gives one design note worth taking: a cover with a white or very light background can disappear against the store's white page, so add a narrow medium-grey border of three or four pixels to define the edge. The studio's cover download is rendered at exactly 1,600 × 2,560.

Shrink the cover to the width of your thumb and look at it from arm's length. Can you read the title? Can you tell what kind of book it is — practical, literary, a report? If either answer is no, the cover has failed the only test the store will give it, however handsome it is at full size. This is why typographic covers work for nonfiction: one big title, a short subtitle, an author line, a restrained palette. Illustration and photography can work too, but only when they leave the top third and the bottom quarter quiet enough for type.

Choose the layout before the picture. A left-aligned editorial grid suits guides; a centred stack suits novels and companions; a solid band across the lower third carries type over any artwork; a boxed title suits workbooks and reports. Set the title in a face with real contrast at small sizes, keep the subtitle a size that is legible or leave it off the cover, and never let the picture generate the lettering — image models spell badly, and mangled type is the one tell every buyer recognises. Artwork goes underneath the type, tinted so the type wins.

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