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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

Let's see, things I have some experience with:

For paperbacks/hardbacks - Ingram Sparks has a lot of requirements that are different in sizes and different ways of doing things.

Ebooks and paperbacks can use the same images on the front, you just need to do the spine and back. Since you use black for a lot of your covers, you can extend the black and just put the blurb on their along with the ISBN/AISN square, a bit about you, and the publisher's logo. For the spine you should have the publisher's logo, too, as well as the title/author.

Ingram Sparks also has dust jackets for their hard covers, and you can have separate images for the hard cover and dust jacket.

Amazon has hard covers, but the image is printed on like middle school books, which make them a little less professional, but can still look nice, so it's not a totally bad situation.

There are some indie places out there that are trying to do specialized covers such as foil and sprayed edges for special orders, they are in the UK currently, but you can order from them.

Amazon (and the others) have templates that you can download to work with that help you to figure out the sizes you need for the cover images.

5.5 x 8.5 is one of the most used paperback trim sizes, with 6 x 9, being the next most. and 8.5 x 8.5 being the most common for children's books.

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