What goes on the back cover
A reader who has turned your book over has already decided the front was interesting. The back cover's only job is to convert that into a purchase, and it has to do it in about fifteen seconds, in a shop, standing up.
It is also the panel with the least design freedom on the whole wrap, because part of it belongs to a barcode.
What goes on it, in order of importance
Not everything below belongs on every book. The order is what matters — cut from the bottom.
- The hook line. One line at the top, larger than everything else, doing the work a movie poster tagline does. It is the only part most people read.
- The blurb. Three or four short paragraphs. Present tense, the character and the problem, and a question left open. See How to write a blurb that sells the book.
- A review quote, if it is real. One line, attributed to a person or a publication that exists. An invented quote from an invented reviewer is spotted more often than authors expect, and it costs you the sale you were trying to make.
- The author line and photo. A sentence or two, third person. For nonfiction this is a credential and it matters; for fiction it is a note, and shorter is better. The photo is optional in fiction, close to expected in nonfiction, and small either way.
- The publisher mark. At the foot, matching the spine and the title page.
- The category line. Something like "FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological", usually set small at the top left. Some retailers and bookshops expect it for shelving; nobody is harmed by it being there.
- The price. Only if you are sure. Printing a price on the cover commits you to it, and a price change then means a new cover file.
- The barcode block. Last in importance, first in layout, because it is the one element that cannot move.
The barcode block owns a corner
Reserve 2 × 1.2 inches in the lower right of the back panel. That area needs to be light and plain — a scanner is reading dark bars off a pale ground, and it will fail on a photograph, a gradient or a dark field.
Leave it clear whether or not you supply a barcode yourself. If you publish through KDP without your own ISBN, the store prints its own symbol into that space, and anything you put there is covered. For what belongs in the block and the price code that sits beside it, see Barcodes, and the price code beside them and Do you need your own ISBN?.
What is left after the constraints
Take a 6 × 9 paperback. The back panel is 6 × 9 inches, but keep everything that matters 0.25 inches inside the trim on three sides and about ⅛ inch clear of the spine fold, and you are designing inside roughly 5.5 × 8.5 inches. Take the barcode's corner out of that, and your text has a little over 5 × 7 inches to live in.
That is the real reason back covers go wrong. Authors design for 6 × 9, then discover the copy has to shrink.
In the Cover Maker. The barcode area is reserved on the back panel from the start — as a clear zone, as a blank box for KDP's own symbol, or with a real EAN-5 price add-on in dollars or pounds — and the trim, bleed and safe-area guides are drawn live over the back as well as the front. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
Set the blurb big enough to read in the hand
This is the most common back-cover failure, and it comes from designing on a screen.
At 100% zoom on a large monitor, a 7 pt blurb looks fine. In print it is a gray block that a reader in a shop will not squint at, and one with ordinary middle-aged eyesight cannot read at all. Your buyers skew older than you think.
Set back-cover body text at a size you would accept in the interior of the book — around 10 to 12 pt — and then cut words until it fits. Do not cut the size until the words fit. If the copy will not go into the space at a readable size, the copy is too long. That is a finding, not a layout problem.
Shorter than the store listing
The back cover and the Amazon description are not the same text, and copying one into the other is a mistake in both directions.
A store listing can run long. The reader is sitting down, has already clicked, and can scroll. A back cover is read standing up, on paper, in a few seconds, and it competes with the rest of the shelf. Write the back cover short — a hook and a hundred and fifty words is a working length — and let the listing carry the longer version.
A full back reads as desperate
There is a look that marks a book as self-published before anyone reads a word of it: every inch of the back covered, four review quotes, a bio, a photo, a bulleted list of what you will learn, a website, a social handle, all set small to fit.
Traditionally published backs are mostly empty. The space is the confidence. If you cannot decide what to cut, cut the review quotes first, then the author bio, then the photo.
It is the same file as the front
The back is not a separate document. It is the left-hand portion of one flat wrap — back, spine, front — built outward from your trim size and your page count, as covered in Book cover dimensions, start to finish.
That has a practical consequence. Any change to the page count changes the spine, which moves the fold, which moves the whole back panel relative to the sheet. So finish the interior, get the final page count, and set the back cover text once, rather than nudging it twice.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Designing a spine people can read on a shelf · More: Barcodes, and the price code beside them · Bleed and safe area, explained once · How to write a blurb that sells the book