What resolution should my cover artwork be?
Print wants 300 DPI (dots per inch) at the final size. Your front-cover image needs to be a bit wider and taller than the book itself, because the artwork runs past the cut line and wraps around the edge of the cover. So aim for:
| Your trim | Front cover artwork |
|---|---|
| 5 × 8 in | 1600 × 2550 px |
| 5.25 × 8 in | 1650 × 2500 px |
| 5.5 × 8.5 in | 1750 × 2650 px |
| 6 × 9 in | 1900 × 2850 px |
Those are your trim size plus the roughly quarter inch of bleed and wrap the printer needs, at 300 DPI — see Trim, bleed and safe area.
Bigger than this is fine — the Cover Maker scales down cleanly. Smaller is the problem: a 600-pixel-wide image blown up to cover size looks soft or pixelated in print.
You don't have to work any of this out yourself. Load your image and the Front Cover section shows its pixel size and the DPI you're getting, and warns you when that's too low for a crisp result at your trim.
If your only art is low-resolution, regenerate it larger rather than stretching it — the tool offers a one-click upscale when you're close, but nothing recovers detail that was never captured. A blurry cover is the most common avoidable print problem; see also Why does the preview look blurry?
Generating your art with AI? Ideogram, Midjourney and DALL·E work in aspect ratios rather than pixels, and their standard output is smaller than every number in the table above. See What size should I generate my AI cover art?