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Book Cover Design for KDP Authors - 7 Tips

7/30/2026

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Book Cover Design for KDP Authors - 7 Tips


Are you an Amazon KDP author looking for a great book cover? These 7 book cover design tips will help you quickly get a bestseller-quality cover, at an excellent price, even if you have no graphic-design experience.

Book Cover Design Tip #1 - Avoid Templates


A book cover template is a premade cover with placeholder text that can be updated with your title and author name. Though the ease of using a premade cover may be appealing, there's a harsh downside.

​Often, every user of the site a template comes from also has access to it, meaning many other books can wind up with a cover that's almost identical to yours, which has negative marketing consequences. Canva, though useful for authors in other ways, is an example of a cover template website and should be avoided for cover design.

​Also, most templates, regardless of where they come from, aren't bestseller caliber.

If you don't happen to have graphic-design experience, and are looking to create a cover with ease, instead of using a template, go with an AI cover creator that will give you a unique, high-quality cover. The best is Book Leopard... 
Book Leopard AI tool - free tial

Book Cover Design Tip #2 - Avoid Hired Design


Not long ago, the main way an Amazon KDP author could get a bestseller-quality cover was to hire a professional graphic designer. Though some designers can certainly create a great cover, this approach has two major downsides - cost and time.

A cover designer can cost $500, sometimes more. And the time to complete your project, encompassing revisions, can be many weeks. Two examples of this option for cover design are the freelancer directory Reedsy and the hybrid-publishing company BookBaby.

Recently, AI has allowed KDP authors to bypass this costly, time-consuming method. The best AI cover design software, Book Leopard, can give you a bestseller-quality cover in just seconds, and the cost is only $49, less than 10% of the price of many professional cover designers. 

Book Cover Design Tip #3 - Visually Convey Your Book Type


When readers on Amazon, and other sites, are looking for a book like yours, they may be checking out dozens of cover images on a search-results page. You want to be sure your cover visually conveys your book's type, so these readers know it's for them once they see it.

Before readers even have a look at your description, they should have a sense of your book's type from the cover image alone. The cover generator Book Leopard will do this for you.

Book Cover Design Tip #4 - Modernize Older Covers


Do you have a book that's been out for 5 years or more? If so, its cover is possibly coming off as dated to readers, which can be negatively impacting sales. Replacing an older cover with a modernized one can instantly fix this problem.

In the recent past, if you were working with a hired designer, based on cost and time, updating older covers may not have been practical for you, especially if you had several books that had been out for a while. However, the high speed and low cost of AI cover design has changed this.

You can quickly and cost-effectively update older covers, which can boost your sales. 

Book Cover Design Tip #5 - Add an Author Highlight


Have you hit an Amazon bestseller list? Have you won an award? Have you done anything else readers might find appealing when deciding what book to buy next? Include a mention of it on the cover of your book. However, be sure to keep this brief, no more than one line. 

Book Cover Design Tip #6 - Mention Your Series Name


Is your book part of a series? You should mention the series name on your cover. You should be sure to do this on the cover of every series installment too.

​If someone reads a book in your series and likes it, that person has a high chance of buying more books in the series. If that person happens to come across another series book on Amazon, or another site, the name on the cover will make a purchase more likely. 

Book Cover Design Tip #7 - Visually Convey Series Inclusion


If your book is in a series, mentioning the series name on your cover can help, but you can do even more in this area. Though each cover in your series should be unique, reflective of its book, all installment covers should have a similar overall look.

This will help readers associate the books with the series. If a reader enjoyed a series book, the odds are high that person would buy more. You need to make sure readers like this can easily recognize series books.

The AI design tool Book Leopard can quickly handle this for you. When you're creating a cover for a series book, you have the option to upload an existing cover of another installment. If so, the cover created will automatically be given an overall look aligned with the existing cover, while having a unique concept.

In the recent past, updating every cover in a series, with a hired designer, may not have seemed practical for you, in terms of time and cost.

However, with the AI tool for cover design Book Leopard, you can do this yourself quickly. Though creating a cover for one book only costs $49, if you were to create new covers for multiple books, you can for even less per book by purchasing a package.   
Ready to give Book Leopard a try? Just click here:
Visit Book Leopard
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Copyright 2026 Ted Galdi
  • Home
  • About
    • Mailing List
    • Bio
    • Contact
    • Awards
    • Interviews
  • Books
    • Novels >
      • The Cassandra Trap
      • The Azure Scam
      • Black Quiet
      • Razor Moon
      • Frozen Dream
      • Sky's Shadow
      • Edge of Chaos
      • Lion on Fire
      • An American Cage
      • Elixir
      • Three Thriller Boxset
    • Short Stories >
      • Vandal
      • Shapes of Dark
      • The Split
      • Intrusion
      • Hazel Is Missing
      • A Road to Nowhere
      • Chasing Dawn
  • Learn
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