Cover Studio · Paperback, Hardcover & eBook

A cover that sells your book, designed for your book.

Tell Cantos what you picture and it paints original artwork, then designs three complete covers for you to choose between. You refine your favorite until it is right, and take away press-ready wraps for KDP, IngramSpark and Lulu, the eBook front, the artwork on its own, and the layered master. $99.99, with revisions included.

Design My Cover

Choose the cover at checkout, then design it with Cantos. The print files and the layered master are yours, with revisions included.

Your story and your artwork stay yours. Never used to train AI.

A complete book cover designed by Cantos: original night-lighthouse artwork with full wrap typography

An actual cover designed by Cantos, artwork and typography.

How It Works

Three covers. You choose. You refine.

Step oneTell Cantos what you picture

Your title, your genre, and the scene in your head, in your own words. Cantos paints original artwork from that direction. Already have a photograph or a commissioned piece you love? Bring it, and it designs around yours instead, for the same price.

Step twoChoose from three complete covers

Not three sketches: three finished covers, artwork and typography together, each a genuinely different take. You pick the one that feels like your book. Nothing decides that for you.

Step threeRefine it, then take every file

Change the wording, the sizes, the colors and the placement, by hand or just by saying what you want. Then download a set for every printer you publish with, each built to that printer's own measurements.

What You Receive

Every file a published book needs.

A print cover is one piece of artwork wrapped around a book, not three separate pictures. Cantos builds the whole wrap, then everything else you will be asked for along the way.

The paperback wrapFront, spine and back in one press-ready PDF, with the barcode placed in the corner that belongs to it and nothing else allowed there.

The hardcover case wrapThe full case layout with its hinge grooves and its bleed, because a hardcover sheet folds over boards and is larger than the trim in every direction.

The eBook front coverA crisp retail image for Kindle and every other store, built to survive the thumbnail it will actually be met at.

Your background artworkThe original painting on its own, with no type on it, for your website, your social posts and your press kit.

The layered design masterArtwork, title, subtitle, your name, spine text, back copy and barcode, each on its own layer, so you or any designer can change one thing later without redoing the rest.

Per-printer measurementsTrim, spine, hinge and bleed computed for each printer you chose, so nothing has to be guessed at or nudged by eye at upload time.

The print files are press-ready PDF/X-1a, which is the format a printer's preflight expects. You do not need Photoshop to use any of this: the PDFs and images are finished and upload-ready, and the layered master is a bonus for the future.

Sized To Your Book

Canva makes any size you type in. Cover Studio measures yours.

The right size for a print cover is not a design choice. It comes from your book: the printer, the trim size, the final page count and the paper. A design tool cannot know those numbers, so you work them out, type them in, and do it all again whenever the page count changes. Cover Studio starts from your book instead.

The spine, from your page countYour spine width is calculated from your page count and paper, by each printer's own formula. Add twenty pages and the wrap is measured again, not stretched.

The whole wrap, not a front coverBack, spine and front on one sheet, with bleed on every outside edge, at the exact size the printer will measure your file against.

IngramSpark hardcovers on IngramSpark's sheetA hardcover case wrap is larger than the paperback in every direction, and IngramSpark takes it on its own template sheet. Cover Studio places it there for you.

Press-ready filesPDF/X-1a with the ink kept inside the printer's limit and the EAN-13 barcode placed. Canva does not offer authors a PDF/X export.

Canva is a wonderful design tool, and many authors use it for front-cover ideas, ebook covers and launch graphics. If you have a front design you love, bring it: upload it as your own artwork, and Cantos builds the spine, the back and every print file around it, sized to your book. How a print cover is measured.

The Craft Behind It

The rules a good cover keeps.

Most homemade covers fail in the same few ways, and all of them are avoidable. Cantos designs against the conventions readers actually shop by, and then it measures the result rather than trusting its own eye.

What it designs for

One focal point, not the whole plot in one picture
Your genre's visual grammar first, your own twist second, because readers shop by pattern recognition
Survival at thumbnail size, where most readers will meet it
Two or three typefaces at most, with the title dominant and your name second
Local contrast: the title must stand out from the exact patch of image it sits on
Type that never crosses a face, human or animal

And what it then checks

Nothing clipped: every line of type is measured against the panel it sits in
The spine text centred on the real spine, hinge included, on every case wrap
The barcode zone kept clear, and the barcode pure black on white so it scans
Safe margins honoured, because the trimming blade is not perfect
The placement re-measured on the rendered cover, not assumed from the plan

The Price

One price, every print file.

$99.99 a book

The whole design session is part of the price. Cantos paints the artwork, designs the three covers and lets you refine the one you chose, and the print files and the layered master are yours.

Three books bought together are $199.99, held as credits for whenever the next one is ready. With an interior, the pair is $149.99; interior, cover, copy editing and the Marketing and Book Premiere Kit together are $249.99.

Revision passes come included with the cover, so a change of heart about the typeface is part of the price.

If the cover is not what you wanted, ask for a refund within 30 days and you get back everything you paid: every purchase carries a 100% money-back guarantee for 30 days. The full wording lives in the Terms.

Being Straight With You

What this is not.

Not offeredNot a dust jacket

Every hardcover we build is a case wrap: the printed cover laminated straight onto the boards, which is what KDP, IngramSpark and Lulu print. We do not make dust jackets or other specialty bindings, and we would rather say so here than let you find out at upload.

By designNot a cover with no book behind it

A spine has to be computed from a page count and a paper stock, so a cover is built once the inside of the book is settled. If your interior is finished elsewhere, that is fine: tell Cantos the page count and the paper and it does the rest.

Your call, not oursNot a rights service

Artwork you upload has to be yours to use, and a title has to be yours to publish. We do not adjudicate rights, and we design only what you tell us is yours to design. Cover text is set in the Latin alphabet; a title in another script is refused honestly rather than set badly.

One App, The Whole Book

Cantos handles the full stack.

The cover is the promise; the inside has to keep it. Everything here is built from the same manuscript in the same project, which is why the back-cover copy on your wrap can come straight out of your marketing kit.

InteriorTypeset like a real book. 30-day money-back guarantee. CoverYou are here. Copy EditingCorrections, not rewrites. Marketing KitAround 30 pieces, written from your book.

Why We Built This

A note from Tracy Atkins, founder

Fifteen years ago my team and I started BookDesignTemplates.com because first-time authors kept telling us the same thing: I wrote the book, but I have no idea how to make it look like a real one. More than 70,000 authors have used our designs since, and more than 300,000 books have been published with our work inside them.

Covers are where that gap hurts most. A reader decides in about a second, at about the size of a postage stamp, and a cover that ignores the visual grammar of its genre reads as confusing rather than as original. So Cantos designs to those conventions on purpose, and then it measures the finished cover instead of admiring it.

And it hands you everything, including the layered master, because a cover you cannot edit next year is a cover you are renting. Your artwork and your words stay yours. We claim no copyright on your book and we never use your manuscript or your artwork to train AI.

Tracy Atkins, founder

Before You Start

The questions authors ask about covers.

What files do I actually get?

The full paperback wrap as a press-ready PDF, the hardcover case wrap, the eBook front cover, the background artwork on its own with no text on it, and a layered design master in which the artwork, the title, the subtitle, your name, the spine text, the back copy and the barcode each sit on their own layer. Every one of them is yours to keep.

Can I use my own artwork or photograph?

Yes, and it costs the same. Upload a front-cover image or a complete wrap and Cantos sets the typography around it and builds the print files to each printer's specification. A front-only image gets a spine and back drawn from the palette of your own picture. Resolution is measured on your own pixels at the printed size: a file that would print soft is accepted and you are told so before anything is committed, and only a file too small to print well (under 150 ppi) is turned back, with the pixel size that prints sharp. PDF, PSD, TIFF, WEBP, PNG and JPG are all read.

Can I make my cover in Canva instead?

You can, and for front-cover ideas, ebook covers and launch graphics Canva is excellent. A print cover is harder: Canva's book cover templates are front-only, it has no spine calculator, and it does not offer authors a PDF/X export, so the measurements are yours to work out and to redo whenever your page count changes. If you have a Canva front you love, upload it to Cover Studio as your own artwork, and Cantos builds the spine, the back and every print file around it, sized to your book.

What if I do not like any of the three?

Ask for a fresh set, or refine the closest one in plain language: make the title bigger and warmer, move my name up, try the other typeface. You can also nudge any element by hand, and revision passes come included with the cover, so refining it is part of what you bought.

Which printers and formats are covered?

Amazon KDP, IngramSpark and Lulu, in paperback and in hardcover, each built to that printer's own trim, spine, hinge and bleed math, plus the eBook front cover. Tick every printer you plan to publish with and Cantos prepares a set for each. Hardcover means a case wrap, the printed cover laminated onto the boards. We do not offer dust jackets.

Why does the spine depend on my interior?

Because spine width is page count multiplied by the thickness of one sheet of the paper you chose. That is why a cover is built after an interior, and why changing the length of the book changes the cover. Design your interior here and Cantos already knows the number; bring a finished book and you tell it the page count and the paper.

Do I own the cover?

Completely. The artwork, the finished print files and the layered master are yours, with no copyright claim from us. You can open the master in Photoshop, or in free tools like GIMP and Photopea, or hand it to any designer you like, at any time.

Do I need a cover if I already have an interior from you?

No, and nothing is bundled onto your order without you choosing it. A cover can be added to an existing project whenever you are ready, or bought on its own for a book we never touched. If you buy it with an interior the pair is cheaper than either alone would suggest.

Is my book or my artwork used to train AI?

No. Never. Your manuscript, your cover brief and any artwork you upload are yours, they are not sold, licensed or shared, and they are never used to train a model. You can delete a project or your whole account whenever you like.