Instant Book Cover Art Guidelines

We have published Instant Books in two sizes and we might have more sizes in the future. The finished size depends on the dimensions of the unfolded paper and the number of folds. If you are not sure, contact the Instant Book designer for your project.

Instant Book Cover Art Dimensions

  • Letter-sized Instant Book front cover art: Scaled to fit in a 2  x 3.5 inch live image area, portrait orientation.
    The unfolded sheet size is 8.5 x 11 inches. The finished front cover is 2.75 x 4.25 inches, but we need to allow room for margins and text. No bleeds without prior approval from the book designer. (The desktop printer leaves a white space where it grabs the paper.)
  • Legal-sized Instant Book front cover art: Scaled to fit in a 3 in x 3 in live image area.
    The unfolded sheet size is 8.5 x 14 inches. The finished front cover is 3.5 x 4.25 inches, but we need to allow room for margins and text. No bleeds without prior approval from the book designer. (The desktop printer leaves a white space where it grabs the paper.)
  • For cover images that wrap around from the front cover to the back cover, contact the Instant Book designer.

Instant Book Image Specs

Color image resolution: 300 dpi

Black and white image resolution: 600 dpi for 1-bit black & white line art
300 dpi for 8-bit grayscale continuous tone images

Color Space: CMYK for color images or grayscale for black and white images

LPI (lines per inch): 180

Image file format: TIF or JPG

File naming: If possible, use unique file names that include your name