Design your cover.
Front, spine, back — all at once.
CoverForge is the first offline, book-aware cover design tool built for authors. Set your trim size, link your manuscript, and the spine calculates itself.
Fully offline · One-time purchase · No subscription
Every tool you need.
Nothing you don’t.
Generic design tools make you guess at trim sizes, bleed, and spine width. CoverForge knows what a book cover needs — so you can focus on the design.
Unified cover spread canvas
Back cover, spine, and front cover on one continuous design surface — exactly as the printer sees it. Every zone is correctly sized for your chosen trim and distributor from the moment you open a new project.
Automatic spine calculation
Enter your page count and paper weight — or link directly to your ManuscriptForge project file — and the spine resizes itself instantly. Every spine object repositions proportionally. No maths, no guessing.
Link to your ManuscriptForge project
Open your .mfx project file and CoverForge reads the page count, trim size, and paper weight automatically. Title and author fields in templates pre-populate from your manuscript metadata.
Full-featured canvas editor
Text, images, shapes, and groups — all with full transform support. Double-click text to edit live. Drag handles to resize, rotate, or flip. Every property is exposed in the context-sensitive right panel.
Layers, visibility & locking
Every object in the z-order as a named layer. Toggle visibility without deleting. Lock layers to protect background elements while working on foreground detail. Drag to reorder, group and ungroup freely.
Guides, bleed & safe zone
Trim line, bleed line (3mm), safe zone (5mm), and spine fold lines always visible as non-printing overlays. Drag from the ruler to place custom guides. Nothing critical will ever be trimmed off accidentally.
Asset library
My Images, My Fonts, and a built-in Textures library — linen, paper, grunge, geometric patterns — all accessible in a collapsible panel. Drag directly from panel to canvas, or click to place and scale.
Undo / redo — 50 steps
Full history with configurable depth, persisted inside the .cvr project file. Pick up exactly where you left off, including undo history, every time you reopen a project.
The spine width calculator that ends cover rejections
A spine even 1mm too wide or too narrow gets your file rejected by the distributor. CoverForge calculates the exact spine width your printer expects — and resizes the canvas live as you change it.
Link to ManuscriptForge
Click “Link to ManuscriptForge project”, open your .mfx file, and CoverForge reads page count and paper weight automatically. The spine updates in real time.
Enter page count & paper weight
Type your page count and select paper weight from the built-in distributor or gsm options. Spine width calculated immediately.
Type the spine width in mm
Already have the exact figure from your distributor’s cover template PDF? Type it directly and the canvas resizes to match.
| Paper | Thickness / page |
|---|---|
| KDP (white paper) | 0.0572 mm |
| KDP (cream paper) | 0.0635 mm |
| IngramSpark standard | 0.0508 mm |
| 60 gsm | 0.040 mm |
| 70 gsm | 0.045 mm |
| 80 gsm | 0.050 mm |
| 90 gsm | 0.055 mm |
| 100 gsm | 0.065 mm |
Same values as ManuscriptForge’s spine calculator. Both apps stay in sync automatically when linked via a .mfx file.
Start from a professional design, not a blank canvas
Every template is fully customisable — swap images, edit text, change colours. Apply a template to any trim size and CoverForge remaps all objects proportionally.
Auto-populated from your manuscript
When a .mfx file is linked, templates pre-fill title, author, and series info from your manuscript metadata.
Works at any trim size
Apply any template to any trim size — A5, 5×8, US Trade, A4, or custom. Objects scale and reposition proportionally across back, spine, and front zones.
Save your own templates
Built a cover style you want to reuse? Save it as a template with a thumbnail preview. Your templates live in the same library alongside the built-in ones.
Plus blank templates for every supported trim size
Every distributor’s requirements built in
Select a distributor and CoverForge sets the canvas dimensions, bleed, colour profile, and export validation rules automatically. No more hunting for spec sheets.
Export the right file for every destination
From press-ready print PDF to ebook JPEG — CoverForge validates your design before export and catches problems before the distributor does.
Press-ready with bleed marks
300 DPI scaling, trim and bleed marks, embedded fonts, correct colour profile per distributor. Supports standard PDF and PDF/X-1a.
Digital & ebook cover
High-quality JPEG for ebook listings, social media, and your website. 2560px on longest edge — the Amazon ebook standard — or custom resolution.
Lossless with transparency
Lossless PNG export for covers that need transparency. Full sRGB, no bleed. For designers needing a clean layer to composite further.
Vector for further editing
Vector export of text and shape layers for refinement in Illustrator or Inkscape. Raster images embedded as base64.
Pre-export validation
Before every export, CoverForge checks your design and reports any issues that would cause a distributor rejection or print problem.
Resolution check — are all placed images at least 300 DPI at their current print size?
Safe zone check — is any critical text or key image element outside the safe zone?
Spine width check — is the spine wide enough for the placed text?
Font embedding — are all fonts available and embeddable in the PDF?
Barcode placeholder — a reminder that the ISBN barcode is added by the printer.
File size estimate — warning if the final PDF will exceed distributor size limits.
Three apps. One complete workflow.
CoverForge is part of the only fully integrated, offline book production toolkit in the world. Each app connects to the others — no cloud, no subscriptions, no third-party lock-in.
ManuscriptForge
Write, format, and export the interior of your book. Fiction and non-fiction. EPUB, PDF, DOCX. Built-in imposition engine for physical book production.
CoverForge
Design the cover — front, spine, and back — as one unified spread. Links directly to your ManuscriptForge project for automatic spine calculation.
You are hereImposition Forge
Arrange interior pages on print sheets for physical book production. Signature, perfect bind, booklet, stab binding, Coptic, and miniature formats.
Truly offline. Fully yours.
No subscription
One-time purchase, lifetime updates. The app you buy today works in ten years without a monthly fee.
No cloud dependency
Your covers stay on your machine. No sync, no login required to open your own files.
Single portable file
Every project is one .cvr file containing your full design, embedded images, and undo history. Copy it, back it up, share it.
25 trim sizes + custom
Every standard KDP, IngramSpark, UK, European, and children’s trim size built in — plus a custom size option for any dimensions.
The cover designer that knows what a book cover needs
Correct bleed, correct spine, correct export — for every distributor, out of the box.
Join Our Waiting ListWindows 11 only at this stage · One-time purchase · No subscription
Also available as part of the Forge Suite bundle →