Self-publishing: How do I download the cover image of my book from Amazon.com?

How do I download the cover image of my book from Amazon.com?

When you upload your manuscript via the KDP publishing platform to Amazon.com you will need a book cover.

You can add a book cover by either:

  • 1.) upload a cover image for your book, or
  • 2.) create one on the fly using Amazon’s own cover designing tool.

I currently am creating my own book covers to go with my books.

But, for my very first ever published short story, I used Amazon’s book covers design tool on their KDP platform to design my book cover.

The tool is simple to use, with not a whole lot of whistles and bells.

This is fine since the vast majority of authors have no design experience and therefore are likely to end up creating a mess of a book cover if presented with the advanced features the more fancier design tools out there have.

After the publication of my short story, I quickly realized I had a problem.

I needed the book cover locally (on my laptop), so I can use it in my marketing campaigns and on other book platforms.

But there was no obvious way for me to download a high-resolution image of my book cover.

On the book page in the Amazon book store, a thumbnail is provided. But I rather not use a scaled-down version of the image when promoting or publishing my work elsewhere.

I was hopeful when I clicked Look Inside and was presented with a high-resolution image of the book cover. But the usual Right Click and Save was not allowed/was not possible.

I tried a bunch of suggestions I found online, but most of them didn’t work.

In the end, the solution was reasonably simple: I just need to download the complete webpage that Amazon has created for my book from within the Look Inside view of my book.

This is how you download a high-resolution version of your book cover from Amazon.com:

  • On Amazon.com lookup your book page.
  • Click on Look Inside to view a sample of your work.
  • Hover with your mouse cursor above the top edge of the opened Look Inside view.
  • Right-click and select Save as… (this action will create a local version of the webpage and all related resources — like images — on your machine.)
  • On your machine navigate to where you have downloaded the webpage and open the folder with all the resources (do not open the .html file!)
  • There you will find a high-resolution version of your book cover.
  • Copy paste this image to another folder to use later, after which you can delete the .html and the accompanying folder with resources.

Khadim Zaman, science fiction author and poet.

I am a science fiction author and poet from Amsterdam.

It took me a while to discover I liked to write. Now I am hooked.

Help me get the word out.

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Thank you.