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I have tested with PStricks and the layout came fine though i had to struggle with the positioning of the covers based on the coordinates since using the exact coordinate gave inaccurate results.

Is there any class which eases the creation of Book Cover Layout for the front cover, back cover and spine with bleeds etc.

I have see a lot of posts regarding creating a title page but only a couple for book covers.

How do you go on creating a layout for the book covers and saving the result as a PDF/X-1a or -3a etc. ?

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  • A book cover is something printed, hence it doesn't need any accesible pdf-features. Creating it ... well, you have to know the dimensions of the book, including the spine and then it is plain putting boxes like Lego on a page. Depending on how fancy your cover is, some graphical tool might be better suited.
    – Johannes_B
    Feb 10, 2015 at 17:11
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    For my book covers I use tikz (with graphicx if any non-vector artwork is included) and then convert the pdf using jmakepdfx.
    – Nicola Talbot
    Feb 10, 2015 at 18:29

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Recently (4th March) the bookcover class was made available on TexLive. I have not tried it but it seems to do what you want.

Use the TexLive manager tlmgr to update your installation. For example, in a command window:

> tlmgr update -list

To see what changes will be made, then

> tlmgr update -all

to get all the updates.

There is a gui version of tlmgr if you would feel more comfortable with that, initiated by

> tlmgr -gui

and for for instructions try

> tlmgr -help
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The question has two parts: How to design a book cover? How to obtain the final format as PDF/X? The PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3 formats are often, not always, required by publishers.

Designing the cover, in terms of layout and content, can be done with the "book-cover" package, as mentioned above. You should also consider using a graphics program. GIMP works. Note that there are not many good reasons to use LaTeX for book cover design. A graphics program is better.

An ordinary PDF can be converted to PDF/X using Adobe InDesign or Acrobat Pro. These programs have sophisticated methods for altering a background image so that it print well, with overlying text. LaTeX, not having much graphics capability, cannot do that (and probably never will). GraphicsMagick can do that.

Also, the PDF/X may be required to comply with an ink limit. For example, the most prominent print-on-demand services in the U.S.A. impose a 240% ink limit for CMYK artwork.

EDIT: In my initial reply, I referred to a GitHub project. That project has now been discontinued.

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