In this 5-minute tutorial, I’ll walk you through the BookVault cover setup for using either foil or spot UV treatments—including the key differences you NEED to know before you submit your files!
I’m using Affinity Publisher (v2) but these concepts of how to export and submit the files should work in whatever program you’re using.
Come to my Facebook group with any questions (the Indie Author Toolkit), or email me to let me know you’re not on Facebook, as I’m working on an off-FB space: he***@**********ks.com (<<click on that if my anti-spam settings have cloaked the address).
Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, Jody Skinner here, and I’m going to show you the difference between setting up a foil cover design for BookVault, versus a spot UV cover design.
[00:00:12] When you’re coming through and setting up your title in the first place, whatever your cover binding is, paperback or hardcover, you need to choose matte, whichever one you’re going with. And then whatever paper stock that you choose here, add your color pages and your black ink pages. And then when you come to the bottom, you’re going to click Make it Bespoke.
[00:00:34] As you’re going through, it will keep a running tally at the bottom of what it will cost to print in the UK versus in the us. But as soon as you add a bespoke option, it’s going to print out of the UK. It will still ship worldwide. I have most of my buyers in the US, but I still have everything printed in BookVault UK.
[00:00:53] So you can either choose what color foil that you want, or you can choose spot UV. The main difference is that foil is always opaque, it’s never see-through, and it may shift in printing, so you really don’t want to layer this on top of a printed design, that if it shifts more than a couple millimeters, it’s going to show up. And the spot UV option is just a clear, glossy ink that goes over any color that you have there. So it’s going to make your matte cover coating really pop wherever you have that. And your foil, again, is going to be shiny, then, on top of your matte cover.
[00:01:27] So once you’ve selected those and you come down to add the rest of your items, then inside your file when you have it set up, it’s going to give you the places where you can upload your files that you may have ready. So each one of the ones is going to say, the Text File here at the top, Cover File, this is Cover Foil. This is a – I set this one up as spot UV and it still says foil. So don’t worry about that. You can either get the sizing templates from each little box now, or you can come to sizing templates at the top and you can download any of these.
[00:01:58] Now I’m setting up in Affinity Publisher. This is the version 2.0. They just came out with a free version in 2025, but this is what my cover files are in right now, so this is what I’m using. This is what my hardcover template looks like. And just so it’s clear, the, the lighter blue part is the outer part of the finished hardcover. The center lighter blue is the spine. The medium blue on either side is where the design is going to fold. And then the dark blue around the edge is the wrap that’s going to go all the way around.
[00:02:26] And this is what the cover itself looks like. So if I want to foil or spot UV, these inner items right here, I’m basically going to have two pages that are the size of my template. So for this one, I have all my cover designs here. So if I pull the snowflakes, the text, and the bottom elements here, let me show you the difference between foiling and spot UV, whichever one you’re using. It just needs to be the black designs that you want to pop, on a blank white background. I have the template underneath, but I just have a white rectangle over everything. All the blue is covered up. You don’t want this because if this is actually exported with any of the blue, it’s going to print and we don’t want that. And now I’m just going to change the last of these into black items.
[00:03:13] And now to make sure nothing has shifted, I’m going to overlay this to check that it’s in the right place. So I’m going to hold the Shift key down while I click all of these. And I’m actually going to select the background as well. Um, I’m going to [right-click] select Group for these, and then I’m going to right-click and I’m going to Cut the design off. So then I’m going to come up to the one above there and I’m going to Paste it over top. Whatever program you’re working in should have some kind of, uh, transparency or an opacity setting. So whenever you can take that down and just check, okay, does that line up exactly with the items underneath? Then shift it off to the side. Just double check. It’s like I want, so I’m going to take it back up to full opacity. I’m going to Cut it once again and bring it back down. I do like that the Affinity programs will Paste exactly where you Copied them from, but if anything shifts, um, just getting them back squared up with the design is great.
[00:04:13] So for spot UV, I want to keep the design that’s underneath because this is going to be clear and is going to go over the top. So I would export this page. I would export this page, label them as the right items, and upload them where they need to go.
[00:04:26] For a cover with foil elements though, I’m going to actually either remove them or just hide them, and then export the cover underneath without them. Since the printer can shift and the foil machine can shift, if the cover shifts a millimeter one direction and the foil shifts a millimeter the other direction, I don’t want anything that needs to be that precise. It shouldn’t have something where it’s going to be immediately obvious poking out underneath if the foil isn’t precise enough. So it’s good to work with your design and make sure that you can have these great elements, but have a little bit of wiggle room in the design too.
[00:05:01] Hope that’s helpful. Have a great day.