GoodNotes Notebook Cover Sizes and Sellable Designs

A GoodNotes notebook cover is the first page of the notebook, nothing more, and Goodnotes' own support page says so in those words. The right size is whatever paper size the notebook uses, A4, A5, Letter or Goodnotes Standard, because the app doesn't resize a cover you import to match the pages behind it. Deliver each cover as its own single-page PDF, since a multi-page PDF imported as a template keeps only its first page. Free covers live in the Marketplace's Covers category, and the paid ones sell as packs of 5 to 300.

That's the buyer's answer. The seller's version is that a cover is the cheapest digital product there is to make, so the market gives most of them away, and the ones that get paid for are matched to a planner or sold as a colour system. The seven live listings I read weigh anywhere from 0.1 MB to 1,340 MB for the same kind of product, and that number decides whether your pack fits in a free Goodnotes account, or on Etsy at all.

Everything below is from Goodnotes' support and pricing pages, seven Marketplace listings, the two sellers ranking for this term, and the fee pages of Etsy and Gumroad, all loaded 15 September 2026.

A Cover Is Page One

Goodnotes' page on changing a cover opens with the definition and then gives six steps. Open the notebook and go to the first page. Tap the More button on the right of the navigation bar, then Change Template, then the Cover tab. Choose the size and orientation, pick a cover, tap Apply.

The page also carries a warning in bold, and it's the answer to the most common complaint about covers. Change Template changes whatever page you're looking at, so if you're on page 14 when you apply a cover, page 14 becomes a cover and the Library thumbnail doesn't move. Goodnotes' wording is "confirm that you are viewing page 1 before applying a new cover". That warning is the likeliest answer to the "why can't I change my cover" question Google attaches to this search.

The other thing the definition gives you is a second route that needs no template at all. Any page moved into the first position becomes the cover shown in the Library. So a cover can be a page you drew on, a photo you dropped in, or a page from a planner you bought, dragged to the front.

The Size Nobody Publishes

The search suggestions for this term include "GoodNotes notebook cover size", and the honest answer has two halves.

The first half is that Goodnotes doesn't publish pixel dimensions for its own Goodnotes Standard paper on any page I could find, and the third-party guides that fill the gap don't agree with each other. One ranking guide states 1536 by 1960 pixels. The measurement sites that come up for the same query give 455 by 588 points. Those are different shapes, about 1.28 to 1 against 1.29 to 1, and a cover built to one will show a sliver of margin against paper built to the other. Neither is Goodnotes speaking.

The second half is what Goodnotes does say, on its template import page, and it makes the pixel argument mostly moot. The size category you choose when importing a template is used "to categorize the template", and "the selected size category does not resize the imported file". Then, one line later, "for the clearest result, use a PDF with the intended page dimensions". Read together, the size of a cover is the size of the paper it will sit in front of, and the app won't fix a mismatch for you.

The practical rule that falls out of this is simpler than the table. Make the cover in the same page size as the notebook it's for, export it as a PDF at that size, and import it. If you're selling covers, ship them at the paper sizes your buyers' planners use, and say which on the listing, because "Paper Size" is a field on every Marketplace listing and a filter on the category page.

Seven Live Cover Packs And What They Weigh

Each Marketplace listing shows a "What you'll get" block with the file size, paper size, layout and quantity, and I read seven from the Covers category. Prices didn't render in the text I could read, so the paid ones are shown as paid without a figure.

The spread between the lightest and heaviest cover on that table is about 1,200 to 1. The Retro pack's creator describes their work as "predominantly creating vector illustrations", and 20 covers in a tenth of a megabyte is what vector export looks like. The 6.2 MB per cover at the bottom is what a full-page photograph or a painted texture looks like, and Goodnotes' own four covers are the heaviest per page on the list, which I found funny and also instructive. Both are legitimate. They're just different products with different consequences.

The consequence is the free plan. Goodnotes' pricing page gives the free tier 100 MB of storage and an import limit of 5 MB per file. The 2026 Digital Covers pack is 13 times the free tier's entire storage. The 300+ pack is four and a half times it. A subscriber on Essential has 5 GB and won't notice, and the larger of the two is labelled a Subscriber Special, so that may be a deliberate fit. But if you're selling a cover pack outside the Marketplace, to a buyer who imports it through Files, a single cover over 5 MB won't go into a free account at all.

I'd export covers as vector where the design allows it, and where it doesn't, I'd keep each cover under 2 MB and say so in the listing. That's a judgment rather than a Goodnotes rule, but the rule underneath it is Goodnotes'.

The Multi-Page PDF Trap

This is the line that changes how a cover pack should be built, and none of the pages ranking for this term mention it.

From Goodnotes' template import page, verbatim, "If you import a multi-page PDF as a template, only its first page is added." A 20-cover pack delivered as one 20-page PDF, imported as a cover template, gives the buyer one cover. The other nineteen exist in the file and are invisible to the template library. The buyer can still get at them by opening the PDF as a document and moving a page to the front of another notebook, but that's not what they'll try first, and it's not what the listing promised.

Etsy's limits come from its digital listing page, which allows up to five files at 20 MB each and no variations on a digital item. Its page doesn't list accepted formats, so I can't confirm from Etsy itself that an archive goes through, though the sellers in these results advertise packs of 48 and 220 covers, so something does. The Marketplace has no such limit that I could see, which is how a 1,340 MB listing exists there and could not exist on Etsy in any form.

The delivery I'd ship is one PDF per cover, sized to the paper, in an archive, with a one-line note on the Downloads page saying import each file separately as a cover. Jenaw Designs' free set, which ranks tenth, ships four JPEGs and four PDFs, which reads as the same idea done by hand.

What A $9 Pack Keeps

The one direct seller ranking for this term, Maven Artistry, sells a single product in its covers collection, a composition-book cover in 20 colours for $9, with an onboarding document and a tutorial video included. That's 45 cents a cover, and it's a sensible shape for a paid pack, one design in a colour system rather than 20 unrelated designs.

Here's $9 through the channels with published fees. US seller, one sale, nothing to ship.

Etsy and a Gumroad link are ten cents apart on a $9 sale, and the full Etsy stack, including when the ad fee stops being optional, is in how to sell digital downloads on Etsy. The Marketplace's rate is the blank on every one of these tables, and the Apple cut that sits ahead of it on iOS is worked through in GoodNotes planner, so I won't repeat it. The short version is that you apply, wait up to three weeks, and then learn what a sale is worth.

What I'd take from the table isn't the fee line. It's that $9 is about the ceiling a cover pack can ask when the Marketplace is giving away 71 and 304 covers to subscribers, and at $7.70 kept, 200 sales is $1,540. Covers are an add-on product. The listings that seem to understand that are the ones tying the covers to a planner, which is what JeyDesignShop's free set does in its own description, "they match perfectly the JDS 2026/2027 Digital Planners". Seventy-one free covers is a very good reason to go and look at the planner.

Making One Without Buying Software

Goodnotes gives you a route that uses nothing but the app. Open any page, draw or paste what you want on it, then Share and Export, Export This Page, PDF, and choose the Flattened type. Import that PDF through Manage Notebook Templates as a cover. Because it came out of Goodnotes at the notebook's own page size, the dimension question answers itself.

Canva ranks second for this term with a gallery of digital notebook cover templates, some free and some marked Pro. Its page doesn't say what size they export at, in the text I could read, so set the page size yourself to match the notebook before you design, and export as PDF. If you plan to sell what you make there, the licence that governs Canva's own elements is the part to read first, and it's covered in Etsy Canva templates and the license that limits you.

One more Goodnotes rule for the maker. A deleted custom template can't be restored, though notebooks already using it aren't changed. Keep the source files somewhere other than the template library.

Questions

How do I create a notebook cover in Goodnotes? Design a page at the notebook's paper size, in Goodnotes itself or anywhere that exports PDF, and import it through Manage Notebook Templates as a cover. Or draw on any page and move it to position one.

Why can't I change the notebook cover on Goodnotes? Almost always because Change Template was applied to a page other than the first. Go to page 1 and apply it there. If a purchased cover won't appear in the Cover tab, check that it was imported with Cover enabled rather than as paper.

How do I import a notebook cover in Goodnotes? On Apple devices, Goodnotes menu, Manage Notebook Templates, enable Cover, choose the size and orientation, scroll to the end of the group and tap Import. On Android, Windows and web, the same menu, then Edit, Create new group, and Import Template. PDF or image, and only the first page of a PDF.

What is the size of a Goodnotes notebook cover? The size of the notebook's paper. A4, A5 and Letter are fixed standards. Goodnotes Standard has no published dimensions, and the safe way to hit it is to export a page from Goodnotes and use that as your canvas.

How do I change my notebook cover on GoodNotes? First page, More, Change Template, Cover tab, pick one, Apply. Six taps.

How do I download notebook covers for GoodNotes? The Marketplace's Covers category, reachable from the app or at marketplace.goodnotes.com without signing in, with filters for free-for-subscribers, orientation and paper size. Goodnotes' own four-cover set is free to everyone. Outside the app, the free set ranking tenth is for personal use only, per its own page, which matters if you were planning to resell it.

Can I sell covers I made in Goodnotes? Yes, through any channel on the fee table, and the Marketplace doesn't require exclusivity. Test the file on the oldest device you have first, and the wider checklist for that is in digital planning iPad setup.

What I'd Do

Build one design in a colour system at A4 and Letter, export each cover as its own single-page PDF, and check the per-cover size against the numbers in the table above before you write the listing. Under a megabyte is the target I'd set, and vector gets you there for free.

Then decide what the covers are for. If they're the product, price them at $9 or under and expect the free packs to be your competition. If they're the reason to look at a planner, give them away and put the planner link where the buyer will land. The second plan is the one the Marketplace's own listings are running, and I think they're right.