How to Set Up Vertical Spine Text for Your Book Cover in Adobe InDesign (KDP)

[ali_4619]

Hi, I’m on the final step to get my first book onto Amazon KDP. Exciting! But I’m stuck on changing the text on the spine to vertical. I’ve tried all the suggestions I can find online.

Object > Transform > Rotate 90 degrees changes the orientation of the text box, not the lettering.

Object > Transform > Flip vertical just pushes the text box up off the page and doesn’t change the lettering to vertical.

When I try type on a path, I can draw the line fine but when I go to type on a path, ‘Options’ is greyed out.

Also, the text on the back cover has suddenly gone all blurry and I have done nothing to create that effect. I have been working on this cover for about a month with the text looking fine, and regularly save new versions including today. I am using this setting: View > Display Performance > High Quality Display.

This will almost certainly be newbie error so I appreciate your patience. Screenshot below has hidden characters showing. 

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[Willi Adelberger · Accepted solution]

When you select the text frame with the selection tool (black arrow) text and text frame are rotated. If you select the text with the direct selection tool, only the text frame is selected. If you want the text rotated , use the selection tool. 

[ali_4619]

Fabulous, thank you! Fixed. Any thoughts on why the text on the back cover has suddenly gone blurry?

[Willi Adelberger]

This might be a screen issue only. Do you see the problem in the final PDF?