Your book needs a cover design that is as good as its content!
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and since your cover is going to be what really grabs the attention of people browsing Amazon, you really want to make sure it’s the best it can be (within your budget).
Here are some options for quickly creating a fantastic cover design, whether you’re happy to spend $5 or $500. Or even if you’re not looking to spend a single penny!
Now, of course, you can create a cover design yourself using software like PhotoShop or even just Microsoft Word, and if you’re artistically inclined, that may be a great option for you. However, that can be quite a complicated process.
In fact, I’m going to talk about software that makes creating your own covers very quick and easy, much easier than advanced graphic design software!
But before anything else, you should start with ideas in mind, as it makes the process of designing and deciding on your final cover much easier.
Here are some options to get started with market research:
- Browse Amazon in your marketplace for design ideas. Pay special attention to best-selling books.
- That said, you don’t need to limit yourself to your market. Spend some time looking at the best-selling books in other related marketplaces and see what ideas they give you.
- And it’s also worth downloading Amazon book samples to see how other authors have designed and presented their books.
Now let’s go over ten great options for creating your own fantastic book cover:
Get dozens of designs at 99 Designs
99 Designs is a very popular site for getting lots of design ideas in just a few days and the final design a few days later.
The operation is as follows:
- As a client of the site, you will have hundreds of designers competing to create the perfect design for you.
- So, initially, you choose your “prize” level. This is a financial amount, and the higher this amount, the more designers you will have vying for your attention, and the better quality the designers will be.
- You prepare a summary of the project and launch the contest.
- The designs begin to arrive.
- Once the contest is over, among all the designs you have received, you choose finalists.
- You work with the finalists to create the perfect design for you.
Now, 99 Designs isn’t the cheapest option, but how much you spend depends on the prize amount you choose. However, with this site you get what you can’t (affordably) with any other site, dozens of design ideas in just a few days.
Get a unique design for $5 on Fiverr
Fiverr is a very popular online marketplace for services, where everything is just $5. Well, the basic options start at $5 anyway. There are often many advantages that can significantly increase the price. For example:
Do you want a response time of 24 hours? That’s an extra $20.
Do you want all the source files for your design? Add $10.
… and so.
But, with a bit of searching and reading the reviews, you can come up with a decent cover design.
It will usually be created relatively quickly (a few days) and is likely to be okmaybe even Okay. Probably not great. But of course, for $5, your expectations can’t be too high. If you are looking for a lot of collaboration between you and the designer, this is not the site.
Find talented and affordable designers at UpWork
oDesk and eLance used to be two separate sites that were marketplaces for services. Effectively sites where people could post projects of what they needed to do, and then freelancers would bid on the project in an attempt to get the job.
One (not entirely unfair) way to categorize the two sites was that oDesk catered to the cheaper end of the market, while eLance tended to be more expensive, and by implication, the quality of freelancers was higher (although this wasn’t always the case). ).
However, the two sites have now become one. And it’s called UpWork.
Now, there are thousands of very talented designers on this site from all over the world, and prices vary quite a bit depending on country, skill level, and sometimes just because freelancers are underrated or underrated.
So you can approach a freelancer directly and set up a private project with them, or you can publish a project and let designers bid on it.
If you post a project, you then filter through the people who have bid on your project to choose who you’d like to communicate with more, so you can choose one (or more) designers to work with.
When choosing designers, be sure to review their work history and portfolio. This is ideal if they have already created book covers and can show you examples of their work.
And if you’re clear on what you’re looking for and find a designer who creates great work and communicates well, you can often get great designs even for less than $50.
More great designers will be found at People Per Hour
Another site where you can find very talented freelancers is People Per Hour.
It is worth noting that although it is an international site, a large proportion of the freelancers on this site are from the UK. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t work with them if you’re outside of the UK.
But be aware of time zone differences, and in particular, that they won’t offer the kind of low prices that some designers do on UpWork.
Interestingly, this site also offers simple services at a fixed price, and calls them Hourlies.
This way, you don’t always need to go through the process of posting a project and interviewing people. You can simply buy a ready-made service and take care of it right away.
Get your own exclusive premade book cover
Author Marketing Club is an affordable membership site that provides tips and tools to help freelance authors write, publish, and promote their books.
They offer a large number of exclusive covers ready to use. You can choose one of these covers, customize it just for you, and then buy the exclusive rights or get it as a bonus when you become a paid member:
Use free Canva software to easily design book covers
Canva is free software that makes designing easy. It has all kinds of features, but a particularly relevant part of its functionality is the creation of book covers.
And interestingly, instead of asking for payment in advance, their business model is as follows:
- You can use the software for free.
- You can create your cover for free.
- You can choose from over a million images available in the software to help create your design.
- Nevertheless, images are watermarked, so if you want to use an image for your cover, you must pay the rights to the image to have the watermark removed. So, in a way, it’s a stock photography site, with some software attached to the front!
- GoalIf you provide your own photos or stock images, you don’t need to pay to use them, of course, so using the software may not cost you anything.
- That said, there is also an advanced version with more features that is billed monthly.
Cover Creator is a free software to create book covers
Cover Creator is a completely free web-based software for designing book covers. It’s not the most feature-rich software, but it’s a quick and easy way to get started:
Easily design great covers with Book Cover Pro
Book Cover Pro is software that helps you easily and quickly create attractive covers for your eBooks, even if you’re not technical or particularly artistic!
There is no free or demo version of this software on the main site, to try before you buy, but there are plenty of testimonials on the site, so if you decide to take the plunge with this software, it looks like you’ll be fine. business.
That said, you can currently download a demo version from CNET and there are some additional reviews there.
Get your own exclusive cover ready to go
Like the Author Marketing Club mentioned above, there are two other sites where you can pick up ready-made covers and get exclusive rights to one you like: Go On Write and the related site Vamos Write.
Cover prices are currently $45. You browse through the available covers, and if you see one you’d like for your book (with the text changed, of course), you place your order, and that cover is personalized and becomes exclusively yours to use.
This is a quick, easy and inexpensive way to get a cover you like, without the usual back and forth of working with a designer.
The cream of the crop for cover designers
If you have the budget to do so and are looking for the best cover you can get, you may want to check out Creativ Indie Covers.
This service comes recommended by successful freelance author Joanna Penn, as she uses it for her own books (which have sold over 300,000 copies).
Although due to the expense, you may need to feel confident about your book sales and have a significant marketing push lined up before spending a large amount on a design.
Of course, you can start with a cheap cover to test a book, then update the cover once you’re generating sales. While a cover can certainly affect how well a book sells, it’s not the only variable, so you may not want to make costly, feet-first decisions if funds are too much for you at the moment.
Three additional resources…
While 10 is a nice round number, 13 is less so! But they would give me to exclude the following options also to design your cover:
Book Baby offers a number of services to help authors create and promote their books. Of course I am going to focus on your ebook cover design service.
Currently, their price per design starts at $199 for a fairly basic offering, and goes up to $299 for more complex designs with multiple photos, textures, graphics, and unique fonts.
eBook Launch offers formatting and design services for authors to help your book look great for publication date.
The lowest price option is for prefabricated covers. As you can see, the price is double (or more) compared to other services, so it’s not competitive, although you can of course browse through your options and see if a cover catches your eye.
While the higher priced options are custom designed just for your book.
The Book Cover Designer specializes 100% in book covers for authors. You have the option of pre-made covers and prices vary quite a bit.
They also offer a custom design service that is very affordable starting at $90. However, the basic offer is not as flexible as other custom services. And additions to the basic service (more images, for example) increase the price, so it’s best to be clear at the beginning of the process how much it could end up costing you.
