10 Resources for a Great Book Cover Design, Whatever Your Budget

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 might 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 first of all, you need to 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 you 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 time searching for best-selling books in other related markets and see what ideas it gives you.
• And it’s also worth downloading book samples from Amazon 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 to get 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 competing for your attention, and the better quality the designers will be.
• You prepare a summary of the project and launch the contest.
• The designs are starting 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 (economically) 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 only $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 24 hour response time? That’s an extra $20.

Do you want all the source files for your design? Add $10.

…etc.

But, with a little searching and reading the reviews, you can get a decent cover design.

It will usually be created relatively quickly (within a few days) and is likely to be Wellmaybe even good. Probably not excellent. But of course, for $5, your expectations can’t be set 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 service marketplaces. Effectively sites where people could post blueprints 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 was not 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 simply because freelancers are underrated or underrated.

So you can either 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 the most, 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 about what you’re looking for and find a designer who creates great work and communicates well, you can often get great designs for even less than $50.

More great designers to 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 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 offer 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 pre-made book cover

Author Marketing Club is an affordable membership site that provides tips and tools to help independent authors write, publish, and promote their books.

They offer a large number of exclusive covers out of the box. You can choose one of these covers, customize it just for you, and then purchase the exclusive rights or get it as a bonus when you become a paid member:

Use the free Canva software to easily design book covers

Canva is free software that makes design easy. It has all kinds of features, but one 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.
• However, images are watermarked, so if you want to use an image for your cover, you need to pay for the image rights to have the watermark removed. So, in a way, it’s a stock photography site, with some software attached to the front!
• AimIf you provide your own stock photos or images, you don’t need to pay to use them, of course, so using the software may not cost you anything.
• That being said, there is also an advanced version with more features that are billed monthly.

Cover Creator is a free software to create book covers

Cover Creator is totally 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 quickly and easily 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, 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 sounds like you’ll be fine. company.

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 use

Like the Author Marketing Club mentioned above, there are two other sites where you can choose 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. 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 customized and made uniquely yours to use.

This is a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to get a cover you love, without the usual back and forth of working with a designer.

The cream of the cover designers

If you have the budget to do it and are looking for the best cover you can get, you might want to check out Creativ Indie Covers.

This service is 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 major marketing push lined up before spending a huge amount on a design.

Of course, you can start with a cheap cover to test a book, and 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 might not want to make expensive decisions feet-first if funds are too much for you right now.

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’m 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 layout and formatting services for authors to help make their book look great by publication date.

The lowest priced option is for pre-made decks. 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 their 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 decks and the 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) add to the price, so it’s best to clarify early in the process how much it might end up costing you.