Book Cover Design
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I am a Professional Graphic Designer. I am Able to any Kinds of Graphic Related Works. Just Knock Me For any Works.
I am a Professional Graphic Designer. I am Able to any Kinds of Graphic Related Works. Just Knock Me For any Works.
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Book Cover Design: How self-publishing authors can do it best
February 9, 2017 - Book Design, Understanding Publishing - 15
Book cover design, also known as ‘book jacket’ design, is a favorite topic of conversation in the Reedsy office. Since we opened our digital doors over two years ago, we’ve seen hundreds of authors collaborate with designers — and much more join our regular ‘cover critiques,' when our professionals offer feedback on self-published book covers.
Despite our fascination with the art of cover design, we were surprised how little we actually knew about the process and, crucially, its cost. In 2016, we published a report on the costs of self-publishing a book by crunching real quotes offered by Reedsy editors and designers over a year. We were able to give practical guidelines for the cost of editing, but when it came calculating an average price for a professional cover, the costs ranged from between $300 to over $1,500.
In this article, we take a closer look at professional book cover design. In revealing how various Reedsy designers approach each project, we’ll uncover the actual cost of getting a professional book cover design and show you how to get the best value for money.
If, like our designers, you think a picture is worth more than a thousand words (literally), you can click here to scroll down to our infographic, where we distil most of the points and data gathered below.
Contents
Part 1. Why should I get a professional book design
1. Why should I get a professional book cover design?
At the most basic level, a professional-looking cover will help readers take you and your book seriously. Online retailers like Amazon do not distinguish between traditional and self-published books in their search results. That means independent authors must compete against traditionally published books and ensure their designs match or, if possible, exceed those the big boys are putting out.
You may have a friend who’s great with photoshop and has offered to help you for free. As enticing as it may be to work with a friend (for free!), a professional designer brings more than just photoshop skills to the table. Book cover design is a complex balance of images, text, and information — and you need someone who understands how each of these elements interacts with the others to best sell your book
.A designer who specializes in book jackets will understand how readers respond to layout and typography. They understand the current trends and can see how your cover will compete in the market. Most importantly, they will know how to communicate the right message with your cover. Let’s take a look at a real-life case study.
How will a cover affect your sales?
A stunning book cover is great to have but if it doesn’t help with your sales, it’s pure vanity. David Penny tracked the efficacy of his new covers by comparing how his Facebook ads performed before and after the redesign.
“I started experimenting with Facebook ads in November 2015, almost 6 months before the cover redesign,” said David. “By February I had lost somewhere around £300 on an ad spend of over £1,000.”
2. How to find the right book cover designer
There are plenty of places on the internet where you can find designers advertising their services. Some of them will be legitimate freelancers with years of great experience, but a vast majority of them will not be. With that in mind, your first priority is to seek out designers with a great portfolio and a track record of creating great covers within your genre.
We mention genre for a reason. You want a designer who’s well versed in the tropes and trends employed by books similar to yours.
At Reedsy, we vet all our freelancers to ensure their experience and high work quality and have made it easy for authors to search for them by genre. However you choose to look for designers, it’s advisable to create a shortlist with multiple candidates. Good designers will often be booked up for weeks, if not months.
Once you’ve narrowed down your candidates, it’s time to start thinking about your brief.
3. Different techniques used in book cover design
Even though authors won’t need to know exactly how book jackets are made, you should try to understand the cover design process. In this section, we’ll look at the three basic techniques used by cover designers and discover how much Reedsy’s designers will charge for each.
Stock image manipulation
This is almost always the most cost-effective way to design a cover, as it doesn’t require your designer to create images from scratch. A quick look through your local bookstore will reveal this to be the most common technique used in modern book design.
Professional designers have access to (literally) millions of photos, graphics and illustrations through image libraries like Shutterstock and iStock, as well as more niche image archives. They can license these images, digitally manipulate them, and often combine them with other images to create a unique design. The designer will then lay over the title, author name and any other text to finalize your cover.
Illustrations
Did you know that illustrations can also be obtained through image libraries? When designers create an illustration-style cover, they often base their designs on stock illustrations. But if your book calls for something a bit more specific, your designer will likely spend more time on the project and charge accordingly.
Cover design and illustration are, for the most part, different disciplines. Some of the have little experience with typography and formatting, while the vast majority of designers do not profess to be skilled illustrators at all. If their prospective clients require an illustration, many designers will either reject the project or tell you that they’re outsourcing that part of the work to another freelancer.“The amount I’ll charge really depends on what type of illustration I'm doing,” says Jake Clark. “If it’s going to be similar to a Christopher Moore book cover design that is relatively simple, then I likely won't charge anything more. But if it’s going to end up being something similar to a fantasy book cover then I'll charge anywhere from 1.5 to 2x my usual rate.“
If you ask your designer for a complex illustration (like the ones on Scholastic's original Harry Potter covers), you can reasonably expect your budget to double — which will account for either the extra workload or the cost of commissioning a freelancer.
Top Tip: Hire an illustrator to create a cover image first. Once that’s done, you can work with a specialized cover designer to create your layout and arrange the text. This will often result in a lower overall cost and a better outcome.
“Some designers have small lighting kit setups in their office or studio,” says Ben Anslow. “Also, I know a few designers who often just use themselves — or their wives or girlfriends — as models to save money. Especially if it's just something quite generic, like the back of someone's head or a hand holding an object.”
As a general rule of thumb, a photo shoot should be the last thing on your mind if you’re trying to manage a reasonable budget.
Top Tip: The majority of books published by the Big Five will use pre-existing, licensed images — whether photographs or illustrations. It’s simply the easiest and most cost-effective way to create a cover. Most designers will recommend this approach, unless there’s an unavoidable need for bespoke images.
4. The process of creating a book cover design
Getting the most out of an experienced book jacket designer means understanding their standard approach to working with publishers. This usually involves multiple rounds of designs and refinements.
Stage 1: The First Concept Round
At the initial concept stage, the designer will usually submit a variety of broad concepts. According to our poll of Reedsy professionals, most standard proposals include between three and five initial concepts for the client to choose from.
The author might be torn between a number of covers that they really like, at which point they might ask their friends for an opinion. Some authors will even share the concepts with their social media following before pulling the trigger on a design.
It’s important, at this stage, to be honest with your designer. If you’re not happy with any of the covers, a quick conversation can help you home in on why those concepts didn’t work and allow your designer to return with ideas closer to what you had in mind.
Stage 2: Final Iterations
Once you choose a concept, the next step is to refine that design and polish it into a final book cover design. Some designers will provide you with variations on the original concept so you can see how the cover will look with other fonts, or with a slightly different color or layout, as in the example below.
In our poll, the majority of Reedsy professionals said their standard offers account for two to four rounds of iterations once the concept is chosen. After that, you can still ask for changes but if they are significant, expect to compensate the designer for the extra time.
According to our poll, designers will charge an average of $50-$100 per extra round or an hourly rate of $25-$50. For ‘rockstar’ cover designers, this may be significantly more. However, their level of experience should theoretically limit the need for extra changes
Stage 3: Is it just an ebook, or will you need print covers?
Most self-publishing authors, especially in fiction, only need a front cover for the ebook. If your intention is to also sell paperback and hardback copies, you will also require a cohesive design for your spine and back cover.
“Communications with the client about the actual layout for print with bleed, safe areas, and spine width is much more time-consuming than delivering a front cover design aimed for online use,” we were told by designer/illustrator. “When designing just the front cover, I don’t have to worry about how it will connect to the spine and back.”
Print-on-demand (POD) services offer dozens of formats to choose from, each of which will have unique dimensions. With each of those formats, the width of the spine will also vary, depending on the precise page count — the longer the book, the wider the spine. Each POD service will also have separate guidelines for submission, which complicates matters further.
Designers with a traditional publishing background have mainly with dealt clients who require a full range of formats. When working with self-publishers, who often only require an ebook cover, they tend to reduce their quote to reflect the work required — hence the difference in price between web-only and print covers.
Some designers are happy to include print layouts as part of their package, but if you’re certain you only need an ebook-only cover, they will often reduce their quotes by 20-30%. Equally, freelancers who offer quotes for just a front cover may add another 25-50% if additional formats are needed.
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