If you read our series on professional book cover design, you know that these days, a book is indeed judged by its cover. Finding a great cover design can run upwards of $500, money well-spent of course, but still a hefty chunk for an author on a budget.
So we were pleased to run into a company at BEA 2015 that’s devoted to producing inexpensive and original covers for authors, SelfPubBookCovers.com. Ranging from just $69 to $99 (for a front cover), SelfPubBookCovers.com has over 12,000 covers on its easy-to-navigate website. Best of all, once a cover is sold it’s taken off the site and won’t be sold again.
Granted, many books will demand a cover concept that’s unique to elements within the book and won’t lend themselves well to wallowing through art that might do the trick. But if you’re not sure of your concept yet, or are just looking for ideas and “looks” that might fit your work, this is a great place to start!
Reminder: Note which cover images on this site stand out, even as thumbprints, and which offer bold, easy-to-read text. These will help you stand out on a crowded bookshelf as well as any online catalog.
How It Works
1. You pick an original cover, and you can browse through several genres including:
- Thriller/Mystery
- Romance
- Non-Fiction
- Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Young Adult
- Literary Fiction
- Erotic
- LGBT
2. You customize it on our site with your book’s title, author name and tagline. You can choose to change type styles, colors, etc. to make it truly unique.
3. You can choose to customize a back cover and spine for the book for $125.
4. You’ll receive both 72dpi (lo-res) and 300dpi (hi-res) images for print and ebook formats.
5. Once purchased, your cover is automatically removed from their site and will not be sold again. You own the cover and all rights to it.
We had a chance to play in the site and see just how easy (and fun!) it was to create a few sample covers. When you choose a cover the samples provide type font and color examples, but you can fiddle with each of those, too. Check out their user-friendly site (there’s a video there that helps explain the customizing process) and let us know what you think….
Thanks a lot for sharing a commercial site that takes business away from hard working artists such as myself. I certainly don’t get as much as $599 for a cover or as little as $69 or $99. But I do I tailor each one to the book and I do a pretty good job. Check out my covers at http://jmbolton.com/IDBPI.html#bkcovers
I’ll check out this site … bet it’s another one where the company gets all the $$ and the artist does all the work for next to nothing.
True, Johanna, it’s a double-edged sword – what saves an author $ may cost an artist. But keep in mind these are more “stock” covers for newbies who likely wouldn’t be paying bigger fees. Most of the folks we work with charge in the $300-$500 range and we like both the control it gives an author to have their concept created, and the more commensurate fee for artists.
This was a tough call for me personally; I come from a family of artists, including a brother who, yes, also does book covers… But it’s an option and has to be presented. And I think of it this way — there are millions of books being published each year now — there really is plenty of work for every price range.
I can see why, at first glance, you might have some misconceptions. If you check out the Artists link on our homepage, and our testimonials page, you will find out why hundreds and hundreds of artists choose to sell their covers on SelfPubBookCovers!
As the cofounder (and for the first couple of years, the one person in charge of paying our artists manually — now it’s automated so artists get paid in 48 hours after a sale) I can tell you that:
A. We’re not competing with custom cover artists. Some covers and/or authors just require custom covers. Many of our artists have their own custom cover business separate from the covers they sell on SelfPubBookCovers.
B. The artist names their price and gets 70% of the cover price when their cover sells. Each artist has their own Gallery of Art on our site so authors can easily search through their favorite artists’ covers.
C. The commission SelfPubBookCovers gets pays for us to bring tens of thousands of indie authors to your covers, and for the site to run smoothly. We are constantly upgrading our site to provide a better, easier experience for both the artists and authors.
D. We spend big money every day on advertising and promoting our artists’ covers to help sell your covers for you. We attend conventions and author conferences to spread the word and bring you more sales.
E. We paid six figures out to artists last year, and that is growing every year. We’ve opened up a new revenue stream for artists and have been in business for 4 years now. For some of our bestselling artists, selling premades on our site is their full-time job/income!
Our goal is to provide a new revenue stream for artists while providing indie authors with professional covers they can instantly customize and use. The site is run by Rob Sturtz, my cofounder and a graphic design artist with 30+ years of experience in the industry. Rob is also the Creative Director.
Each cover is vetted individually, which means only the best covers are for sale. This high quality brings authors back to buy their other covers as well.
You can always email us at Sales@SelfPubBookCovers.com with more questions! Thank you!
Thank you so much Shoshanna for these clarifications and happy you’ve found a way to serve the needs of authors and artists… I definitely know the costs of promoting artists and providing useful tech to the masses – this is a win-win!