I get my pre-designed covers from this site for $70-ish

[Marie Silk]

Hello, I do not have any affiliation with this particular website, it is just one that I found when I was looking for cheap book covers. Most of the covers are gorgeous and professionally designed, running around 70 bucks each. I thought this might be handy for a lot of people here and 70 bucks seems very affordable for a great-looking book cover. edited to clarify: this price just for the ebook cover, for a back cover and spine it will cost extra or you can make your own with createspace.

You can overwrite title, author, subtitle, etc. directly on their website when you buy the cover, or if you just want to see what your title looks like on it, you can preview all of that too without any commitment while you decide. The font options are great imo and the best news is you can edit the cover as many times as you want to with unlimited downloads for free.

There are thousands of searchable covers by genre or keywords. Below is one of the covers I got from them. I hope this helps someone! And if you do get your cover from there, feel free to post it in the comments so we can all ooh and ahh about it!

http://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/


cover art by RLSather

[J.D.]

That site is my go-to for covers as well. They haven't steered me wrong yet.

[Martin]

I like.

[G.G.]

Are they exclusive? I mean.. sold only once? because I swear I've seen this exact covers somewhere already:

http://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/inde...

[J.D.]

G.G. wrote: "Are they exclusive? I mean.. sold only once? because I swear I've seen this exact covers somewhere already:

http://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/inde......"

They say the covers are exclusive, that once one is bought, no one else can buy that cover again (unless designs are showing up on more than one site, which is possible).

[Marie Silk]

The covers are exclusive and unique, but the stock photos used in them are not, if that makes sense. So you might see a girl who looks like mine on another cover, but the other images and colors and background will be different.

For example, this is my first cover:



Same girl, but posture a little different with different sizes and images.

[G.G.]

Yeah that is true. I just pointed it out because that was kind of exactly what I remember seeing.. same color same everything. But lots of cover designers love to change the hues to blue, so... I tried to find the other cover, but I can't and it bugs me! :P

[Marie Silk]

G.G. wrote: "Yeah that is true. I just pointed it out because that was kind of exactly what I remember seeing.. same color same everything. But lots of cover designers love to change the hues to blue, so... I t..."

Yep I gotcha. There is a chance that the artist did not pull it as they were supposed to, but they are usually good about making sure people don't buy the same cover.

[G.G.]

Or another artist thought it was a great idea for a cover and if they didn't modify it much, there goes the risk of seeing a twin somewhere. Not likely though, it's just that picture. It's there in my mind. I will remember the title I'm sure (or at least I hope) and post it for kicks. :)

[Quantum]

Marie wrote: "Hello, I do not have any affiliation with this particular website, it is just one that I found when I was looking for cheap book covers. Most of the covers are gorgeous and professionally designed,..."

great! thx! i've been working on my own cover for my ready-to-go novel for a few months (while writing other things), but one on this site might work.

[E.A.]

@ Marie. Thanks for that! I've just used them and it's fab! My new cover is different than the normal sort of covers I have but I love it!
They're so easy to use too, I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised!

[Pam]

I did look at this site some months back and they were then saying that for a print cover, you paid another 149 dollars. They are now saying you can do your own on Createspace, I see, but I don't know how difficult that would be in practice.

[Marie Silk]

I am not technically savvy, so I asked the company who does my formatting to also make my back covers and spine. They are more expensive than the website I linked here, but I wanted it to look consistent with my first book which the formatting company did from start to finish.

Createspace showed a link to their cover creator when I was uploading my files to publish last night, but I have not seen what the actual process is since I didn't use it. Best of luck :). Has anyone here done alright with the Createspace cover creator tool? Is it complicated for someone who doesn't know much about computers?

[Justin]

Gonna check this out!

[Ana]

I found a gal who did my Marie cover then did a custom job for me and made my Jasmine cover. I went straight through her and she did my front and back for only $100.

[K.C.]

Thanks for the tip! I found a couple covers there that might do the trick!

[Marie Silk]

Ana wrote: "I found a gal who did my Marie cover then did a custom job for me and made my Jasmine cover. I went straight through her and she did my front and back for only $100."

Wow, good deal!

[Laura]

I find it a bit hard to use pre-designed cover artwork because my books are set in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece, and the way the time period looks is so specific that stock images/covers just don't work. I've had to be resourceful and use a combination of stock art and ancient art to produce my covers.

[Erin]

Marie wrote: "I am not technically savvy, so I asked the company who does my formatting to also make my back covers and spine. They are more expensive than the website I linked here, but I wanted it to look cons..."

I did use the Cover Creator tool for my two chapbooks and I don't recall it being very difficult. Granted, this was 6 years ago so I'm not sure if anything changed with the tool from then to now.

[Geetanjali]

Pam wrote: "I did look at this site some months back and they were then saying that for a print cover, you paid another 149 dollars. They are now saying you can do your own on Createspace, I see, but I don't k..."

I have used the Createspace cover creator tool and it is not difficult, but with a few caveats. If you have an ebook cover and you just want a plain back and spine its pretty easy, but since I didn't add a back blurb I am not sure how complicated that would be.

I used the template where you basically upload your own front and back, and type in what you want on the spine, and choose a color. They are limited in color choice, but I think I got a decent outcome. Bearing in mind this is non-fiction, I don't know if that makes a difference. But its meant to be as simple as possible, so go ahead and try it out.

[Allan]

Thanks for sharing, this site looks great.

[J.D.]

Geetanjali wrote: "Pam wrote: "I did look at this site some months back and they were then saying that for a print cover, you paid another 149 dollars. They are now saying you can do your own on Createspace, I see, b..."

I just use PhotoShop to throw together a back cover (nothing complex, just a stock image with the book blurb and my author bio over it) and it turns out fine.

[Noah]

If anyone wants to vie for some original artwork, I'd highly recommend using 99designs. I'm currently in the throes of a contest for my co-authored book and it has been so much fun. It's a bit pricey (that is, if you don't want to plunk down 299 or more) but you do get to work with many talented designers. They listen. And they fix things to your precise liking. I've been scoping the site out for such a long time and now I'm happy to have finally pulled the trigger with utilizing it.

[K.P.]

I had to invest in Poser and got my hands on Daz Studio to create my covers because most of these premade and stock art sites are prone to being pasty. :( ehh at least I know how to do digital art lolz (^-^) the only downside with premade is that though unique the stock art isnt so you might have a similar cover floating around...

[Ronel]

I love creating my own covers! And hey, if anyone is interested, I pre made tons of cover when I first got started, and they're on this website: http://best-book-covers.com if anyone's interested.

I actually wanted to go full time with creating covers for indies but my writing was simply more important