Book Cover Illustration
Custom book cover illustration from $300 USD, including full rights and source files. Covers built to work as a thumbnail, on a shelf, and everywhere your readers actually are.
A cover has one job: to make somebody who has never heard of your book pick it up. We work with you to tell your story in that single image, so it stands out in print, online, and wherever your fans are.
Rates start at $300 USD, and include full rights and the source files for all artwork. You own what you paid for — no licensing tiers, no separate fee when you want to put it on a poster.
A cover is read at four sizes
The thumbnail
This is where nearly every book is first seen — a hundred pixels wide in a storefront grid. If the title is unreadable and the image is a busy scene, the cover has already failed, whatever it looks like at full size. We design outward from the thumbnail rather than shrinking a poster down to it.
The storefront page
Bigger, but still on a screen, still beside a dozen competitors. Here the cover has to hold attention for the second it takes somebody to decide whether to read the blurb.
The physical shelf
Print is unforgiving in a way screens are not: colour shifts, the spine matters, and the book is seen at an angle from two metres away.
The detail
And then, finally, somebody holds it. This is the only size where the small things — texture, a hidden element, the quality of the linework — do any work at all. They are worth doing, but not at the expense of the other three.
What genre signals do
A cover is a promise about what is inside. Readers are fluent in genre convention even when they could not explain it: they know what a literary novel’s cover does, what a horror cover does, and what a cosy mystery does.
Breaking that convention deliberately can be powerful. Breaking it by accident loses you the readers who were looking for exactly your book and did not recognise it. Part of our job is telling you which one you are doing.
How it works
You bring the manuscript or a synopsis, whatever you know about your reader, and any covers you like or hate — the hates are usually more useful. We come back with concepts, you choose a direction, and we take it to finish.
We work across the range our own catalogue covers: horror, fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction and all-ages. Our illustrators are the same team behind our published titles, so the covers you have seen on our book catalogue are the standard on offer.
What you receive
If you need more than a cover
A cover is one piece. If your book needs the rest of the pipeline, we do that too: editing to get the manuscript right first, interior illustration for comics and graphic novels, lettering, and translation when you are ready for other markets.
Ready to start? Get in touch with your title, your genre, and when you need it by.
Common questions
Can you match a series style?
Yes, and it is worth planning for. A series whose covers share a visual system — consistent type treatment, a repeating compositional idea, a palette that shifts book to book — sells later volumes far better than a series where each cover was commissioned in isolation. Tell us at the start if there will be more than one.
What if I already have artwork?
Bring it. Plenty of authors arrive with an illustration they commissioned or made themselves and need it turned into a working cover: typography, spine, back cover, and the adjustments that make it survive at thumbnail size.
Do you do print layout as well?
Yes. Spine width depends on page count and paper stock, so we need those before final files, but wrap layout is part of the same job rather than a separate line on the invoice.
Other services
IllustrationComic Book and Graphic Novel Illustration
Our team of experienced illustrators are ready to bring your project to life.
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LetteringComic Book Lettering Services
Don't let your book be amateur-ish because of poor lettering. Affordable rates starting at $20/page
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EditingScript and Book Editing Services
Script and book editing for novels, comic books and screenplays. Structural editing, line editing and script review from a team that publishes its own catalogue.
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StoryboardsStoryboarding
The blueprint for visual storytelling — over a decade of turning ideas into shot-by-shot narratives.
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TranslationComic Book Translation
Comic book and graphic novel translation and localisation. We publish in multiple languages ourselves, and offer the same service to independent creators and publishers.
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CopywritingComic Book Copywriting and Script Review
Effective copy leads to great stories, and great stories lead to engaged fans.
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Have a story to tell?
Send us the manuscript, the script, or the sketch on a napkin. We will tell you honestly what it needs.