A cover has about two seconds to do its job, and it does that job in a thumbnail long before it does it on a shelf. Designing for both is the craft.
Whatever you have been told, books are judged by their covers, and increasingly by a cover reduced to about 150 pixels in a retail grid. That is the format the design has to win in first, because it is the one that decides whether anyone ever sees the full-size version.
The house has been putting covers on books since 1844, which means it has had to solve this problem in gilt on cloth, in dust jackets, in paperback, and now in a thumbnail. The medium keeps changing. What does not is that the cover has to tell a stranger what kind of book this is, quickly enough that they do not have to think about it.
A cover is not one image. It is a front, a back, a spine and a set of files that have to survive a printer, and each of them is designed rather than cropped from the others.
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Custom cover design
Your idea, designed. Original illustration and typography built for your book specifically, with nothing licensed from a stock library and nothing reused from another author's jacket.
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Fiction and fantasy covers
Horror, romance, thriller, action, science fiction, suspense, genres with their own visual grammars that readers read fluently and notice instantly when you get wrong.
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Children's book covers
Covers designed for the age they are actually for, and for the adult standing next to the child who will decide whether to buy it.
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Textbook and academic covers
Science, history, mathematics, earth science, literature, language and art. Restrained, legible, and credible to the people who assign reading lists.
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Back cover and spine
The blurb that makes the sale, plus publication details, barcode and price, set to the standards a retailer and a printer both expect.
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Print-ready files
The final delivery is a print-ready cover at the correct trim and bleed for your printer, plus a flat illustration file you can use in your own marketing.
Four things that decide whether a cover project goes well, none of which are about software.
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You choose between concepts
You are sent two to three distinct directions rather than one design to approve. Choosing between real alternatives is a different decision from being asked whether you like something.
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Revisions until it is right
If a direction is not working, it gets reworked. A cover that the author is privately unhappy with is a cover that undermines everything they do to sell the book afterwards.
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Your feedback drives it
Suggestions are incorporated rather than absorbed and ignored. The designers are open about what a change will cost the design, and then they make it if you still want it.
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Transparent throughout
You see the process rather than a reveal at the end. Every detail of where the design is and why is shared as it happens, which is how surprises get avoided.
Eight steps from a conversation to a print-ready file, with your approval at three of them.
Consultation
A conversation about the book, its readers and the shelf it is going onto. A cover cannot be designed without knowing what it is competing against.
Ideation and concepts
A questionnaire that gets the designers inside the book, what it is about, who it is for, and which covers you already admire and why.
Collaboration
Art direction, colour scheme and overall aesthetic worked out with you rather than presented to you, so the directions that follow are ones you have already had a hand in.
Designing
Two to three illustrations produced over roughly two weeks and sent to you for your choice.
Revisions
The chosen direction refined against your notes, as many times as it takes for it to be right.
Extensive edits
If something in it is not working for you, it changes. The designers will tell you what a change costs the composition, and then make it if you still want it.
Layout
The full exterior laid out to international print standards, front to spine to back. Every ebook file is tested to confirm it is suitable for print.
Completion
Delivered as a print-ready cover for upload, plus a copy of the illustration for your marketing campaign.
A few of the people the house has worked with, in their own words.
I had eleven years of notes and no book. What I got back read like me on a good day, my turns of phrase, my arguments, and none of the padding I would have added myself. The first chapter arrived and I stopped worrying.
Marianne ElleryIndependent author The structural edit was not comfortable reading. It told me the second half started in the wrong place, which I had suspected for a year and nobody had said out loud. Moving three chapters fixed a problem I had been trying to solve with better sentences.
Devon AlukoIndependent author What sold me was being told I did not need half of what I had asked for. I came in wanting the full package and left with a cover, a proofread and an honest explanation of why the rest would not have helped yet.
Priya RaghunathanIndependent author Three cover directions, all of them plausible, none of them the thing I had described. The one I picked worked at the size that actually matters, I could recognise it in a list of forty other books, which is more than I can say for my first attempt.
Tobias HearnIndependent author I own the book outright and that was written down before I paid anything. After two years of being quoted percentages by people who would not put them in writing, that was the whole reason I stayed.
Cecile MarchandIndependent author The audiobook took longer than I expected and they told me why each time rather than going quiet. The narrator they cast got my grandmother's accent right, which I had assumed would be the thing I had to let go of.
Nathan BoakyeIndependent author
What authors want to know before commissioning a cover.
Yes. The house designs covers for horror, fiction, non-fiction, romance, thriller, action, academic and journal work among others. Genre matters more than most authors expect: readers navigate a retail page by visual convention, and a cover that ignores the conventions of its category reads as an unpublished book rather than a bold one.
Yes, and it is a good starting point. Your idea gets developed into a design that works at every size the cover has to work at, provided you hold the rights to the image, or it is one the designers can originate for you.
Look at the thumbnail before you look at the full-size design, because that is the version most readers will ever see. Beyond that: pay attention to colour, theme, typography and the back-cover copy, and be honest about what category your book is in. The most common first-cover mistake is designing for the author's taste rather than the reader's expectations.
Two to three distinct directions, produced over roughly two weeks, and then unlimited revisions on the one you choose. You are choosing between real alternatives rather than approving a single design.
It depends on what the cover needs: original illustration is a different job from a typographic treatment, and a full wrap with spine and back copy is more than a front alone. Tell us about the book and you will be quoted for the actual work rather than sorted into a package.
Ask to see covers they have done in your genre, and look at those covers as thumbnails. Then ask who owns the artwork at the end, what happens if you dislike the first round, and whether print-ready files are included or extra. The answers to those three separate the professionals from the rest faster than a portfolio does.
You do, completely. The author holds 100% of the rights to their work, in every format, for its whole life. The house is paid for the work it does, not with a share of the book. That is the arrangement the house reopened in 2008 to offer, and it does not change with the tier, the price or the point at which you come to us.
Yes. Your name is on the cover and in the record. Everyone who works on the book (writer, editor, designer) works on your book, and none of them is credited on it unless you ask for them to be.
Yes. Your story is yours, and nothing about the project leaves the house. We will sign your NDA before you send anything, or supply ours if you would rather use one.
No. Six disciplines are available and you take the ones you need. Authors arrive here at every stage (with an idea, a half-draft, or a finished manuscript that only needs a cover and a shelf) and the work starts where you actually are.
It depends on the work: length, how much research is involved, how much of the book already exists, and which disciplines you need. There is no list price for a book, and any firm who gives you one before reading your material is quoting something other than your book. Tell us where you are and we will price the actual job.
Move the marker. You do not need to know what to call it: you only need to know where you are.
Tell us where your manuscript is, where you want it to go, and we'll show you what's possible.