Illustrated covers sell a feeling before a reader has read a word — a world, a season, a promise. The risk is that the artwork swallows the title. Our job is to commission the image and then protect the type, so the illustration carries the mood and the typography still does the selling.
What you receive
- Original artwork made for your book, not licensed stock that four other titles are also using.
- Full wrap: front, spine and back calculated to your page count and trim size.
- Type that survives the thumbnail: title and author sized for a 120 px search result, not for the designer’s monitor.
- Print-ready and screen-ready files: 300 dpi CMYK wrap, 1600×2560 RGB ebook cover, square audio crop.
- Layered source file so the series can be extended later.
The process
- Mood board. Six to ten reference images and a two-sentence description of the feeling, agreed before anything is drawn.
- Sketch. A rough composition showing where the artwork sits and where the type lands.
- Final art and typography. Colour, light and detail finished, then the type set over it.
- Two rounds of amends, then all exports and sources.
Which genres suit illustration
Fantasy and romantasy, historical fiction, children’s and middle-grade, cosy mystery and cosy romance, literary fiction with a strong sense of place. Illustrated covers struggle in categories where readers expect photography — thriller, business, most contemporary romance — and we will say so if your brief is heading into a fight it does not need to have.
Getting the artwork right the first time
Illustration goes wrong when the brief is a genre rather than an image. “Fantasy” produces a generic castle; “a girl on a cliff at dusk, wind pulling her cloak, one lit window below her” produces a cover. We ask for the scene, the weather, the time of day and the emotion, then sketch the composition before any detail is painted. Because the sketch is cheap to change, the expensive part — colour, light, finished detail — only happens once, on a picture you have already approved.
What the brief needs to include
Send the blurb, the genre, the age of the reader if it is a children’s book, and two sentences about the scene you keep imagining. If you have references, send them; if you have a cover you dislike, send that too and say why — it is faster than guessing. Authors who arrive with a paragraph of description and three comps get a stronger first sketch than authors who arrive with “something magical”, because the artwork can only be as specific as the brief.
Pricing
| Tier | Scope | Price | Was | You save |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 cover | $50 | $50 | |
| Professional | 3 covers | $130 | $140 | |
| Bulk / Authority | 10 covers | $400 | $400 |
Frequent questions
Is the artwork exclusive to me?
Yes. It is made for your title and never resold, which is the main difference between this service and a stock-composite cover.
Can you illustrate the interior too?
Interior illustration for children’s books is quoted separately — see the children’s book service for the manuscript and illustration brief.
What if I already have artwork?
Send it. We can set the type, extend the image for the wrap and prepare the exports — that is the typography-only option.
Commission an illustrated cover — send the blurb and the mood you want.