5 Affordable Ways to Create Book Cover Artwork

Not judging a book by its cover doesn't hold in my experience as a reader and writer. In a world where most readers scroll past multiple book covers on a computer screen within fractions of a second, artwork fights for interest. You might think writing a book is hard, but what comes next is equally formidable. Here is a short list of platforms and tools that might help (I've tried them all). There are others out there that sometimes perform similar functions, but I've either not used them yet, or decided against them.

1. Fiverr

Fiverr is a flatform that connects you with creators (e.g. book cover designers), for a myriad of purposes, and usually for an affordable price (hence the name). It's definitely a mixed bag in terms of the capabilities of the creators and their prices, but there are usually plenty of reviews to help. I don't use Fiverr anymore (my publishers create covers in-house), although my consistently top-performing book's cover was generated this way. The pros: you have a lot of creative control, and the pricing scale is transparent. The cons: interacting with a single creator can be tricky, timings can vary, and instructions need to be watertight.

2. Pre-designed covers

Ready-made covers are great since they take out the faff of trying to figure out what might work, since you can see a variety of options immediately. The pros are obvious: there is no danger of not getting what you pay for, they're not prohibitively expensive, you might find something better than you could have personally envisioned. Furthermore, when you buy a cover, no one else can buy it again (although images may be re-used, but this isn't abnormal by any means). The cons: it can take a while of perusing to find exactly what you might like. While there are many platforms/websites offering these covers, one that I've used and I believe is reputable is here.

3. Simple DIY Covers Creators

Two of the best DIY cover creators that are easy to use are BookBrush & Canva. BookBrush is geared purely towards book covers, and is the superior option. It also has a variety of options to create professional-looking promotional material. There is a free plan, but I used a paid plan. Canva similarly has free and paid plans, and I used the free plan. It's a little more fiddly, and not geared purely towards books. That said, it's still a very good option!

4. Complex DIY Software

If you feel a little more comfortable with graphics software, you might want to create a book cover yourself. Or you might want to licence a cover and then make some further edits yourself. You can do this with software like paint.NET (yes, there's a "." in the middle of the name, followed by caps). I should also state, while I call this "complex", it really isn't once you familiarise yourself with it. I love it.

5. Cover Inspiration

Number 5 is geared more towards helping you decide what you might like for your cover, as opposed to creating the cover itself. Like putting your thoughts onto the page, without the hassle of becoming a draft artist yourself. You can also use it to show designers what you want. The tool... AI picture generators. There are apps such as "Starry AI" and "Wonder" or websites such as NightCafe.

They use complex algorithms that take a sequence of words and preferences you input to create a visual depiction. I don't think legally these are able to be used as book covers due to non-ownership of the assets/individual images used to make the end results, and I'd certainly never recommend this, but the outputs can be fascinating! At the very least, you can tweet/post them.

Good luck!