"Cover Design" can be both simply, “design a pretty image,” but it can, and does, also mean, tackle the incredibly challenging job of creating somethingn that reaches out, grabs your prospective customer by the nerve-endings and says to that person, “HEY, reader! I am the book for you!” 

This is beyond challenging, in fact; it’s a very difficult thing to do. Sometimes, it’s because the publisher has no idea what they want (“make it ‘impactful,’ but I don’t know what I want”), or sometimes, because they are dead set on a specific image, that to them, tells the entire story of the book in a single glance—but to anybody else on earth, would mean absolutely nothing.  Somewhere, between those two poles, a great cover is waiting, patiently, to be created, designed and discovered.

Almost anything, really. You can create covers for novels, how-to books, memoirs, cookbooks and almost anything else using our design services.  Generally speaking, if it’s a job for which we have zero or not-enough experience—fear not—we won’t accept the work. We can and do make paperback covers, hardback covers, Case Laminate covers (hardback), dustjackets, covers for Audible Books, and of course, eBook covers. 

In the last 5 years or so, we’ve made over 700 covers, for publishers just like you.  If you want a cover, for almost any kind of book, you're in pretty good shape if you come here!

Well, possibly you can, if you are technically and technologically proficient, and a gifted designer--but designing a book cover can be pretty fraught with peril, whether for the first-timer or the nth-timer.  Everything that goes into making a commercially-viable, professional-looking book cover is typically not known to the layperson. More importantly, that book is your child.

You’ve been pregnant with it for ages—weeks, months, decades or even longer. You are emotionally attached to it in a way that practically guarantees that you can’t stand back and realize that if you really do make a cover with a suburban home, a long winding drive, a tricycle laying on its side, a discarded baby bottle, three ravens and a partridge in a pear tree, that the person who sees that cover isn’t going to glance at it and instantly say “OMG, this is just the cozy mystery I’ve been looking for!” 

We're not saying it's the equivalent of magic to make a competent, compelling cover. (Darn near it, though—just ask Hitch, who believes all our cover designers are wizards!)  But things like good design principles, understanding the power of three visual elements, knowing what readers do and don’t look for…it’s hard to learn these things in a powerful, ingrained and organic way, in your bones, usably, if you haven’t got years of experience under your belt already. And if you’re also in love with the subject—the book—how objective can you really be?

A cover—a cover is all about a feeling. It’s about making sure that the genre, the idea, the concept is instantly knowable to even the most casual viewer, and it’s about immediately invoking that feeling that you, the publisher, wants them to get. That they’re looking at a HEA romance or a wild Sci-Fi Trip through the Outer Moons of the Tadpole Galaxy (yes, that’s a real thing! Thank the Hubble for that bit of knowledge!), or a Sam Spade-esque mystery Noir.  Knowing how to invoke that feeling, impart that information without overloading the imagery—and yet retain enough room for the needed typography—these are things learned typically the hard way be cover designers. Why not use their suffering to your advantage? 

You do! You're the author, the publisher, not us.  We make no claims on your copyright, your text, your title, or your book.  We're simply providing services to you--we have no rights in and to your book.

If down the road, you decide to switch from one publishing platform to another (say, from KDP to Ingram) you won't have to get us to "agree" that you have the rights to your own book cover--you already do!  (n.b.: we do retain the Master working files--those belong to the contracted cover designer who makes the file.  If you want to own the Master Design files, make arrangements with us to buy those when we are working up your quote!  This is industry-standard--we're not doing anything remotely odd or unusual here.) 

Absolutely. I’m not saying that we’re Fort Knox, or the Batcave, but we pay a lot of money each year, for file security and encryption, to protect your IP (Intellectual Property).  If you are uncomfortable sending your "baby" to us for a quote, we're happy to give you a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Once we put the cover into production, we use secured, encrypted email addresses and 64-bit encrypted sites, to protect that IP, to protect your work.  To the best of our knowledge, no other print or digital formatting company spends the thousands that we do, each year, securing your files like we do.  We take file security, your IP and you and your book very seriously indeed.  

I do want to add that we do not promise to retain and archive your files forever—or at all, for that matter—that’s not part of what our services entail. But, while they are with us, they are secure.