Ebook Cover Design Overview

What is an ebook cover design?

An ebook cover is an image that is used to represent the book in retailer catalogs and software libraries like Amazon KDP, Apple Books etc.

• You can see examples of our ebook cover designs in our website's book cover portfolio, and even more on our Pinterest and Instagram accounts.

What is included when I order an ebook cover design?

•  A professionally designed ebook cover concept that is optimized to upload to all the major book distributors including Smashwords, Amazon KDP, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, IngramSpark, etc. It's a single, ready-to-upload image of the "front" cover and does not include a spine or back cover. We also offer a print cover upgrade which includes the spine and back cover design.
• You get unlimited reasonable changes during the design process (more info on process below). 
• Your one approved ebook cover concept also will come with two bonus 3d mockups!
• Unlimited stock images and textures for use in the book cover design. (If client has specific image requests from a website that Ebook Laucnch does not have a subscription to, additional charges may apply.) Unless otherwise stated, images for cover design use will be sourced from Shutterstock.com
• Digital delivery of files

What are the file specifications of the ebook cover design?

• File Type: JPG
• File size: <5mb
• Dimensions: 1600 pixels width x 2560 pixels height (the optimal dimensions recommended by Amazon KDP, Draft2Digital, IngramSpark, Smashwords and other major distributors.
• Colour Profile: RGB (not sRGB or CMYK) 
• Resolution: 72 DPI

What is the process for your ebook cover design service?

We offer two design approaches: Photo Manipulation and Hand Illustration. For the vast majority of our portfolio, the designs are photo manipulations of multiple existing images, vectors, and textures from www.shutterstock.com to create beautiful one-of-a-kind professional book covers. However, we also offer hand-illustrated covers when the genre and tone of the book are appropriate. Only one approach will be taken for each book cover project. We've outlined the process for each approach below:

Photo Manipulation:

Step 1 – Order: 

A. Fill out our book cover order form. This form provides us with all of the details we need to design your cover if it is filled out thoroughly.

B. Once we receive the order we'll email an invoice within 2 business days. 

C. When payment is received, we'll send a welcome email and clarify any questions about your cover order if needed.

Step 2 – Design (within 14 days):

A. Sending concept - We'll send two concepts within 14 business days of payment of the invoice - often sooner depending on our workload. 

B. Author/Publisher chooses one concept to proceed to Step 3.

• If neither concept work, we'll try an additional concept with more assistance and detailed feedback and direction from the author/publisher.
• If by the third concept we still do not have a book cover concept to revise (which is very rare), we may choose to end the project and refer you to another designer, or we may keep going with additional drafts depending on how close we are.

Step 3 – Revisions and approval: (2-7 business days, depending on changes)

Changes to the chosen concept from Step 2. Only one concept from Step 2 will be revised. All reasonable revision requests will be done in this step until the concept is approved by the author/publisher. Reasonable revisions requests meet the following criteria:

• Changes that do not substantially alter the chosen concept from Step 2.
• They are within the scope of the original brief submitted on our order form.
• They can be done through the use of existing stock imagery.
• They do not constitute a completely new cover design.
• Usually, these changes consist of tweaking certain individual elements of the cover, changing colors, moving elements, changing text placement and/or fonts, and resizing etc.

Hand Illustration

Step 1 – Order: 

(this step is the same for both approaches):

A. Fill out our book cover order form. This form provides us with all of the details we need to design your cover if it is filled out thoroughly.

B. Once we receive the order we'll email an invoice within 2 business days. 

C. When payment is received, we'll send a welcome email and clarify any questions about your cover order if needed.

Step 2 – Design (within 14 days):

A. Sketching Phase - We'll send a hand-drawn sketch within 7 business days of payment of the invoice - often sooner depending on our workload. The sketch will show where the main elements of the illustration will be as well as have placeholder fonts. Any major revisions are to be made during the sketching phase. Once the sketch is to the client's liking, they approve the sketch. 

B. Detailed Phase - Once the sketch has been approved, we'll complete the detail of the illustration (colours, shading etc). At this stage only fifty percent of the project is refundable due to the time-intensive nature of custom illustration. The author will review the completed illustration and make any small revisions if required (colour, small details). 

C. Font Phase - Once the completed illustration is approved by the author, we'll add the fonts to the illustration and send the completed concept for approval.

Step 3 – Revisions and approval: (2-7 business days, depending on changes)

All major revisions or changes need to be made in the sketching phase. Once the time and effort have been spent meticulously detailing the image, only small changes will be available to be made in the detail phase. 

Once the cover and revisions are approved, we'll send a final email with the high-res ebook cover and 3D renderings (one with wood background and one with transparent background). If you have ordered a cover design package with additional design material or have ordered cover design extras, then instructions with the next steps will be provided