Premade book cover art has its benefits and drawbacks, like most other publishing tools on the Internet. However, some of the designs I’ve seen online have been incredibly eye-catching and reasonably priced. It’s no wonder why the industry has grown rapidly in recent years.
Premade art is nothing new. However, its development and use have grown exponentially over the past few years to the point where Google pulls products from a range of websites when you try to search the topic.
But is premade art something you want to use when publishing your book?
What is Premade Book Cover Art?
Premade book covers are images that have already been designed and are available to purchase. Most are created to fit eBook platforms, but a lot of designers offer services in addition to the image purchase for printed copies of books.
In most scenarios, you’d send the designer your author name and the title of the book at checkout. And most will have an image back to you within 48 hours.
Once you’ve received the artwork, it becomes yours and the designer relinquishes any rights previously held.
Selling premade covers is a sound practice. This is coming from someone who was a ghostwriter for the first five years of his career. In this case, however, the creator already spent time designing something that may fit a certain niche.
For many self-published authors, a $200 cover could mean the difference in attracting more people to read the blurb and buy the book.
Pros and Cons of Premade Cover Art
PROS
- Lots of Available Art
- Not Overly Expensive
- Quick Turnaround
- Direct Hiring In Some Cases
- Supports Actual Artists
CONS
- Finding One That Fits
- Some Stock Image Usage
- Limited Customization
Lots of Available Art
There are a lot of premade book cover sites out there, as well as Facebook groups and designers on sites like Fiverr. This means there really isn’t a shortage of creative works waiting to grace your manuscript.
In fact, it’s such a huge element right now that Google launches its “shopping” results when you search the term, “premade book covers.”
What I especially like is that there are a lot of extremely talented artists out there who have created some masterful covers – all without the use of generative AI, I might add.
Of course, you have to verify the AI thing with some of the designs, but a lot of artists and platforms explicitly label “no AI.”
Anyway, the point here is that there is a lot of premade book art that you can use for your cover. The hardest part is finding one that fits perfectly with your manuscript, which I’ll go over in a moment.
Not Overly Expensive
While researching this post, I saw some amazing work with prices ranging from $34 to $1200, depending on the artist and platform. A lot of the much lower-priced covers were found on Etsy. However, some of them looked quite AI-generated.
Nonetheless, prices for the book covers are relatively low compared to what you’d pay to have something completely customized from scratch. For those who don’t have much of a budget but would love to see their books available, it won’t cost a lot to get something nice.
On some of the sites, though, you can definitely tell the quality of a $25 and a $400 cover.
Quick Turnarounds (usually)
From what I’ve seen of most premade book cover websites, there is a 48-hour turnaround. Of course, there are some reviews stating how it took longer. But for the most part, it seems to be a quick and easy way to get something available for your novel.
That’s in contrast to the weeks if not months that it will take for a lot of designers to custom create the cover for a higher price.
The reason for the quick turnaround is that the majority of the work is completed. All that’s needed is the title, author name, and minor adjustments if the artist or seller platform agrees.
Directly Hiring Artists
In some cases, you can hire artists directly to create a custom cover. So, the images the artist has on the cover site are essentially a portfolio of what you can expect.
Unfortunately, the only way to get a price quote from most authors is to send them a message or an email. Regardless, it might be worth checking out if the creator’s style matches the tone and flow of your manuscript.
Supports Actual Artists
I’m all for supporting actual artists. I’d rather give my money to someone who spent their time honing their craft and skill rather than someone plugging in some terms and getting something from artificial intelligence.
I spend a lot of time researching platforms and artists to ensure they don’t use AI and that I’m paying for the human element.
As someone who worked as a freelancer doing something similar (in my case, it was writing), I understand putting yourself out there to make a living. I’d rather give them my money.
Finding One That Fits
Possibly one of the biggest drawbacks to using premade book cover art is trying to find one that fits your manuscript. There are some that can come close, and you may find a few that encapsulate your tale nicely. But it’s going to take some digging.
After browsing for about two hours, I couldn’t find one that fit my book, Kingmaker, without it looking somewhat bland and uninspired. Don’t get me wrong, there were some nice designs on the Internet. But nothing that really jumped out for my book.
Then, there are a lot of covers that seem to be slight alterations of the same theme. You want your book to stand out from the crowd, not blend in with similar colors and designs to others in your niche.
Some Stock Image Usage
Some sites allow designers to use a mixture of artistic talent with stock imagery. Now, using stock images isn’t inherently a bad thing. The reason why these stock image sites exist in the first place is to provide images users can’t create themselves for a myriad of reasons.
The drawback to stock image use is that so many other people are using the same pictures across a variety of industries. Instead of having a unique appearance, you may have to share that visual with someone else.
On the other side of the coin, though, good designers often alter the stock image in such a way that it does make it unique. That’s the power of Photoshop, Illustrator, and a slew of other graphic design apps.
So, don’t discount the use of stock images right off the bat. It may be next to impossible to tell what element of the cover was downloaded from a stock site. I suggest using an image search feature on the premade cover to see if it has been used elsewhere.
Limited Customization
In most instances, a premade book cover has very few customization options available. Some artists may make adjustments as needed, but not without an extra cost. But can you blame them? From the graphic designer’s perspective, they would have to put more time into a project – and in this world, time is money.
Unfortunately, this often means having to stick with something that isn’t absolutely perfect. But always keep in mind that being perfection doesn’t exist. Like manuscripts, a good book cover is subjective to an individual.
The point of this is that you are limited to customization options without paying extra in most instances of online premade book covers.
Before Selecting a Premade Book Cover…
Keep a few things in mind when considering art, especially the fact that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some are going to hate your cover simply because they don’t like the colors or the font.
It’s the people who buy your book that you want to worry about, not the trolls.
With that being said, here are a few things to bear in mind when searching Google for that perfect visual layout.
Thousands to Sift Through
As I pointed out earlier, the options for a book cover are growing daily. More people are trying their hands at self-publishing and many of them don’t have an eye for graphic design. Thus, the availability of cover art continues to expand.
Unfortunately, this means that you can easily chew up a lot of hours sifting through designs to find the best one that fits your manuscript.
However, I find this kind of fun, in a way. Going over thousands of covers for Fantasy books gave me all kinds of ideas for stories I’d like to write. So, exploring the different designs and genres could be a great way to spark your imagination and inspiration.
There are quite a few quality sites for book covers out there such as:
- The Book Cover Designer
Initially created in 2013, The Book Cover Designer is home to over 21,000 designs spanning roughly 20 genres. It’s a stand-out platform as it hosts one of the largest collections of covers on the Internet. - Book Cover Zone
Currently, the Book Cover Zone claims to host over 10,000 covers, so it might be worth checking out. Plus, the customization form for each image is easy to use. - Etsy for Covers
Etsy has a lot of crafts and hosts more than 1,000 covers. Although Etsy doesn’t have the massive collections as the two above, I highlight it here as the designers are more apt to customize the cover while charging less.
Avoiding AI
The fun part is trying to avoid generative AI junk when looking for a premade book cover.
If I’m paying money to an artist, I’m hiring them for their personality, style, and talent. Inputting a few lines of text into a field so AI can spit out something it “learned” does not make you an artist. It makes you a prompt jockey.
Anyway, you can search sites that don’t allow AI as part of the design. For instance, one of the reasons why The Book Cover Designer is listed above is because AI usage is strictly forbidden.
Extra Costs
Something else you might want to keep in mind is that some covers might have extra costs. That depends on the artist and the platform, though. Some will allow minor customizations while others are relatively strict about sales being final.
For example, an artist might charge an extra $50 to create a print-ready version for paperback and hardcover formats. Another might charge $15 for each individual change made to a cover to make it more aligned with your manuscript.
Every artist is different, and their prices will vary in massive ways. So, when you decide on a premade book cover, give yourself a bit of leeway when it comes to the price. Maybe set aside an extra $100 to cover any extras you might want.
On sites like Book Cover Zone, you can choose to have the creator make a title page and social media banners for your accounts. A lot of authors will display their latest book on their social profile pages. It’s just another aspect of marketing, really.
Using Google Lens (Chrome)
If you’re using Google Chrome, you can always launch the Google Lens tool. From the desktop browser, right-click the image in question and click “Search with Google Lens.”
Chrome will launch the tool and scan all of its indexed sites to compare the image. It’s not absolute, but it’s a good start to ensuring the cover is unique and not already copyrighted.
It’s also a great way to see how many other books are using a similar layout. As I said earlier, you want your cover to stand out.
Google Lens will show books with similar title text. However, you probably don’t want to pay too much attention to this function. The titles used in premade book cover art are placeholders to show what your title might look like on the image.
Would I Use a Premade Book Cover?
As the two books I have published thus far are part of a series, it would take a lot of searching and customizing to make subsequent books match. You don’t necessarily need to have the books in a series consistent with design, but it makes a massive difference in marketing.
For one-off books, though, using a premade book cover is ideal for me. That’s because of two vital elements: it’s affordable and has the potential for a 48-hour turnaround.
That is until I can afford to pay a designer more to have something completely custom for the manuscript. I’m broke folk, so I need to be careful where I invest my money.
One of the things I wanted to do for the YouTube channel was to create a challenge where we buy a premade cover and then write a manuscript to match the design. Unfortunately, that would be somewhat costly as some of the covers can be priced quite high.
Overall, I can see the value in a premade book cover and the pros definitely outweigh the cons for me. So, yes, I would easily buy a premade cover if I could find one that matches the tone of the manuscript.
Cover Art is a Worthwhile Expense
Although proper editing and marketing are the two biggest expenses for self-publishing a book, the cover art is up there on the list. People will judge a book by its cover, and you want something that is enticing enough to pique someone’s interest.
However, this doesn’t mean that you need flair and pizzazz. There are a lot of books out there that are successful with only the basics of font and color choices anyone can create on free platforms like Canva.
Nonetheless, investing time, money, or both is a good expense to create something that connects readers to the story. And premade book covers might be a worthwhile investment if you can find one that fits.
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