Book Cover Design

Cover sells the book. The rule of thumb: first novel, hire a pro from Reedsy; subsequent covers, you can DIY if you have design skills. AI-generated covers are common in 2024-26 but controversial — readers and Amazon's AI-disclosure rules both flag them. For general design tools see design-vector-apps and design-raster-editors.

DIY tools (the practical paths)

• ★ Canva — paid + free; web + mobile; ★ for "I'm not a designer but need a serviceable cover." Templates are obvious — readers recognize them — but a customized Canva template beats Microsoft Word every time.
• ★ Affinity Publisher / Designer / Photo — paid one-time; $70 each or $165 Universal; ★ Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign alternative without the Adobe subscription. The serious DIY cover designer's pick. See design-vector-apps and design-raster-editors.
• Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign — paid subscription; the pro standard.
• GIMP + Inkscape + Krita — free OSS; capable but rough learning curve; see the design pages above.
• Photopea — free web; Photoshop-shape.
• Figma — free + paid; not cover-specific but used by designers for layout.
• Pixelmator Pro — paid Mac; lighter than Photoshop; great cover work.

Cover-specific generators / templates

• Book Brush — paid + free trial; cover + ad-graphic templates targeted at indie authors; "Cover Creator" quick-start.
• DIY Book Covers — paid + free; templates with KDP / IngramSpark spec presets.
• Placeit by Envato — paid + free; mockups + cover templates.
• KDP Cover Creator — free; Amazon-built; serviceable for very simple covers; flag that everyone-else can spot a Cover Creator cover at 50 paces.

Hiring a cover designer

• ★ Reedsy — paid marketplace; vetted cover designers; tier ranges from ~$300 to $2000+; see writing-self-publishing-kdp.
• 99designs — paid; design contest model; you post a brief, designers compete.
• Fiverr / Upwork — paid; mixed quality, cheap entry; vet portfolios carefully — the AI-generated portfolio problem is real.
• Damonza, MiblArt, Ebook Launch, Streetlight Graphics — paid; well-known indie cover studios; flat-rate packages.
• Behance / Dribbble portfolios — free; find designers directly, often cheaper than marketplaces.

AI cover generation (controversial — flag honestly)

• Midjourney — paid; the most-used image AI for cover concepts; Amazon KDP requires AI disclosure since 2023; some readers / reviewers explicitly avoid AI covers.
• DALL-E 3 / GPT Image — paid (ChatGPT Plus); decent for stylized / illustrated covers.
• Stable Diffusion / SDXL / Flux — free OSS weights; full control, can be self-hosted. See ai-llm.
• Adobe Firefly — paid (Creative Cloud); trained on Adobe Stock; the "commercial-safe" claim is more solid than competitors but disputed.
• Honest take: AI is fine for mood boards / cover-concept exploration to share with a human designer; using it as the final cover is a working choice but a contested one — be aware that some retailers and readers actively downrank AI-generated covers, and KDP requires disclosure.

Cover specifications

• KDP Cover Templates — free; download exact PDFs sized to your trim + page count.
• IngramSpark Cover Templates — free; same.
• 300 DPI CMYK for print, 1600 x 2560 PNG for ebook (KDP recommendation).

Stock / fonts / templates

• Creative Market — paid; designer marketplace; high quality.
• Envato Elements — paid subscription; templates + stock photos + fonts.
• Unsplash / Pexels — free; royalty-free stock; check licensing for cover use.
• DaFont / Google Fonts / Adobe Fonts — free + paid; check licenses for commercial use carefully.
• The Book Cover Designer / SelfPubBookCovers — paid; pre-made covers, cheap ($50-200); flag that pre-made covers can be sold to multiple authors.

Pick this if…

• First novel, want pro: Reedsy (★).
• Cheap pre-made: SelfPubBookCovers / The Book Cover Designer (~$50-200).
• DIY non-designer: Canva.
• DIY + serious skills + no Adobe sub: Affinity Designer + Photo + Publisher.
• AI for concepts only: Midjourney → take to a human designer.
• Cover-spec compliance: download the KDP / IngramSpark template and snap to it.