What we learned designing three book covers with Fiverr -

 Last updated: 12 October 2022

Although our parents taught us from an early childhood to never judge a book by its appearance, the reality is that the covers are the first thing many of us see at a book store or browsing online for eBooks. The art of creating the perfect cover though always a challenge, is crucial to all authors, regardless of their book's specialization.

When it comes to finding the right design for your book cover, there are many factors to consider, from expertise to of course, cost. Nowadays online, you can find many excellent sources to find book cover designers and makes the search much easier task than previously.

This morning, we're going to talk about Fiverr and the possibilities of having your book's cover created on the website for 5 dollars (USD). Sounds remarkable, right?

We conducted a little experiment using Fiverr for the purpose of being able to offer you all the information you need before deciding to choose this platform for the design of your book's cover. Let's see what our experiment showed us.

What is Fiverr?

Fiverr provides an on-line marketplace where clients and freelancers can request or offer services as low as $5 (plus the 10% fee charged by Fiverr that is paid by the user). Content writers and designers, web developers translators, editors, and much more offering services for a wide variety of work, at just five dollars. This platform is extremely popular and, though it is contested by many, it seems to have a lot of success among part-time freelancers and customers looking for an affordable and quick solution.

's Cover Design Experiment

Armed with curiosity and a need to clarify why it is important to choose an affordable solution, the group decided to carry out an experiment on Fiverr and ask for three cover designs for books, in three different categories. Although Fiverr gives its users an opportunity to gain more out of the site with additional options including optimized thumbnails the original file, higher resolution pictures, and so on, We decided to find out what else we could find in exchange for five dollars.

The Books

To conduct this research, we have come up with three novel titles from different genres:

• Hard Valley by Lilith St. Parish ( Crime/Mystery)
• Undead Pluto by James Sinclair ( Fantasy/Dystopi)
• The Captive's Tales by Milena McAdams ( Romance/Erotica)

What We Got

Since visual content reigns supreme so let's take a examine the covers first , before going to specifics or analysing the outcomes. Click the cover you want to see the larger image in a different tab.

What is it? It Works

Once you have created an order for a cover design the designers begin bidding, and all is left to choose is an artist. After analyzing our choices and made sure the designers were rated as the top on the platform, offered to do the cover for only five dollars and within less than 24 hours. It turned out that there was not much of options with these restrictions so we had to be a little flexible regarding our timeframe.

When you've settled on your choice then you'll need to give a couple of details regarding the book to the design team, including the title, subtitle, author name as well as other information you're thinking about for your book cover.

The first designer provided the cover design in less than three hours and, in our opinion, was the only designer who took a amount of work instead of just using some stock images. This brings us to an important aspect of having your book cover designed on Fiverr:

Be sure to conduct an easy Image search once you get the cover. You might not want the first thing the public sees on the book's cover to end up being a picture that is used by many other websites.

In the case of the other covers for books, even though we liked the design of the second one enough to provide us with two possibilities, after conducting an image search, we discovered that both images are utilized by lots of sexual-related websites, and even other books in similar niches! That is also the case of the image that resembles a vampire that we chose for the Undead Pluto cover.

The Things We Don't Know

In the beginning of this project at the beginning, we knew the reality that, due to the limitation of $5 and the tight deadline, we would not have the same level of experience that you would get when working with a professional book cover designer. However, let's get moving and talk about the things that can't be found on Fiverr with just five dollars.

• It is not possible to get the cover modified or revised after completion
• The files aren't accessible to the original files (.PSD, .AI etc)
• There aren't any high-resolution images to be used for various print or online situations for example
• It's not possible to bounce ideas back and forth with the designer and talk about the cover prior to the actual designing process

How to Make the Most of Fiverr

Similar to any other online platform such as Fiverr, the use of Fiverr for the cover design has its ups as well as downs.Although there are cons that seem to outweigh the benefits, there are a few guidelines to help make the most of Fiverr. You need to put in your time when choosing the artist and in providing specifics about the cover. If you're concerned over getting a cover that does not relate to the characters or story you are telling make sure you provide all the details you could to the designer and even describe an ideal cover you may have in the back of your mind. This will help them narrow the options and make better choices in terms of images and stock photos.

Also, pay attention to the offers of designers because they will reveal a lot about the professionalism and experience of the person who is bidding. If you keep getting calls from madam even though your Fiverr username is Jack and he/she is probably not paying that very much attention to what they are doing or you're dealing with an agency that acts as a design farm and passed your contract along to another person.

Conclusion

If you are evaluating a book based on the cover, viewers usually look for the covers that stand out the plethora of titles that appear to have been designed by the same person. They want to see covers that perfectly convey the authors their style as well as the narrative in the pages of the book. If you want a unique cover design for your book, one that stands out and impresses your readers, you might need to think twice before having the cover design done for only five dollars, no matter your platform of choice!

If you're in a hurry and don't wish to commit more than you need on the cover, Fiverr is a great place for you to experiment with your cover design in little to not much time. Sometime, even just a couple of hours.

All in all we think our Fiverr test was fascinating, it provided us with a wealth of insightful data on how design-mills function and on how designers can provide you quality book covers for affordable prices. We don't believe they'll blow any reader away.

 Have you ever used Fiverr for your book cover design? Tell us your experience.