For Designers
This page is set up to provide site information for all book cover designers–those who are already listed on the Directory and those who are curious about membership.
The Designer Directory
Designers featured on the Directory have been invited based on their professional experience and portfolio strength. The Directory mainly highlights designers who have professional experience designing books for the world’s biggest publishing houses.
If you’d like to be considered for a future invitation, you’re welcome to send a brief email introduction to ineedabookcover.assistant@gmail.com. While we may not be able to respond to every message, we genuinely appreciate your interest!
Membership
We now offer three tiers of membership to join the Directory: The Starter, The Standard, and The Spotlight profile. Each tier offers members a different level of visibility and added features, with accessible pricing for designers at various stages in their careers. If you’re invited to join the Directory, you’ll receive full details about each membership tier, including pricing and what’s included.
Engagement
Profiles with lapsed engagement will be hidden from the main Directory page after three months. This means that if a designer does not upload a new cover within three months, their profile will be hidden. Designers will still be credited for their work and profiles will always remain properly linked to individual covers, but their names will no longer appear on the main Directory page.
Why? Members of the economical Starter Profile option enjoy financial flexibility by only remaining visible when they want to pay for it. If you’re entering a busy stretch and won’t be taking on freelance work for a few months, you can simply let your profile go offline—knowing you’re not paying for unused real estate in the meantime. This model also helps benefit our more active members: by hiding inactive profiles, we reduce clutter on the directory and make the visible designers stand out more clearly to potential clients.
If your profile has disappeared from the main directory, simply upload one new cover to reactivate it! This will restore your profile to the main Directory for another three months.
Standard and Spotlight Profile subscription holders will never be hidden.
Submitting Cover Designs
Whether you’re listed on the directory or not, we invite you to add your cover work to the site! To get started, click the button below:
Designers who are a part of The Standard and The Spotlight profiles may upload 4 covers per month as a part of their memberships. Please note that those 4 allotted covers do not carry over from month to month (meaning, if you upload 0 covers one month, you are not able to upload 8 covers the next month). This helps us space out submissions and avoid being overwhelmed by too many uploads in a single month.
All other cover uploads cost $10 per design. This fee is applied to all members of The Starter profile. This fee is also applied to any member from The Standard and The Spotlight memberships who upload more than 4 covers in a given month.
Book Parameters
All covers which adhere to the specifications below will be added to the site
- INABC specifically celebrates covers from Adult genres such as fiction, literary fiction, nonfiction, self-help, memoirs & biographies, food, poetry, fantasy, etc.
- We are highly selective about posting a Young Adult (YA) book cover, sharing those with a cover design that straddles the adult look.
- This site focuses on trade books rather than mass-market editions.
The following submissions will not be posted:
- We do not showcase Children’s Books.
- We do not showcase Graphic Novels.
- The covers featured here are mostly from the twenty-first century
If a cover design is submitted and paid for that does not align with the parameters listed above, your fee will be refunded and your cover will not be uploaded.
Earn free cover uploads!
Our goal is to provide design credits for every cover we add to this site, but we need your help to achieve that goal! Look for books that are missing design credits. Write to ineedabookcover.assistant@gmail.com and provide us with the design credits for 3 books. As a thank you, we will post a cover of your choosing for free!
The Blog: Guest Posts and 10Questions
As has been our policy from the start, anyone is welcome (encouraged!) to contribute a guest post to the blog—whether you’re listed in the Directory or not. If you have insights, experiences, or advice to share with fellow designers and authors, we’d love to hear from you!
Designers who are part of the Standard and Spotlight membership tiers are automatically invited to be featured in the 10 Questions interview series.
The Jobs Board
Members of our thriving Jobs Board are given access to our weekly Book Cover Jobs, which are posted and shared as they become available.
Each Creative Brief is password-protected. Designers must apply to gain access to these high-value opportunities. Once approved, members will receive the passwords for each job via email.
*Please note that membership to the Jobs Board is separate from being included in the Designer Directory. The requirements for joining the Directory differ from those for accessing the Jobs Board, and not all Jobs Board members automatically receive a profile in the Directory. Want to know if you’re aligned with the other designers on our list? Read our Designer Requirements before you apply. There is a one-time $50 fee to apply to The Jobs Board listserv.
Our clients post projects with average budgets of $1,500. If you’re selected to work on a project, you’ll have full autonomy working with the client. That means you’ll receive the full payment offered, with no cut taken by INABC.
The Jobs Board is designed to connect talented designers with serious clients—plain and simple. Our role is to facilitate that initial connection. From there, it’s up to you to manage the project professionally and independently. We trust our designers to communicate clearly, to set fair terms, and to deliver great work. If you’re ready for that level of responsibility (and reward), we’d love to see your application!
