I’m sure you’ve noticed that you can find prices for cover art from almost free to thousands of dollars. It can be hard to figure out why there is such a huge difference.
Design pricing is mostly a combination of skills, knowledge of design and publishing, experience, average amount of time spent on a design, and how in demand that particular artist is. Though even these are not always concrete. You can always find artists who undervalue themselves and those that greatly inflate their value. You’ll honestly find more of the former than the latter though. Artists tend to have a hard time charging what they’re really worth. But don’t tell them that I told you. 😉
The best thing to do is to look at covert artist’s portfolios and find the one that you think would do the absolutely best job for your book. Then save up so you can afford to hire them. (more…)
