Lulu book cover design options: choosing a cover designer

If you plan to publish with Lulu.com, you may be trying to decide which of their book cover design packages to buy. Here’s a breakdown:

Basic Book Cover Design: $130

For $130 you get a very simple template-based cover. The templates look very similar to Createspace’s free cover generator though; so I’m not sure why you’d pay when you can make one yourself at Createspace.

Premium Book Cover Design: $450

For $450 you get two nice book cover designs to choose from. Hopefully you like one of them! They are probably pretty decent.

Full Custom Book Cover Design $999

For $999 you get 3 great covers to choose from.

Is it worth the money?

I won’t say that all Lulu covers are ugly – they have some good designers working for them and can produce good covers; however as a big company, Lulu.com is taking a cut and paying the designers less (so you’re paying extra for the middleman). Comparatively speaking, these prices are about average in the industry. But that doesn’t mean that they’re a good deal!

The biggest drawback is that you only get to see the finished covers; if you don’t like them you’re screwed. It’s a big gamble. That’s why when I design covers, I get the author to help me choose colors, styles, photographs and fonts in the beginning, and keep them involved in the process – that way I know they’ll love the finished cover.

As for price – my $199 full print ready cover is comparable to their $999 cover design package. Although there’s no middleman and you get to deal with me directly, $199 is still too cheap for what I provide. I’ll be raising the price steadily, aiming for a comfortable $399 (still below average!)

If you’re looking for fast and easy book cover design services, don’t care about the finished product, and have no idea what you’d like on the cover, Lulu can probably handle it all for you. If on the other hand, like most Indie Authors you like to be involved and are looking for a designer to work with you (rather than for you) – and you also want to save loads of money, check out my book cover samples.