Should I shut down my site? Apologies and other frettings

I’m very fortunate, and grateful, that people like my book cover designs and I keep getting lots of orders. I love doing them and am happy as a clam to work on them all day, fine-tuning things and playing with the best fonts, arrangements and colors. I feel I’ve produced some pretty great work.

But unfortunately, over the past few months – even after I raised my prices – I’ve been getting more work than I can handle.

This means it’s been taking longer and longer until I can start new orders. Recently I’ve had to refund two authors who were dissatisfied with the wait, and I hate that I took up their valuable time without delivering.

Although I’m usually pretty good about leaving an expected timeline of 2 to 3 weeks up on my site, I know that authors are anxious to see samples, and I’d love to have a turnaround of just a few days.

Should I close my site to new orders until I’m all caught up? Probably. The other option is raising my prices again, but I’m happy where they are and I don’t want authors to have to pay too much. Neither option seems like a solution, because eventually I’ll open my site and get overworked again. I could pass off some of the work to my friends or colleagues, share the workload (especially with the ebook and InDesign formatting I’ve been doing recently, or website designs, which take a lot of time).

For now – I’d like to apologize for not being faster. I hope someday soon to have improved my cover design services to the point where all authors will be ecstatic. Apologies and best wishes,

Derek