Augusta Scarlett Book Cover Design & Artwork

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Selected Covers & Artwork

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Portfolio

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Click on a cover to see a larger version. You can then navigate through the lightbox by swiping (on mobile) or clicking/tapping on the arrows to the left and right of the image.

Ebook Covers

Eye-catching covers to suit your book. Ready for Amazon, Kobo, Wattpad, Smashwords, Apple Books, Bookfunnel or any way you distribute your books.

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Print Covers

Paperback, hardcover, dustcovers and casebound book covers for Amazon, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, Lulu or other POD or traditional printer.

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Artwork & Graphics

I can provide custom artwork, box set and audiobook images, and logo design.

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Pricing & Services

• Ebook Cover
• Ebook & Print
• Cover Artwork
• Graphics & Web Art

Premade Covers

I have a small rotating selection of premade covers available through different storefronts.If you buy a premade cover you can add the text yourself, or I can customize it to your needs by:          > Changing front, spine and back cover text: title, subtitle, byline, tagline, back cover copy
          > Making minor changes to the artwork, such as hair and eye color
          > Adding your existing logo or series graphic
          > Adding an ISBN bar code to the back coverIf you need more customization, please talk with me before purchasing the cover to get my timeline and a quote for the work.Be sure to check out every site, as I sell different book covers through each!

Elements of a Successful Cover

It seems strange, but a book cover
should not be a picture of what happens in the book.
Your book's cover
should communicate how a reader will feel.

You may have a strong vision for your book cover, but is it a good book cover? A book cover needs to advertise a book, not illustrate the story, and has different requirements.

Here's advice on what you need for a successful book cover.

0. IMPORTANT: The book cover design must be readable at 1.5" tall, which is the size at which most online book browsing people will see the cover in search results.

This item is #0 because it is so important that it transcends list numbers. If your cover is a muddy mess in an Amazon search results list, it won't get looked at. All of the other advice below is useless if all a potential reader sees is a blob."Readable" does not always mean that all the text must be understandable. What readable means in art and design terminology is that the important shapes on the cover must be visible and identifiable. If it is a text-based style, then the title should be legible. If it is a character-based cover, you should be able to recognize the outlines of the characters. If it is an object-based cover, the object should be immediately recognizable.

1. A successful cover accurately reflects the genre and sub-genres of the book.

Imagine picking up a book that you think is a cosy mystery, only to discover halfway through that it's actually a serial killer thriller. Would you ever pick up another book from that author? Consider a reader looking for a Warhammer-style military science fiction book and skipping your milSF novel because your cover artwork is anime style, not the gritty, semi-realistic style the reader expects.Make sure your readers can find your book by using the cover to signal exactly what genre and sub-genres your story is. Here are a few examples of how granular sub-genres can get.

2. A successful cover signals the mood of the book.

Is it romantic? Cosy? Suspenseful? Epic? Dark academia? Cottagecore? Uplifting? Character-centered? Thrilling? Scary?If your cover promises a thrilling space opera with swashbuckling cats but the story is an introspective analysis of existential ennui, you'll give your reader mental whiplash. The book cover should serve up exactly what your story dishes out.

3. The best cover strikes a balance between looking like other covers in its genre and looking just different enough to stand out.

Your book cover should say "Do you like this type of book? You'll love this one!" No potential reader of cozy space opera will look twice at a novel whose cover looks like dystopian cyberpunk.

Example: Shifter romance book covers often have the animal that the protagonist turns into photobombing the hero or the couple, as in the four covers below.Each cover handles the shifter animal differently, from using a bear's face close up as the background on Defender Cave Bear to having the wolves the protagonists turn into fading into magical mist on Sinking on Steamboat Lake.

4. Your cover should hint at the tropes and themes in the book.

Readers love tropes! Even the readers who claim they hate tropes (what they hate are tropes done badly). Pick out your tropes and feature them on the cover. You'll find there's a lot of overlap between tropes and sub-genres.Examples:

5. A book's cover should hint at the location, culture, and time period of the story.

For example, a mystery set in Joseon Korea should not have a cover similar to a paranormal fantasy novel in WWII Croatia.That example is a bit obvious, but readers look for settings. Novels about women in World War II are currently popular, and you can find them because they almost all have a picture of a woman from the back in 1940s clothing, with 2 or 3 WWII-era airplanes flying overhead, a building or landscape to indicate which country, and often a suitcase or bicycle. The typography is usually sans serif, in white or red.Seriously. Here's fifteen books I found in five minutes of searching on Amazon. (None of these covers are mine.)

Frequently the woman is wearing a red coat or dress to ensure she's the focal point--and if not, often the font is red--but the "woman in a red coat" motif is used quite a lot in suspense and thriller covers as well, so it imparts tones of suspense, fear and danger appropriate for WWII.Hearkening back to #3 in the list, about appearing similar but also standing out: these covers look alike, but readers of "women in WWII" novels use all these images as shortcuts to find their next book. If you don't use any of the genre signals, you risk missing out on someone who really wants to read your novel. Find another way to stand out from the crowd, like the two covers that use shadows of airplanes on concrete, the one which surrounds the heroine with piles of books, or the one which puts the title into a bright, saturated yellow.In conclusion: don't risk losing a reader who really wants your cosy Caribbean paranormal romance by settling for a cover that doesn't tell readers that's what it is.

Workshopping Your Cover

When workshopping a cover:

Final Thoughts

A scene pulled straight from the book might look like nonsense to a reader who hasn't read the book yet.You might hate a certain style of cover, but if your target readers are buying books with those covers, you should seriously consider that style. Example: flat illustrations on romance novels. You might think they look like comic books, but your readers may love them and think stock photos look old-fashioned. Why lose those readers?Stock photos are limited when it comes to poses, expressions, and costuming. You will probably end up compromising on all of those unless you are willing to invest in custom photography. If you've got $1000+ to invest in your cover image, I can direct you to some custom photographers' websites.Nobody has ever returned a book because the heroine's hair is the wrong shade of red. Don't sweat the details too much.You wrote a book! That's awesome! Let's give it a cover that will find your readers.

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