After a long and careful search, you’ve finally found the cover artist of your dreams. How do you work with them to produce a great cover that will help sell your book?

All right, so you’ve decided to commission a custom illustration for your book cover. With a bit of luck and a truckload of hard work, your book’s gonna come out looking great! But what should you expect from this process, in practical terms?

In my previous blog post about the purpose of book covers, my examples all had custom cover illustrations. And to get one of those, you need a cover artist! But there have been plenty of very successful science fiction and fantasy books whose covers don’t feature custom illustrations.

Everyone knows you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But we all do it anyway.