There's an art website, DeviantArt, where artists of all types showcase their work. Many of them are available for commissions. If you search for "book cover", you'll find a bunch of ready-to-go art pieces, some even compiled into cover art templates: https://www.deviantart.com/popular-all-time/?q=book+cover
I hired a graphic designer to design the cover for my new book The Last British President, but unfortunately things didn't work out. I was very disappointed, as I'd more or less hung my hat on receiving a stunning design and also to free me up on finalising the book with KDP. Anyway, the money was refunded (£250) to me and I started to do the design myself in the end. As it happens, it was a blessing in disguise, since I enjoy design anyway. At first I started with GIMP but I needed a gradient put in a very large word, which was quite tricky with GIMP. Then I discovered Inkscape and everything came together. I was able to play with the gradient settings to my heart's content and after a couple of weeks, I had my book cover, which I then exported as a 300dpi print-ready pdf for KDP. And it didn't cost me a penny either, because both GIMP and Inkscape are open source and free of charge, which are three of my favourite words. Believe me, once you get the hang of it, there really is no need to pay a fortune for a book cover. Besides, as others have said, imagine how many books you'd have to sell to recoup the costs?
Oh dear, how things change. I've recently had the book translated into Spanish, took another look at the book cover and after cringing for a long while, managed to find a professional to design a new cover. The cost was only $50. Fortunately he immediately hooked into what I wanted and the new design is provocative enough for potential readers to want to know more. The setting for the book is Buenos Aires, so most Argentines will get what the cover is trying to say. Here are both for comparison purposes. My effort: New cover
Hmm. I have written 8 books - "written" as in finished them, got them critiqued, finished the 2nd draft, went back over them, finished the 3rd draft etc... ... but unfortunately, a cover is something I have never attempted, mostly because I have no idea how it's done, and my art skills leave a lot to be desired. I have looked around DeviantArt and other places, but I'm not sure how much a cover would cost. A range between $200 and $2,500 is ... not helpful; it's too wide to know what to expect. My genre is historical fiction, though I'm not sure if that makes a difference, price-wise. (Obviously, it makes a difference to what the cover would look like!) Any ideas where I could start looking? I've been looking at covers of other books in my genre, so I know what the cover should look like. Thanks!
Noobie was a real douche also seen as joe six pak among others, I wouldn’t take anything he said seriously that aside in general a decent off the shelf cover is like to be in the region of 50 to 100 USD and a bespoke in the region of 500 to a thousand depending on who big a name designer you use and how complex a design you want ( and also on whether you just want an ebook or whether it’s ebook and print)
I haven't attempted it yet, but I wonder how much a leap of self-teaching cover design is compared to writing and/or formatting multiple novels. What's the hour investment required to make something reasonable? 100? 200? Could be Kruger speaking, I don't know. I do know it's common for new authors to rush the blurb and cover, leaving an unprofessional presentation, but if this is someone carefully going whole hog and spending $100-$200+/cover on potentially a larger library, are they really incapable of learning how to do something like this? Spoiler: Book cover that can be bought online for $350 US I don't mean the art, just post effects and comp. Edit: here's another one, $235 US Spoiler: cover
Hmm, I had a look on their website (thebookcoverdesigner.com), and was a little confused. I write historical fiction, but I specialise in ancient history. The 'history' covers (and covers for all other genres) don't seem to be in any order, i.e. one cover is prehistory, the next is French Revolution, and so on. Also, there are some covers under the 'History' genre that don't seem to belong there. For instance, this one seems to belong more in the 'Romance' genre, judging by the 'Beefcake'. *shrug* I wonder what kind of 'History' people expect when the cover has some guy with his shirt off? Possibly something Mills-and-Boonesque, and nothing very serious?
Someone with a good background in photoshop could learn to make a cover reasonably quickly. someone who’s never used photoshop will obviously take much longer however there’s also a question of what your time is worth… and whether it is limited. if you are time rich and cash poor learning to do it properly yourself is an option, on the other hand if your time is pressed you might prefer to spend it writing
Clearly that cover is not serious history, there a big cross over between romance and history in the bodice ripper market thus is the other thing about premades, that you do need to understand cover trends for your genre to pick the right one