Book Cover Illustration
Custom book cover illustration for fantasy, romantasy, children’s books and non-fiction, plus interior illustration for picture books and middle grade. Every illustration drawn by hand for your story, never stock, never AI-generated. Illustrated covers from $449, interior pages from $49.
Pricing
Flat prices, published up front. No quotes, no discovery calls, no surprises at invoice.
Per interior page or spread
Per standalone custom illustration
Original cover artwork, drawn from scratch
Choosing a style
The most common mistake we see is an art style pitched at the wrong age band. A picture book illustrated like a middle grade novel confuses buyers, and parents are the ones actually choosing.
| Book type | Reader age | Style that works |
|---|---|---|
| Picture book | 3 to 6 | Whimsical watercolour or soft digital painting. Warm palettes, rounded shapes, expressive faces |
| Early reader | 5 to 8 | Bold flat vector with clear outlines. High contrast so the art reads alongside large type |
| Chapter book | 7 to 10 | Line art and spot illustration. Black and white interiors keep print costs down |
| Middle grade | 8 to 12 | Detailed painterly work with real atmosphere. Readers at this age want to be taken seriously |
| Fantasy and sci-fi covers | Teen and adult | Full painterly rendering. Creatures, armour and invented architecture cannot be sourced from stock |
| Non-fiction | Adult | Clean line art, diagrams and conceptual spot illustration. Clarity over decoration |
Recent work
How it works
Style is approved before we illustrate the full set, so you never pay for twenty pages in a direction you did not want.
Plus a short brief: age range, tone, and any characters you already picture clearly.
We return character sketches and a sample illustration. Nothing else starts until you sign it off.
Every page drawn in the approved style, with characters held consistent across the whole book.
300 DPI with bleed for print, plus web versions for promotion. Full copyright transfers to you.
Book cover illustration means the cover artwork is drawn by an artist rather than assembled from licensed stock photography. Every character, creature, landscape and object is created specifically for your book, which is why illustrated covers are standard in epic fantasy, romantasy and children’s publishing, where the imagery simply does not exist in stock libraries.
Rates vary widely across the market, from a few hundred dollars for a simple single-figure composition to several thousand for a detailed scene from an established cover artist. At Book Cover Hub a fully custom illustrated book cover is $449, and a children’s book cover is $299. Complexity is what moves the price: one character on a plain ground costs far less than a full battle scene.
Children’s interior illustrations are $49 per page. Standalone book illustrations are $99 each. A fully custom illustrated cover is $449. A 24-page picture book with a cover typically lands between $800 and $1,400 all in.
At $49 per interior page and $299 for the cover, a 24-page picture book comes to roughly $1,175. A 32-page book with a cover is closer to $1,475. You pay per page, so a shorter book costs proportionally less.
Character sketches and a style sample come back within a few business days. Once the style is approved, allow roughly one to two business days per illustration, so a 24-page picture book usually runs four to six weeks end to end.
No. Every illustration is drawn by an artist. This matters practically as well as ethically: AI-generated artwork has uncertain copyright status, and Amazon KDP requires you to disclose AI-generated content when publishing.
Yes. We build a character sheet before illustrating the book, defining proportions, palette and features from multiple angles. That sheet is what keeps your character recognisable across every spread, and it is the thing cheap illustration usually skips.
Yes. All copyrights transfer to you on delivery. You own the artwork outright and can use it on any platform, in any format, in any territory, with no ongoing fees and no royalties taken.
Print-ready files at 300 DPI with correct bleed, sized to your trim dimensions, plus web-resolution versions for your site and social promotion.
Book Cover Hub
Send us your manuscript and we will come back with character sketches and a style sample before you commit to the full set. Illustrations from $49, with full copyright transferred to you on delivery.