Commissioning cover art

Hi folks – ready to judge some books by their covers?

Let’s talk about commissioning cover art! For me, it was the most fun aspect of self-publishing. Thinking about all of the covers I’ve loved (and hated) and all the infinite choices was electrifying. I was crafting my story’s first impression and it felt like a perfect creative extension of my writing.

However, I think I started working on cover art earlier than I should have. I was done with the first drafts and had received enough query rejections to finalize my decision to self-publish, but still struggling to jump into The Checklist. Since I’d always had a really clear vision of what I wanted my covers to look like, I thought that would be a good place to start. Surprisingly, this is something that The Checklist doesn’t have a lot of information about. They link to 100 Covers and GetCovers, but not much else besides the standard “match your genre” advice.

While both services are well-reviewed in 2026, and the packages with a variety of dimensions were attractive, there was something a little soulless about them to me. If meeting genre expectations and keeping your budget low are important to you, I think either would be a perfectly fine option. For me, there were two main reasons I went in a different direction:

1) I knew that I wanted a movie poster-esque cover, since those were some of my biggest inspirations. I write in a cinematic style and I wanted to communicate that to my readers.

2) My characters are aliens, so I wanted my readers to have a good frame of reference without having to bloat my descriptions of them in the text itself.

I’ve admired the SketchGoblin ever since I played Regicide over two years ago. His style had the perfect mix of minimalism and personality that I was after, so I reached out to commission covers for the whole trilogy. He graciously accepted and sent over a simple contract. It was a bit of a splurge but something I was comfortable prioritizing in the budget. I also really like book series that have art across the combined spines, so that was included as well.  Working with Sketch was a dream come true and I couldn’t be more pleased with his work.

He also asked to read the book, which I appreciated a lot. Due to the aforementioned aliens, I sent him a mood board, too, and he wowed me with these:

They were almost exactly what I’d asked for, but the magic didn’t happen until he went off-script. Sketch’s next concept completely blew me away. It was nothing like I’d imagined, but it was stylish and evocative and perfect.

Sketch continued iterating on this version, adding details and color, incorporating my feedback, and developing it into something truly beautiful. My advice for this phase of the process is to trust your artist! Sketch was great about tweaking the art as requested but it really began to shine as he took it in the direction his expertise led him.

Now here’s where the titular hurdles come in. Though I was done with the first drafts, I hadn’t yet hired an editor for final revisions or fiddled with layout/formatting or even picked a print size! I was supremely motivated by this new art but in the wrong direction; I wanted to write more but needed to nail down a page count and layout. I hope Sketch didn’t mind the delay, but I got hung up trying to figure out the spine width and final dimensions so that he could design the spine art.

My books are short, action-packed adventures that move along at the pace of a blockbuster. I wanted them to be the kind of story you don’t want to put down, and don’t have to because you can finish it over a long weekend! You know what that’s not great for? A spine wider than an inch for your talented artist to work with!

If I could do it all again I’d have waited to reach out after all my revisions were complete and I had a final printing proof. Ultimately, it all worked out because Sketch is flexible and amazing! We came up with a compromise for the spine art in the form of a chapter header image based on a logo of his that my beta readers and I fell in love with, and he was still able to connect the spines in an interesting way (to be revealed later).

And now, without further ado, I give you the official final cover for Stolen Ghost, the first book in the Shades of Humanity Trilogy: