What to Do When Your Book Cover Designer Disappears Into the Fiverr Void

There are certain things you expect to worry about when you self-publish a book. Is the manuscript actually ready? (Yes.) Did you catch all the typos? (Probably.)  Is the formatting right? (I think so.) Did you choose the correct categories? (Maybe.) Will anyone buy the damn thing? (Oh, GOD, I hope so!)

And if you’ve been following along, you already know getting the manuscript to this point involved an alarming number of Krakens sacrificing their lives in the name of a typo-free book. I foolishly thought that meant the hard part was over.

What you probably don’t expect is to find yourself sitting at your computer at approximately five o’clock in the morning performing emergency surgery on the letter Y. And yet, here we are. Or more specifically, there I was.

Welcome to self-publishing.

It Started With a Perfectly Good Book Cover

When I had the cover for Consanguinity designed, I loved it. Actually, I still love it. My designer did a beautiful job. I approved the cover. I downloaded my files. Everything was wonderful. Then some time passed. As tends to happen, I needed something changed. There was only one teeny-tiny problem.

My designer had disappeared into what I can only describe as the Fiverr Void. (I’m totally trademarking that.)

Gone. Unavailable. No longer taking messages. No longer available to make changes. This wasn’t immediately catastrophic. I had my finished cover files, and the cover was already done.

Except here’s something I hadn’t really considered when I originally hired someone to design it:

A finished cover file and an editable cover file are two very different things. I had the first. I did not have the second. Remember this. It becomes important.

Enter Amazon KDP

I uploaded the paperback files to Amazon KDP and sent my beautiful little book off for review. Then came the email. There was a problem with the cover. Specifically, some of the text was too close to the edge. And thus entered our villain.

The Freaking Y. (Also getting Trademarked.)

One letter. One. Freaking. Letter.

The Y in my name was sitting just far enough outside the safe area to make Amazon unhappy.

Now, Amazon wasn’t being unreasonable here. Print books are trimmed during manufacturing, which means anything sitting too close to the edge risks being chopped off. KDP requires bleed around paperback covers and recommends keeping important content safely away from the trim area. You can check the current specifications and create a template for your book using Amazon KDP’s Cover Calculator and Templates.

This is precisely why they give you a cover template. Unfortunately, knowing why Amazon hated my Y did absolutely nothing to solve the larger problem. I needed to move the Y. And I couldn’t edit the original design, and more importantly, I don’t know HOW to move the Y.

Do Not Become Emotionally Attached to Your Y

At first, this seemed like it should be easy. Just move the text. Except the text wasn’t text anymore. It was part of the image. Imagine somebody hands you a photograph of a birthday cake and says, “Could you move the third candle slightly to the left?”

Sure. Except you don’t have the cake. You have a photograph of the cake.

That was essentially my situation.

I had the completed cover. I had various versions of the completed cover. What I did not have was the original layered design where I could simply select my name and scoot it over a few pixels. And my designer?

Still enjoying her extended vacation in the Fiverr Void.

So I started experimenting.

This is the point in the story where I would like to tell you I calmly researched the correct graphic-design procedure, carefully evaluated my options, and methodically repaired the cover.

That would be a lie.

Things Got Weird

I have used PaintShop Pro for years, so I wasn’t completely helpless. (No, I really was.)

But there’s a substantial difference between knowing how to edit an image and trying to reverse-engineer somebody else’s completed professional book cover without access to the original layers. There was converting. There was resizing. There was saving. There was reopening. There was also a lot of swearing and quite possibly a few tears. At some point, a TIFF became involved. Why? I knew at the time. Probably.

And then there was the moon. Because naturally, the Freaking Y wasn’t sitting politely over a nice solid-colored background. Oh no. That would have been too easy. It was sitting over artwork. Moving it meant repairing what was underneath it. So I used the clone brush to reconstruct the parts of the image that had been hidden behind the text. Including the moon. Yes. I repaired the moon.

Self-publishing is very glamorous.

Eventually, I reached the completely reasonable graphic-design technique known as:

Cut the Freaking Y out and fix whatever is left behind.

And somehow… It worked. I saved the repaired cover. I converted it back to the format I needed. I uploaded it to KDP. I opened the Print Previewer. And stared.

The Y was inside the margin.

I had won.

What I Wish I’d Known Before Hiring a Cover Designer

This whole adventure taught me something I wish I’d understood when I first commissioned the cover. When you hire someone to create something as important as your book cover, don’t think only about what you need today. Think about what you might need six months or three years from now. Because covers change. You might release a second edition. You might add a series name. You might need a new spine width because your page count changes. A printer might require slightly different specifications. You might find a typo.

You might someday encounter your own Freaking Y. And the person who originally designed the cover may not be available when that happens. So before your project ends, find out exactly what files you’re receiving.

Ideally, keep:

• The final ebook cover in a high-resolution format.
• The final print-ready cover PDF.
• Any separate front-cover image you may need for marketing.
• The original editable/source file, if your agreement includes it or the designer offers it.
• Information about the fonts used.
• Information about licensed stock images or other design assets, including whatever usage documentation the designer provides.
• Copies of the original project specifications and dimensions.
• Your printer’s cover template for that edition.

And then back those files up somewhere you control. Preferably somewhere you can find them three years later without opening folders named things like:

FINAL

FINAL2

ACTUALFINAL

USETHISFINAL

FINAL-FINAL-REALLY

Not that I know anyone who does that. (It was me. I did that.)

Source Files Matter More Than You Think

One of my biggest takeaways from this experience is that authors should understand what they’re buying when they commission a cover. A JPG, TIFF, PNG, or print-ready PDF can be exactly what you need to publish a book. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s what you’ll need to edit the cover later.

The editable source file contains the individual pieces of the design—the text, artwork, effects, and other elements—in a form that can potentially be changed without reconstructing the entire thing. That doesn’t mean every designer automatically owes you their source files. The deliverables and rights depend on what you’ve actually purchased and agreed upon.

It means you should ask. Before you need them.

Because 5:00 A.M. Tracie would like to have a word with Past Tracie about this.

If Your Cover Designer Has Already Disappeared

Maybe you’re reading this because it’s too late for the wonderfully sensible advice above. Your designer is already gone. Welcome. Pull up a chair.

First, do not immediately start hacking apart your only copy of the cover.

Make duplicates. Lots of duplicates. Put the untouched original somewhere safe and work only on copies. Then figure out exactly what needs changing.

If you’re dealing with KDP, download the current cover template for your exact trim size, paper type, and page count. Your paperback cover has to account for the front, back, spine, and required bleed, and the spine width depends on the book’s specifications.

Put that template over your existing cover if your graphics program allows it. That will show you whether you’re dealing with a tiny fix or a cover that really needs to be rebuilt. If it’s a tiny fix and you’re comfortable with image-editing software, you may be able to repair it yourself.

If it isn’t?

There is absolutely no shame in taking the existing cover to another designer and saying:

Help.

In fact, depending on the complexity of the artwork, that may be considerably less expensive than the amount of your life you will sacrifice trying to reconstruct a moon at five in the morning.

And Please Check the Previewer

This deserves its own section. Do not assume that because your PDF looks gorgeous on your computer, it’s ready to print. Upload it. Open the previewer. Look at the front. (Cry happy tears when the Y is within the margins.) Look at the back. Look at the spine. Look at the margins. Look at the barcode area.

Zoom in.

Then look again.

KDP’s cover requirements exist because printing and trimming physical books involve some production variation. Background artwork intended to reach the edge needs to extend into the bleed, while important text and design elements need to remain safely inside the appropriate areas. The previewer is your friend. An occasionally judgmental friend who might develop a personal vendetta against one letter of your title, but still your friend.

The Lesson of the Freaking Y

I wish I could tell you exactly how I fixed my cover. I cannot. Honestly I don’t have a clue.

I can tell you that at approximately five o’clock in the morning, I cut a Y out of my book cover, cloned part of the moon back into existence, saved something as a TIFF for reasons I only partially understood, converted it back into a PDF, uploaded it to KDP, and stared at the previewer. The Y was inside the margin. The cover passed my inspection. And somewhere, deep inside the Fiverr Void, perhaps my original designer felt a disturbance in the Force.

The real lesson isn’t that you should learn how to perform emergency surgery on typography. It’s that self-publishing means you’re not just the writer. Sometimes you’re the editor. Sometimes you’re the publisher. Sometimes you’re the marketer. Sometimes you’re the project manager. And apparently, sometimes you’re the emergency graphic designer responsible for reconstructing celestial bodies before breakfast.

So get the files. Back up the files. Ask about source files. Save your templates. And never underestimate one badly positioned letter.

Especially a Freaking Y.