Alexander von Ness is a book cover designer with over 20 years of professional experience in graphic design, including over a decade as Art Director in a branding agency. In the past few years his main area of focus is book cover design. His website Nessgraphica is among the top trusted sites for book cover design services overall. Here we interviewed him about his company Bookcoverpedia.

1) What exactly is Bookcoverpedia?

Bookcoverpedia is a platform offering the best author experience to help authors discover and order premade book cover designs for their ebooks and print books.

2) What problem does it solve?

For many people facing the publishing challenge for the first time, budgeting for book cover design isn’t something they consider until days before they click the publish button. Then these authors might go on the Internet and get recommendations for book cover designs at rates they can’t quite believe or afford.

Bookcoverpedia gives indie authors a quick, affordable way to get beautifully designed professional book covers. And because we offer a 100% money back guarantee, customers have nothing to lose.

3) Who is your target market?

We serve anyone in need of a great book cover. We’re expecting our service to be of most interest to indie authors, small and mid-level publishers, and other book business professionals looking for covers for their clients.

Being an indie author is especially scary. There’s so much to take care of that would ordinarily have been taken care of by a traditional publisher, like editing, refining the writer’s vision, and marketing. A book cover is the single biggest piece of marketing an indie can directly control, and with 300,000 books published each year in the U.S. alone, that’s a lot of competition to market against.

What we want to do is help those indies, and other publishers, get the best cover for their book to give them the best chance of standing out in a crowded marketplace.

4) What is the difference between Bookcoverpedia and your competitors?

Ever spent time browsing through book cover sites, like something and come back to it later to realise you’ve forgotten it? Or worse yet, it’s no longer for sale because someone else beat you to it?

On Bookcoverpedia you won’t have this problem! Create a free account and you get access to what makes our site so special.

Search our site using keywords, or browse with covers arranged into simple genre categories, and when you see something you like, click its star to add to your wishlist. Now, as well as the option to buy immediately we’ll suggest other related covers you might like based on genre and keywords. A great way to find covers you might have missed.

But, what about other people reserving covers? How do you know if someone else has reserved a cover you’ve added to your wishlist? Bookcoverpedia has a notifications system! Whenever somebody reserves a cover you’ve added to your wishlist, you’ll receive a notification via the site. If somebody else’s reservation expires, making your cover available again, you’ll receive a notification. And perhaps most excitingly, as soon as your ordered cover is ready, you’ll get a notification as well.

5) What results do you hope to see over the next few years?

We want our customers to see us as their first port of call when they need a book cover. For those on a tight budget, we’re going to present to them the best selection of premades, and for those looking for a book cover designer to create something totally bespoke, we want to help them connect with the right designer for them.

Great book cover design is the single best piece of marketing available to authors. We want them to have the best.

6) How do you see Bookcoverpedia developing in the long term?

We’re at the beginning of our journey but we’re excited by our plans.

As our customer base expands, we’re going to need to cater for more disparate tastes. As such, collaboration with more book cover designers will offer our customers a greater range of styles. When this is in place, customers will be able to search for covers from their favourite book cover designer.

Bookcoverpedia is a huge project and I see us leading the way in delivering premade book cover designs.