Last reviewed by Robert Prime — September 2026
Quick Answer: Cheap marketplace covers genuinely work at the upper end — roughly $90–$130 — and that is the tier to compare against an entry-level commission, not the $5 gigs. AI-generated covers are permitted by Amazon but you must declare them at publication, and Amazon counts content as AI-generated even if you edited it heavily afterwards. Under UK law you do not own AI output the way you own something you made, and the tools’ own terms say so.
Below: the real price spread, exactly what Amazon requires, and the UK copyright position.
Table of Contents
- What cheap actually costs
- Amazon’s AI rule, in its own words
- Who owns an AI-generated cover?
- What the AI tools’ terms actually say
- Where cheap genuinely wins
- The industry context
- What we could not verify
- Frequently asked questions
What cheap actually costs
Fiverr and Upwork both block automated access behind bot protection, so we could not open individual gig pages. What we could establish, from live gig page titles, is the advertised price spread on Fiverr: $5, $10, $15, $20, $25, $90 and $130 across seven named sellers.
What those prices include — revision counts, delivery time, whether you get the print wrap, the source file, or commercial rights — we could not read, and we are not going to summarise it plausibly. Assume nothing; ask before you buy.
Upwork’s own published range for a book cover is $20–$200 flat, which overlaps Fiverr almost exactly. The common belief that Upwork is the more professional of the two is not supported by Upwork’s own pricing.
For context on the other end: GetCovers charges $10 / $20 / $35, and Reedsy’s marketplace average across 9,600+ projects is $880, typically $625–$1,250.
Amazon’s AI rule, in its own words
This is the part most authors get wrong, and it is a two-minute fix if you know about it.
Amazon requires you to declare AI-generated content when you publish. Covers are included. The rule that catches people is Amazon’s definition: content counts as AI-generated
“even if you applied substantial edits afterwards”
So taking a Midjourney image into Photoshop and reworking it does not make it AI-assisted rather than AI-generated in Amazon’s eyes. If the image originated from a generative tool, it is AI-generated content.
Two things follow:
It is allowed. Amazon does not prohibit AI-generated covers. This is a disclosure requirement, not a ban.
The disclosure is private. It goes to Amazon during publishing. Readers do not see a label on your product page.
The risk is not using AI. The risk is answering the question wrongly on a form, which is an accuracy problem with your publisher.
Who owns an AI-generated cover?
Here the UK position is genuinely distinct, and worth understanding before you rely on an AI cover commercially.
UK law has a specific category for this. Section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 says that for a computer-generated work with no human author, the author is taken to be “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken”. Such works get a shorter term than human-authored ones.
That is more than most jurisdictions offer — in the United States, the Copyright Office’s position that purely AI-generated images are not copyrightable has held, with the Supreme Court declining to take up a challenge in March 2026.
But “there is a category” is not the same as “you own it outright”. Three practical consequences:
- Your protection may be thinner than you think, and it varies by country — which matters the moment you sell foreign rights.
- You cannot easily stop a lookalike. If another author generates a similar image from a similar prompt, your position is weak.
- A designer cannot warrant what they do not own. If you commission someone who quietly uses AI, the warranty in your contract may be worth less than it looks. This is one reason to have a proper cover design contract.
What the AI tools’ terms actually say
Read at source, September 2026. These differ more than people assume.
OpenAI (European Terms, updated 16 January 2026 — the version that binds a UK user) assigns you its rights in output “if any”. That two-word qualifier is doing a lot of work: OpenAI is not warranting that there are rights to assign. The same terms warn:
“Output may not be unique and other users may receive similar output.”
Midjourney is more generous on ownership: you own your output, and you keep it even if you cancel your subscription. Note the commercial threshold — a business with over $1m a year in revenue needs a Pro or Mega plan.
Canva has its own AI Product Terms, effective 26 June 2026, separate from its general terms. If you are generating cover art inside Canva, that is the document that governs it.
The practical summary: Midjourney gives you the cleanest ownership story, OpenAI gives you the most heavily qualified one, and none of them can give you what a stock library gives you, which is an indemnity.
Where cheap genuinely wins
It would be dishonest to write this page as an argument for always paying more. Cheap works in specific, identifiable situations.
The fair comparison is $90–$130 against $470–$625. Not $5 against $880. At the upper marketplace tier you are buying a real designer’s time, just with less of it and less back-and-forth. For a straightforward genre cover with a clear brief, that can be entirely sufficient.
Cheap is right when:
- Your genre has strong, simple conventions and you can point at three covers you want to resemble.
- The manuscript is finished, so the wrap will not need rebuilding.
- The book is a test — a first title in a new pen name, a novella, a lead magnet.
- You are commercially small enough that the licensing edge cases genuinely will not reach you.
Cheap is wrong when:
- You need a series you can extend in two years.
- You need the source file, which the cheapest tiers usually exclude.
- You are selling foreign rights, optioning, or doing anything where someone will ask you to warrant what you own.
- Your genre is thin on convention — literary, non-fiction, children’s.
The industry context
Worth knowing, because it shapes how this is received.
The Society of Authors found 26% of illustrators already losing work to AI. That is a real economic effect on a real group of people, and it is a factor some authors weigh and others do not. We are not going to tell you how to weigh it.
What we will say is that reader sentiment on AI covers is genuinely unclear. We found two surveys pointing in opposite directions — one claiming a large majority would not buy a book with an AI cover, another claiming most readers prefer them in a blind click test. The second was published by a cover design company. Neither is strong enough to build a decision on, and any article quoting one as settled is overreaching.
For what it is worth, we checked BookBub’s own submission requirements and they do not mention AI anywhere.
What we could not verify
- What any Fiverr or Upwork tier includes. Both sites blocked automated access (Fiverr returned a PerimeterX interstitial; Upwork a Cloudflare challenge). Prices above come from gig titles in search results. Package contents are unknown.
- Whether a stock licence in a designer’s name covers the author’s use. Shutterstock and Adobe Stock both blocked their help pages to us. This is the licensing question that actually matters for indie authors — more than the print-run caps that get quoted — and we did not read it at source, so we are not stating it.
- A widely repeated story about an AI cover being disqualified from a self-published fantasy award. We found it only in an opinion post with no name, date or source. We are not repeating it.
Frequently asked questions
Will Amazon reject my book for an AI-generated cover?
No. AI-generated covers are permitted. You must declare them during publishing, and Amazon’s definition includes work you edited substantially afterwards.
Do readers see that my cover was made with AI?
No. The declaration goes to Amazon, not onto your product page.
Can I copyright an AI-generated cover in the UK?
The UK recognises computer-generated works under s.9(3) CDPA 1988, with the author deemed to be whoever made the arrangements for its creation, and a shorter term than human-authored work. That is a weaker and more uncertain position than owning something you drew, and it differs by country. See our guide on copyright in AI-written work.
Is a $5 Fiverr cover ever a good idea?
For a lead magnet or an internal test, possibly. For a book you intend to sell for years, the problem is not the look — it is that you will not get the source file, so you cannot fix it when your page count changes.
Should I tell my designer not to use AI?
If it matters to you, put it in the contract as a warranty. Do not assume. Many designers use AI for elements like backgrounds and textures without saying so, and a warranty is the only thing that gives you a route back if it becomes a problem.
What is the cheapest route that still gives me the source file?
GetCovers includes the layered file at its $35 tier. That is the lowest published price we found where you can still edit the cover later.
Final thoughts
There is no version of this where cheap is always wrong. There is a version where cheap is wrong for your book, and it usually comes down to two questions: will you need to change this file, and will anyone ever ask you to warrant that you own it?
If the answer to both is no, the $90–$130 tier is a perfectly rational buy and you should not feel talked out of it.
If the answer to either is yes, you want source files and a written assignment — which is what our £129–£399 tiers include, and why they cost what they do.
Read next
This is one of four guides on getting a cover made. The others cover what a cover actually costs, tier by tier with real published prices; premade against bespoke, and the spine arithmetic that breaks a premade wrap; and how to brief a designer, and the KDP specs that get files rejected. If you only need the number, you can work out your spine width from your page count in a few seconds.
— Robert publishing.co.uk
Who wrote this. I am Robert Prime. I run publishing.co.uk, a UK formatting and self-publishing service, which means I spend my week inside KDP's actual upload screens and rejection emails rather than reading about them. I was a guest on the Alliance of Independent Authors' Self-Publishing Advice podcast in July 2026, talking about how AI engines find books. Every price and specification on this page carries the date I read it from the source, and where I could not verify something I have said so on the page rather than filled the gap. If you find something wrong here, tell me and I will correct it and say that I have.
