As Acorn & Ink Publishing continues to grow, we’re looking for a talented freelance Graphic Designer specialising in commercial fiction book covers to join our extended creative team.

We’re looking for someone we can build an ongoing relationship with and work alongside across multiple books, authors and genres.

What We’re Looking For

We are specifically looking for a graphic designer rather than an illustrator or artist.

Our ideal designer understands the commercial fiction market and knows how to take a book brief and transform it into a professional, eye-catching cover that immediately communicates its genre, tone and intended readership.

We’re particularly interested in designers with experience in:

Commercial fiction book cover design
Strong and creative typography
Licensed stock image sourcing
Photo manipulation and compositing
Retouching and image editing
Understanding genre conventions and current cover trends
Designing covers that work at full size and as online thumbnails
Preparing professional print and eBook cover files

Acorn & Ink publishes across a variety of fiction genres, so versatility is important. We’d love to see portfolios demonstrating work across several different areas of commercial fiction.

Our No-AI Policy

This is particularly important to us.

Acorn & Ink Publishing does not use AI-generated artwork or imagery on our book covers.

Designers working with us must use appropriately licensed stock imagery/assets and traditional graphic design techniques.

Please do not submit AI-generated covers, AI-generated imagery or AI-generated portfolio pieces as examples of your work.

Freelance Rate

As a small independent publisher, we work within a set budget for our cover design.

Our current budget is £70–£100 per completed cover, depending on the individual project.

We completely understand that this rate won’t suit every designer and respect the different rates creatives charge for their work. We ask that you only apply if you’re comfortable working within our budget.

While this is a freelance, project-based opportunity, our hope is to find designers we can return to regularly as our publishing list grows.

Interested in Working With Acorn & Ink?

We’d love to see your work.

Please complete our Graphic Designer Application Form, where you can tell us more about your experience and submit examples of your commercial fiction cover designs.

When submitting your portfolio, please include a variety of fiction genres wherever possible.

Applications are open via the link – https://forms.gle/F3GyeT66EYGGvifx6

We can’t wait to discover some brilliant designers and hopefully find creatives who will help us shape the future of the Acorn & Ink bookshelf.

Acorn & Ink Publishing 🌰

Authors / Publishers

Offering successful book tours, bookstagram tours, cover reveals and blitzes. I would love to work on the promotion of your book. For new and previously released titles. All genres are welcome. Use my contact form to drop us an email or download our info kit here.

https://kellylacey.com/love-books-tours/.

If you have any questions, please email lovebookstours@gmail.com and we will be very happy to talk you through our services and answer your questions.

Please note our first reply sometimes hides in the spam folder. So please check there if you don’t get anything in your inbox. As we reply to each query.

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