Collect the final cover assets
Confirm final cover approval and credit
Make sure the cover is final and approved before it goes on advance copies and into metadata, and that the designer, illustrator, and photographer are credited correctly.
Authors often hire help with this: design or production.
Why it matters
An advance copy with a placeholder cover, or a retail page showing an old cover months after the final one was approved, undermines the book before anyone reads it. A missing designer credit is unfair and sometimes a contract breach. Confirming both before the advance files exist prevents both problems.
Your part
- What you do
- Verify. Someone else may do it. Inspect the result yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Publisher and Author. Publisher owns the cover; author consults or approves per contract and records credits
- When
- Before the advance copy files are produced, usually five to seven months before publication (Collect the final cover assets: twelve to six months before publication, as soon as the cover is approved)
Your part changes with your publishing route.
How to do it
The full walkthrough
The cover is the most-copied image of the book. Once it is attached to advance reading copies, sent in the metadata feed, and posted on retail preorder pages, changing it means chasing every copy. So the cover needs to be final, approved by whoever has approval rights, and correctly credited before any of that happens. Credit means the cover designer, any illustrator or photographer whose work appears, and any stock image licensing that requires attribution.
Find out who actually holds approval rights, because the contract decides and it is not always you. A trade publisher usually owns the cover and gives you consultation rather than approval; a hybrid contract often gives you approval; as your own publisher you approve it. Whichever it is, use the right you have before the advance files exist, not after. Then confirm in writing that the final file is the version going onto advance copies and into the metadata feed, and get the credit lines for the designer, illustrator, or photographer, along with the license terms for every image and font.
Record the approval date, the credit lines, and the license details in the Book Identity Sheet.
Common mistakes
- Sending advance copies with a cover marked "not final" and then never updating retailers with the final one.
- Omitting the illustrator or photographer from the credits when only the designer was on the contract.
- Using a stock image licensed for print on marketing materials it does not cover.
- Raising cover concerns after the advance files are done, when changes are expensive.
What done looks like
- Written confirmation that the cover is final and is the version used on advance copies and in the metadata feed.
- Credit lines for the designer, illustrator, and photographer recorded exactly as they should appear.
- Image and font licenses confirmed for the intended uses (print, ebook, marketing).
- The approval date and the final file identifiers recorded in the Book Identity Sheet.
Ask your publisher
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Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- Not checked against its source yet.
- How confident we are
- Verified