Terms & Policies

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About the Designer

I'm Mariah Sinclair, the designer and owner of Mariah Sinclair Design. I've designed nearly 2,000 book covers since 2016, specializing in cozy mystery, paranormal cozy mystery, and cozy fantasy. My covers appear regularly on the Top 100 Cozy Mystery bestseller charts on Amazon. I work with both debut authors and long-running series authors, and I'm based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

What's Included

Every custom cover includes:

• A cover sized for Amazon, which works across all other retailers

• A scaled-down version for social media and your website

• All stock images and font licensing, with no separate fees passed on to you

• Three rounds of revisions before final delivery

• Original design work built for your specific book and series

Paperback wraps, hardback dust jackets, audiobook covers, and 3D box set images are available as add-ons. Pricing for those is listed above.

Revisions

Three revision rounds are included in the price of every custom cover. That's almost always plenty. Most covers land in one or two.

If a project needs revisions beyond the third round, additional changes are discussed with the author beforehand and billed based on an hourly rate of $60/hour.

Booking and Deposits

New projects require a $100 booking deposit to hold your spot on the schedule. The deposit is applied to your total.

Deposits are non-refundable, since holding a slot means turning other projects away. 

Delivery

Final files are delivered by email once the balance is paid in full.

Add-on items like paperback wraps, dust jackets, and box set images are completed on Thursdays. Requests need to be in by Wednesday to make that week's batch.

Source Files

I don't provide layered source files. A working PSD contains licensed stock, licensed fonts, and the actual construction of the design, none of which transfers with the cover license.

If you need a version for ads or promotional graphics, ask and I'll send a flattened file with the text areas accessible. That covers almost every use authors actually have.

Copyright and Licensing

I, Mariah Sinclair, owner of Mariah Sinclair Design, retain the copyright to all custom cover designs and all premade covers, sold or unsold. In keeping with stock and font licensing terms, I license each design to a single client for use on their book.

Because each design is licensed to one client only:

• Covers may not be resold, transferred, or relicensed without my written permission.

• Concepts and mockups presented during the design process, including ones you didn't choose, remain my work. They can't be handed to another designer to build from. I keep the right to revise unused concepts and offer them for sale later.

• Designs may not be used to create NFTs or any similar derivative product.

• Covers may not be submitted to an AI generator to produce additional covers. That includes continuing a series in the same style, rebuilding a design, or using the cover as a reference image to prompt or train anything that outputs another cover.

To clarify the last bullet point:

Use your cover however you want to sell your book. Teasers, ads, video trailers, reels, social graphics, 3D mockups,  trailers, newsletter headers. Use AI tools to help you make any of that if they're useful to you. None of that is a problem.

What the license doesn't cover is producing new book covers out of my work. The design, the branding, and the series look are licensed to you for the book they were made for. If you need another cover in the series, come back to me and I'll make it match.

Premade Covers

Premades are sold as-is. Text is customized to your book at no extra cost, and I'll set your title, author name, and series name for you. Design changes beyond text aren't included at the premade price.

Once a premade sells, it comes down. Nobody else gets that cover.

Premade designs are copyrighted the same way custom work is, and the same restrictions apply. Taking a premade to another designer, or to an AI generator, to extend the concept and branding across a series isn't something the license allows.

If you buy a premade and the series takes off, that's the good outcome. Message me and we'll build the rest of the series properly.

Portfolio Use

Custom covers appear in my public portfolio one year after a project is completed, whether or not the book has published by then. If you have a release timing reason to delay that, tell me and we'll work it out.

Cover Credit

If you'd like to credit the cover in your book, and I'd love it if you did, the line is:

Cover Design by Mariah Sinclair | www.mariahsinclairdesign.com

The copyright page is the usual home for it. Including the web address matters more than it looks like it does, since a name on its own is harder for readers to chase down later.

Contact

Questions about any of this, or about a project that doesn't fit neatly into the options above, reach out to me via my contact page.