Custom Book Cover Design
An original cover built from the genre research, the reader expectations and the story itself, delivered in the sizes your retailers require.
Chapter 01Introduction
This site is organised in seven chapters. Each one answers a different question: who Katty is, how books are marketed, how they are designed, how the work runs, what it produces and how to begin.
Begin ReadingBook Marketing and Design Specialist
I help authors whose books deserve bigger audiences actually reach them. Research-driven, data-backed marketing strategy built for your specific book, your specific genre, and your specific readers.
“I make good books findable.”

150+
Genres Researched
Chapter 02Approach and Philosophy
Before the tactics, the reasoning. This chapter covers the reality most authors face, who Katty is, the principles that guide the work and the kind of author this partnership serves well.
Excellent books go unread every week while weaker books in the same category collect readers, reviews and rank. Not because the market rewards worse writing, but because the weaker book was easier to find. Low Amazon rankings, thin review counts, launch momentum that evaporated, a genre that shifted underneath the title, pricing that signals the wrong tier, positioning that never quite named the shelf, these are the reasons good books stay invisible, and every one of them is fixable.
Launch week ended, the sales velocity dropped, and Amazon quietly stopped showing your book to new readers. Ranking decay is not a verdict on your writing, it is a feedback loop. Without fresh signals from categories, keywords, reviews and pricing, the store has nothing new to test your book against.
Genres move. Tropes that were niche become the headline of every cover; price expectations shift; the subcategory readers actually browse gets renamed. A book positioned perfectly for its release year can be quietly mispositioned two years later without a single word changing.
Strong ratings and warm reviews with thin sales is the clearest signal in book marketing: the product works, the discovery path does not. The work is not persuasion, it is putting the book in front of the readers who were always going to enjoy it.

Book Marketing Specialist
I work with authors whose writing quality has outpaced their commercial visibility, the ones with warm reviews, loyal early readers and a book that simply is not reaching the audience it was written for. My work begins with research, not with a pitch.
Before I recommend anything, I study the book the way a reader, a competitor and the store's algorithm each see it. That means examining:
Marketing cannot repair a book that is not ready, and no honest marketer can guarantee a bestseller list. What good marketing can do is make sure a good book is positioned correctly, priced correctly, categorized correctly and presented to the readers most likely to love it, consistently, and long after launch week.
“I do not offer the same strategy to every author. I do the work of understanding your specific situation before recommending what you should do next.”
No recommendation leaves my desk before I have read the listing, the sample, the reviews and the competitive set. Opinions are cheap; evidence is what changes outcomes.
I identify what is actually holding your book back before anyone talks about scope. If the fix is a category change you can make yourself in ten minutes, I will tell you that.
Read-through, sell-through, category rank, keyword coverage, review velocity. Precise words describe precise problems. Buzzwords describe nothing.
A hockey romance and a WWII literary novel do not share a playbook. Every strategy is written for one book, one genre and one audience.
Marketing cannot rewrite a weak manuscript or promise a bestseller list. Where the ceiling is real, I will name it rather than sell around it.
One or two titles, a modest list, and limited budget. The priority is fixing what is free to fix first, categories, keywords, blurb, price, formats, before a single advertising pound is spent.
A working backlist and real readers, but growth that has flattened. The priority is read-through, backlist activation and turning scattered attention into a repeatable discovery path.
A publisher handles some of the machinery, but rarely the long tail. The priority is the author-controlled layer: platform, community, comparable-author positioning and backlist visibility between releases.
Chapter 03Visibility, Positioning and Reader Discovery
Marketing here means research before recommendations: how your book is positioned, where it sits in the catalogue, how it is priced and which readers are already looking for it.
Find the Right ServiceNo discovery-call maze, no proposal deck before anyone has looked at the book. The first thing that happens is research.
One link, plus anything you want me to know about your goals. Nothing to install, no long intake form.
Rankings, categories, keywords, price bands, formats, review language and the competitive shelf your book sits on.
A plain-language summary of the visibility problems I identified, with the evidence behind each one.
If the findings do not match your experience of the book, say so. If they do, we talk about what to do about them.
A sequenced plan you can execute, with priorities, trade-offs and measurement built in from the start.
150+
Book Genres and Subgenres Researched
120+
Authors and Publishing Projects Supported
4+
Years Digital Marketing Experience
100%
Custom-Built Strategies
24 Hours
Personal Initial Response
0
Generic or Recycled Templates
20+
Growth Opportunities Assessed Per Book
360°
Book Marketing and Design Support
Service Finder
Choose the option closest to your situation to see where Katty would begin. The full service list follows below.
“I do not sell generic packages. I sell clarity.” Every engagement below starts from the same place: research into your book, then a recommendation you can act on. Scope and pricing are quoted per book, after the assessment.
Best fit
Authors with a published book that is underperforming its reviews.
A full diagnostic of how your book is currently found, or not found. I map rank history, category placement, keyword coverage, price position, format gaps and the language readers use about the book in reviews.
Deliverables
You stop guessing which lever to pull and start with the one that is actually stuck.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors 8 to 16 weeks out from publication.
A sequenced launch plan built around your genre's real discovery pathways: pre-order behaviour, category selection, keyword sets, review generation, pricing at release and the first thirty days of momentum.
Deliverables
Launch signals arrive together instead of scattering, giving the store something to amplify.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors whose release did not land the way it should have.
A post-mortem plus a restart. We identify what failed, timing, positioning, category, price, absent formats, and design a credible relaunch rather than pretending the first launch did not happen.
Deliverables
A second, better-informed run at the readers you missed the first time.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors with older titles that still deserve readers.
Older books are often the cheapest growth available to an author. I refresh categories, keywords, blurbs and pricing against the genre as it exists now, not as it existed at publication.
Deliverables
Titles already written begin earning attention again.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors with two or more books in a series.
I trace where readers stop. Book one pricing, end-matter, series branding, ordering clarity and blurb continuity all decide whether a reader continues or quietly leaves after the first title.
Deliverables
More of the readers you already paid to acquire continue to the next book.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors whose listing is doing less work than it could.
Categories, keywords, A+ content direction, blurb structure, series pages and format setup, the mechanical layer of discoverability that quietly determines who ever sees the book.
Deliverables
The store can finally place your book where its readers already browse.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors who know their book is good but cannot describe its shelf.
I identify the authors your readers already buy, then map how those audiences discover new titles, so your positioning borrows an existing reading habit instead of inventing one.
Deliverables
Your book becomes easy to recommend in one sentence.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors building a career, not just promoting one title.
A realistic platform plan: the newsletter, the one or two social surfaces worth your time, and the content cadence that fits how you actually work.
Deliverables
Each new release starts from an audience instead of from zero.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors whose book sits between genres or interests.
Some books belong to more than one community, a history readership and a literary one, a sports audience and a romance one. I map those overlaps and the etiquette of each community.
Deliverables
Two smaller audiences combine into one durable readership.
Request a Custom AssessmentBest fit
Authors unsure what to charge or which formats to publish.
Price is positioning. I analyse comparable titles by format, length and genre expectation, and identify which missing format is costing you readers.
Deliverables
Your pricing signals the right quality tier and stops leaving readers unserved.
Request a Custom AssessmentReader behaviour, discovery channels and pricing expectations are genre-specific. A strategy that ignores that is a template with your book’s name on it.
Chapter 04Covers, Interiors and Publishing Presentation
Design carries the same research as the marketing work. Covers, interiors and series systems are built so a browsing reader recognises the genre, trusts the production and opens the book.
See Design ServicesA reader judges your book before reading a single sentence. The cover sets the genre promise, the interior sets the reading experience and both decide whether a browsing reader trusts the book enough to open it. Design here is treated as part of the marketing strategy, not as decoration applied afterwards.
Every design engagement begins with the same research that drives the marketing work: the genre, the comparable titles and the reader who has to choose your book over the one next to it.
An original cover built from the genre research, the reader expectations and the story itself, delivered in the sizes your retailers require.
Front cover, spine and back cover set to your exact trim size and page count, with barcode placement and print ready bleed.
A rebuild of an existing cover that is not converting, informed by category browsing behaviour and thumbnail legibility.
Typeset pages with considered margins, running heads, chapter openers and typography chosen for comfortable long form reading.
Reflowable files that behave correctly across Kindle, Apple Books and Kobo, with a working table of contents and clean metadata.
Cover, print interior and eBook prepared together so every element of the book speaks with one voice.
A visual system that keeps a series recognisable on a shelf and on a search results page while letting each title stand on its own.
Retailer banners, quote cards and promotional images drawn from the cover system so your campaign looks like one book, not five.
Consistent typography, colour and layout for your author page, newsletter and social profiles.
Chapter 05Research to Completion
A clear sequence from first assessment through research, strategy and delivery, so you always know what stage your book is in and what happens next.
Step 01
I read the listing, the sample, the reviews and the competitive shelf. I record rank behaviour, category placement, keyword coverage, price bands by format, and the exact language readers use when they recommend the book.
Deliverable: Research file with sourced observations
Step 02
Everything found gets reduced to the few problems that actually gate visibility for this book. Typically three. Anything below the line is noted but not prioritised.
Deliverable: Ranked problem statement with evidence
Step 03
Each problem gets a specific, sequenced response, metadata changes, pricing moves, format additions, community entry points, launch or relaunch timing, with the trade-offs written down.
Deliverable: Strategy document with priority order
Step 04
You can execute it yourself with the document, or I stay alongside you: reviewing copy, checking category selections, sanity-checking ad targeting and pacing the rollout.
Deliverable: Implementation checklist and review passes
Step 05
We agree in advance what would count as movement, then look at it honestly. What worked gets extended. What did not gets replaced rather than defended.
Deliverable: Measurement plan and adjustment notes
Chapter 06Results, Portfolio, Resources
Client results, design work shown before and after, free resources for authors doing this themselves and detailed answers to the questions authors ask most often.
The samples below are client results that show the shape of the work, the questions I ask, the evidence I gather and the direction it points to for real authors and real books.
Client Result
Regional award winner, strong ratings, ebook-only listing.
Problems identified
Strategic direction
Serve the format the audience actually buys, then let the award do positioning work.
Recommended actions
Client Result.
Client Result
Unusual perspective on a crowded era, buried under generic packaging.
Problems identified
Strategic direction
Position on the differentiator, not the era.
Recommended actions
Client Result.
Client Result
Sports romance released ahead of the trope's peak popularity.
Problems identified
Strategic direction
Re-enter the conversation the genre is currently having.
Recommended actions
Client Result.
Client Result
Picture book categorised into a middle-grade age band.
Problems identified
Strategic direction
Fix placement first; it costs nothing and gates everything.
Recommended actions
Client Result.
Client Result
Experienced practitioner, credible book, near-zero search presence.
Problems identified
Strategic direction
Make the existing authority legible to the store and the reader.
Recommended actions
Client Result.
Selected design work described by the problem it solved. Each entry shows what the book looked like before and the decision that changed it.
Fiction
Cover system for a debut whose original design read as general fiction.
Non Fiction
Positioning driven redesign for an author speaking to founders.
Series
Series branding across three titles plus a boxed set.
Interiors
Print interior with chapter openers and period appropriate typography.
Non Fiction
Refresh of a backlist title being relaunched.
Fiction
Cover and eBook package for a self published author.
Practical material drawn from the same research process I use with authors. Nothing gated behind a sales call.
The diagnostic I run first: what your rating-to-review ratio, rank behaviour, category depth, price band and format coverage tell you about whether readers cannot find the book or did not enjoy it.
Available on request
Every category, keyword, blurb and format decision worth settling before your release date, in the order they need to be made.
Coming Soon
How to extract positioning language, comparable authors and blurb copy from the words readers already wrote about your book.
Coming Soon
The five points in a series where readers stop continuing, and what each one usually indicates about pricing, end-matter or series branding.
Coming Soon
Every book is different. Tell Katty about your project and receive guidance based on your genre, publishing plans, and design requirements.
Ask Katty About Your BookChapter 07Contact and Project Inquiry
Share the book, the genre and the challenge you are facing. You will receive a considered reply within 48 hours, with an honest view of whether this is the right next step.
The Full Picture
Marketing decides who finds your book. Design decides whether they trust it. Most books struggle because those two decisions were made separately, by people who never spoke to each other. Here they are made together.
You can put a well researched book in front of exactly the right reader, and lose them in the second it takes to look at the cover.
Explore MarketingYou can commission a beautiful cover that signals the wrong genre, sits in the wrong category and never reaches the reader who would have loved the book.
Explore DesignThe first step is simple: send me your book’s Amazon link. I will run an initial assessment and reply with what I actually see, the rankings, the positioning, the pricing, and the visibility problems worth solving first.