Melody Simmons Design

Melody Simmons is the working name of Charlotte Mills, a solo designer in Pretoria, South Africa, who has designed book covers full-time since 2011 — first as eBookindiecovers, then Bookcoverscre8tive, now BookCoversbyMelody. (Only the current domain is live; the older ones still rank in search but no longer serve.) Her covers appear regularly in romance, cozy mystery, historical romance, urban fantasy and thriller bestseller lists. Prices are in USD and are published in full.

What You Get#

• Custom covers priced by genre, not by budget: three tiers, ebook only — Monet $250 (contemporary romance, women's fiction, thriller/mystery/horror), Renoir $300 (cozy mystery, cozy fantasy, historical romance, vector-illustrated romance), Picasso $320 (scifi romance, paranormal romance, fantasy/urban fantasy, romantasy). Monet buys up to two model images and basic manipulation; Renoir and Picasso add overpainting. You cannot buy the cheap tier for an expensive genre.
• Packages that add the print wrap: the tier's ebook cover plus one print cover (KDP or IngramSpark), a Facebook banner, a 3D book-and-tablet image and a transparent title PNG — $310 / $360 / $380.
• Series continuation: $20 off any tier or package, every time.
• A premade shop of roughly 550 covers across 18 genre categories — singles $105–$120, three-cover series sets $280–$450, chapter-header designs $60. Nothing is ever sold twice.
• An à la carte extras menu: KDP or IngramSpark print cover $75, hardcover adaptation $50, audiobook cover $45, A+ Amazon content banner $65, Facebook banner $45, bookmark $65, 3D boxed set $75–$105, translations $25 (ebook) / $50 (paperback).

Who It's For#

• Historical romance and cozy mystery authors first. The premade catalogue is deepest in historical romance (110 covers) and cozy (78), then thriller/mystery (68) — not general romance, despite the branding.
• Series and rapid-release authors: the $20 continuation discount applies indefinitely, and she plans model and stock availability across a whole series if you tell her about it on the order form.
• Authors who want to know the price before they email. Rare for a solo designer at this tier, and the reason she reads as a straightforward alternative to Mariah Sinclair when Sinclair's cozy queue is full.
• Budget-first buyers: a $105 premade single is a real, finished, exclusive cover — the cheapest genuine entry point she offers.

Strengths#

• A published, complete price list. Three custom tiers, three packages and a fourteen-row extras ladder, all dated 2026, plus a shop where every premade carries a price tag. Most named freelancers publish none of this.
• Four revision rounds, stated up front, on every tier — more than the three that comparable designers offer — with post-delivery terms published too: covers are kept at least six months, title or author-name changes cost $25 and image or colour changes $50.
• Fast and specific about it: an average of one week, a stated band of three days to two weeks, a two-week contractual ceiling, premades processed within 24 hours, and expedited work "within a couple of hours" in emergencies. Testimonials return to speed repeatedly.
• Fifteen years and genuine subgenre range: contemporary, paranormal, historical, sci-fi and dark romance, romantasy, cozy fantasy, historical western, romantic suspense, symbol/typography — useful if you write across romance-adjacent lines and want one designer for all of it.

Limitations#

• She will not work with images you supply. Copyright concerns; she uses only stock she has licensed herself. If you have commissioned art, a photoshoot or a character illustration you want on the cover, she is the wrong designer.
• No PSD or source files, ever — the stock licences forbid selling open templates. Copyright in the design stays with her; you get a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence granted on final payment, with no right to resell or modify.
• Her AI policy is honest rather than reassuring. She posts one (FAQ Q12) and it explicitly declines to promise AI-free: her illustrated work is hand-drawn, but she notes that most new stock imagery is now AI-generated whether labelled or not, and that "it is no longer feasible to completely exclude AI-generated stock." If you need a hard no-AI guarantee, Wolfsparrow, Rebecca Frank or Creative Paramita state one and she does not.
• A 50% non-refundable deposit books the slot, invoiced through PayPal (Payoneer on request), and final files arrive only after final payment. Premade sales are final — no refunds or exchanges.
• Extras are gated to her own covers. Print wraps, audiobook covers and banners are "exclusively available to authors whose ebook covers I have designed" — she will not adapt someone else's cover.
• Fiction only in practice. Every 2026 tier, the order form's genre list and all 18 shop categories are fiction. An old non-fiction portfolio page survives with nine samples (cookbooks, couponing, a resume guide) and links to a premade non-fiction section that no longer exists — treat it as a leftover, not as coverage.
• Limited slots: "I take on a limited number of custom orders" and "may not be able to accept all bookings." There is also a "regular monthly design author list" for a recurring slot, but it is an email request with no published rate or terms — the only documented repeat-buyer economics are the $20 continuation discount.
• The prices are images, not text. The 2026 tier tables are PNGs, so nothing on the pricing page is searchable, quotable or screen-reader accessible. The extras table is proper HTML; the tier cards are not.