For example today a woman wanted a book cover design for just $40. In her expanded posting on the website it said she wanted an image of shoes and that to 'please confirm that I will retain all rights to the image to do with it as I see fit.' So below is what I wrote as my 'bid'
Hi *******,
I know based on pricing you won't choose my bid - but I do hope you read below for more information as there are other 'designers' that don't do things correctly that infringe on copyright issues.
There are 2 routes you can go on a book cover design, photo or illustration. I’ll explain both:
If you want to use a photo of shoes on your cover and looking for a low cost quality stock photo on sites like istockphoto.com, they run up to roughly $36 each. Then if you plan on using that photo for an ebook or any publication you’d need to pay for usage rights. If it’s just an electronic book with an unlimited resale that would be another $180. If you need to also do print versions of the book then another $180 is added for unlimited print runs. So just for a photo you’re looking at $200-$400, which then needs to be used in the design that then would need to be created. Depending on if you’d like multiple versions to choose from, each version could take me a half hour to produce - again depending on complexity of design and if you’d like more simple verses elaborate. I charge $80/hr, so one design version could be $40 (with no edits). (Also istockphoto are the cheaper of the the quality stock sites. If you get 'royalty free' images on getty.com that you can reproduce however you want, those run $375-$575 http://www.gettyimages.com/license-info. And if you get an image that is 'rights managed' on their site, to use that on a print and ebook cover for 500,000 impressions, plus 2 or more social media sites for a duration of 10 years, you'd pay $4,000 and up.)
If you want a custom illustration I would first need from you what kind of style of illustration you’d be looking for - simple/flat, elaborate/realistic, etc. Then I’d have to create a rough sketch in pencil for you to approve before I start to create it in Illustrator/Photoshop. Depending on the complexity of the image and if you have any edits, that process could take 3-8+ hours.
So to be fair, I don’t think I could produce a quality ebook cover with an image you retain the rights to for just your budget of $40. If you do go with someone else please make sure they do not pull photos off of Google searches unless you/they get permission from the original copyright owner to use it. And if they use a photo from a stock site, make sure they have all the correct usage rights purchased to reproduce it. I am just trying my best to educate everyone that design does cost more than perceived.
So as you see if this client really truly wanted a book cover for $40 that wasn't elaborate or used a photo, basically all I could do for her would be a text based design with maybe some flourishes.
Of course I should start billing for my time to explain these things.