Professional Book Design Services
Book Cover Express, founded by award-winning book designer Cathi Stevenson, is a boutique book design studio specializing in custom book cover design for self-published authors, small presses, and publishing professionals. With almost 3,000 professional book covers completed since 1999, the studio provides high-quality design, interior formatting, and author-support services trusted by writers across every genre.
Book Cover Express gives authors a place where they can work directly with an experienced book cover designer, without templates, middlemen, or marketplace markups. The goal has always been simple: create strategic, genre-specific book covers that sell, supported by polished interior layout, professional eBook formatting, and clean editorial design.
Over the years, Book Cover Express has designed covers for fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, business books, academic titles, and specialty projects for independent publishers. Book Cover Express also provides author websites, marketing graphics, magazine layouts, and branded communications for organizations that need clear, accessible design.
Custom Book Cover Design
Book Cover Express focuses on tailored, professional book cover design for indie authors, drawing on market research, genre trends, typography, and storytelling to create covers that connect with readers.
Interior Layout & eBook Formatting
We handle print book layout for paperbacks and hardcovers and offer eBook formatting for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), IngramSpark and other platforms.
Author Brand Materials
For authors building a presence beyond the book, we design:
- author websites
- editorial layouts and reports
- brand visuals
- launch graphics
- marketing materials
Why Authors Choose Book Cover Express
Here’s why we’re different:
- All cover design is done by Cathi Stevenson who has 25+ years of publishing experience across journalism, editing, and design.
- Authors will have direct collaboration with the professional working on their book covers, interior formatting, eBook formatting, website design, and author branding.
- We provide custom book design, not mass-production or template-driven work, and no AI.
- A boutique approach that puts clarity, strategy, and accessibility first.
Our work is grounded in real publishing experience, plain-language principles, and a respect for the author’s voice.
“I bring more than two decades of experience in journalism, nonprofit communications, academic publishing, and editorial design. I’m also a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Plain Language Association International, the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and the Interaction Design Foundation.” —Cathi Stevenson
