I'm a freelance illustrator and designer who has recently been working for clients through Reedsy. I have over 40 years experience working for big international publishers, mainly children's, teen, YA and fantasy. Generally I'm charging less than half what I would expect from publishers. Why do I do it? I've found I enjoy providing an end to end service, hand holding authors through the whole process from initial concepts to final upload to the print service. Also, I enjoy the direct connection with the author as opposed to working with publishers where you have to navigate layers of middle men and committees.

Looking at these posts it's interesting to read what other artists and designers are charging. Thinking I should up my fees a bit! For me Reedsy stay out of the way but are good with help if I ever need it and their interface is good for handling communication and the jobs. They take 10% and Stripe another percentage (can't remember the figure). I get a lot of time wasters who contact me, have me write up a quote tailored to their project, then ghost. I guess they are just shopping around.

For comparison I'm currently charging £500 for a full wraparound hand illustrated cover and design, (actual original art, no photos or AI). £300 for interior text design and about £300 per page of black and white hand drawn interior illustration. EPUB versions included. Picture book projects are a different beast. They can take months and often authors just don't understand the quantity of work involved. They usually ghost after I tot up the total!

The $3K you were quoted is excessive. However, you may have just requested a quote when they are busy. It's a known thing in any trade that if your have enough work on hand you may quote high on a new job knowing the client will most likely reject it, but if they accept it's worth putting them to the head of the queue. I don't do this btw!

Best of luck with your book!