Covers Courting Controversy!

In recent weeks, I've been busy creating new book covers as I have almost finished writing the first draft of the 5th Artisan-Sorcerer novel. It's been tricky ensuring the details on the covers are right, that the figures look exactly like the characters in the story in my head, and that the covers, when viewed together, present a clear visual theme to prospective readers.

I'm not ready to reveal the covers just yet. I need to sit with the designs for a while, waiting to make sure they're right. The image above is an older "explainer" graphic, which I will need to update to match the new, improved covers.

I've now pinned-up print-outs of the covers so I can patiently study them over the next week or so. There is so much to consider, such as text size, visual information, creating a visual hook, and so on. Back in my art school days I took Design, and Critical Studies, amongst other subjects. The courses didn't touch on book cover design, unfortunately, so I've needed to do a substantial amount of research to learn the principles.

Now, I know it was only a few months ago that I changed the old Artisan-Sorcerer covers for newer ones, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with them. So I decided to have another try, and to have them ready for when the 5th novel is ready to be published.

These new-new covers have been created with the help of ChatGPT, which I know might spark disapproval from some quarters. I give my word that the manuscripts for all my novels and short stories are 100% my own work. I don't use AI to write any of my stories. I don't feel the need to, as I enjoy the creative writing process for its own sake.

Be assured that the design concepts, the text, and a huge amount of instructions, came from me. An AI machine did not do all the work - far from it. And each cover had to re-done multiple times until they arrived at their current stage of development.

As for the use of AI, while there are entirely valid protests about AI having been "educated" from the work of people without their permission, and without financial compensation, I think that ignoring AI's potential is pointless. It's here, it's staying, it's use is going to grow - and it helped me create much better covers than I could have done on my own.

I suspect similar protests took place thousands of years ago, when paper put the makers of wax and clay tablets out of work. Imagine the cries: "This new-fangled paper stuff won't catch on! It's ruining traditional tablet-making and tablet-inscribing skills! It's bad for business!"

New technology has always unsettled some people, changed how tasks are done, put people out of work but created new jobs too.

You're welcome to disagree, of course.

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