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 language, creating a visual hook, and so on. Back in my art school days I took two additional courses to my main Fine Art Painting subject: Design, and Critical Studies. 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, and that's an on-going process too.
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 AI, 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.
AI is powered from data centres, which are sources of controversy due to the large amounts of water and electricity they apparently use to cool and power their computer servers and operating systems. According to the UK government's website, (as I don't claim any expertise on this topic), UK's current 450 data centres contributed £4.7 billion to the economy, and should be contributing £44 billion by 2035, along with approximately 15,000 jobs. This same website also claimed that data centres, in 2025, used only 2% of the country's annual electricity consumption, and that they are crucial to modern digital life.
Be assured that the book covers 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.
There is quite a fuss over on Facebook at the moment, as a long-published and respected author, (who I won't name), admitted to using AI to make his recent book covers. This sparked a flurry of reactions, both for and against his decision. A handful of objectors went to far as to declare they'd never read another of his novels as they felt he'd betrayed traditional ideas. Yes, he could have paid a human to design the covers, and therefore financially supported that designer. Then again, when you study the desultory sales figures for books these-days, you can surely understand why he chose to save money.
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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