BOOK cover Design
WITH AI
They say to never judge a book by its cover, but we all definitely do...
Custom AI Generated Artwork (credits: The Untamed Page)
There are a variety of options available to create beautiful, eye-catching covers and plenty of great artists out there discoverable on reputable sources like Reedsy Marketplace, for instance. But if you are powering along your publishing journey and want full creative control, then maybe an AI art generator is in your future.
If you are not familiar with these types of tools, they basically create images based on words you type into the text prompt, just like using a search engine. What better tool for a writer than to describe the picture you want to create?!
The most popular options right now are Dall-E 3 and MidJourney which are accessible for a monthly subscription or in the case of Dall-E 2, by purchasing credits, but there is also a free AI art designer available through Microsoft Bing called Image Creator that is amazing for getting started.
Image Creator uses Dall-E for its backend processing which makes it a really powerful tool, but free. This means you can create an array of images through Image Creator to craft the design you have stuck in your head. Like most AI generators, Image Creator will create a perfectly square image, which will need some modification to drop into a book cover template, since most book covers, except for audiobooks, are rectangular.
In order to modify your AI generated artwork, you can either turn it over to an artist you work with to complete, or pay for a little time on Dall-E or MidJourney to continue to refine your image. Either one of these tools allows you to upload your image and modify it. You can add more to the outside edges of it, which is called frame generation or outfilling, and insert images into the center, called inpainting or infilling. With Dall-E 2 you can access the tool through credits, which for $15 you can buy 100 runs on the processor (i.e. hit the “create” button 100 times), which is a pretty sweet deal. So for under $15, you can create custom art for your book cover that is amazing and you own it completely!! That’s right, you own the rights to whatever you create on Image Creator, Dall-E or MidJourney.
Want to see how it’s done?
Check out this video!