Discovery

Does AI Art Affect Indie Authors?

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From The Independent Publishing Magazine:

If you’ve spent any time on social media over the last few months, you’ve probably seen plenty of people sharing pictures of themselves that were “created” using Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are several apps currently available that allow people to share a few photos and instantly have them turned into pieces of art. You’ll find everything from cartoon-style drawings to interpretations that look like they could be placed in a museum.

While there’s no denying that AI art is fascinating and often incredibly beautiful, it’s been met with some backlash.

Not only can AI art reinvent existing photos, but it can also turn words into art — something that many authors are taking advantage of when it comes to creating book covers. AI text-to-image generators can take something as simple as the word “lightbulb” and create a one-of-a-kind piece of art for you to use with your next release.

But, is that ethical? Is it taking away from the human expression so many artists value? Using AI is easy, efficient, and often more cost-effective than hiring an artist to create a cover. It’s important to consider how using it might be affecting others in the creative industry, and how AI in general might impact indie authors and artists.

How Is AI Art Created?

AI art doesn’t just randomly manifest itself. You can’t create something out of “nothing”. To be effective in any industry, there are a few requirements Artificial Intelligence needs to deploy properly, including:

  • High bandwidths;
  • Computing capacity;
  • Data storage;
  • Security.

In the art world, AI is created by collecting data from existing artists (as well as artists from past generations) and their work. For example, some of the current apps generating AI artwork use generative adversarial networks (GANs). These algorithms have two sides: One that generates random images, and one that learns how to judge those images and align them with whatever is being inputted.

As an author, if you want a book cover featuring a young woman sitting on a chair in a particular style, you could simply type in something like, “a young woman on a chair Victorian era” into an AI art generator. The generator would look through thousands of images to “learn” exactly what you’re looking for. It would take data from other human-made works of art to create an original piece in the style of your choosing.

Why Are Authors Using It?

As an indie author, you’ve probably become used to doing many things for yourself. From editing to advertising, you might not have the resources or finances to hire others to do that kind of work for you. But, creating a cover is a different story. If you’re blessed enough to be a writer and an artist, you might be able to create a cover on your own, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

So, you’re often left with the option of hiring a professional artist for your cover design. Of course, that can cost money and stretch your budget quite thin, especially when you recognize the importance of an eye-catching cover. While it’s great to support independent artists, it’s not the easiest financial choice for authors who are just getting started. Plus, if you don’t consider yourself an artist and you’re also new to marketing in the book industry, you could end up hiring someone and fall victim to some common book cover mistakes, like:

  • Too many visual elements;
  • A cover that doesn’t accurately reflect your genre;
  • A low-quality or stolen image;
  • A title that’s too small;
  • Poor choice of font;
  • An uninspiring design.

Because AI is easy to use and can generate multiple images from a single input, you can use it to save money, and you can show several possible images to friends, family, and followers on social media to get an idea of which one will work best for your book.

The Ethical Dilemma

While there are some benefits to using AI art as an indie author, it’s essential to consider how ethical it is. As someone in the creative industry, you can undoubtedly empathize with visual artists trying to make a living through their work. AI takes away from those artists and even goes so far as to use human art to create new images, which some consider a type of theft.

Link to the rest at The Independent Publishing Magazine

10 essential book cover tips for indie authors

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From Old Mate Media:

Every book needs a cover and in a world where a million books are created every day, your book cover needs to be outstanding.

Bleed, margins, spines, embedding fonts, source files, layers, swatches and CMYK vs RGB are just some of the design terms we throw around every day here at Old Mate Media. If those words strike you down in an anxious whirlwind of confusion it’s time to calm your heart. You are not alone. Most authors don’t understand all the particulars and intricacies of book design.

It’s awfully important to get all these elements and many more right and your cover is one of the best places to invest your funds in a professional. But here is the kicker. Artists aren’t designers either. They don’t make books and go through the process of converting them into ePubs, Kindles, hardcovers, paperbacks, apps and more.

At Old Mate Media, we create the art, do the book designs and upload the various formats to their storefronts, so we’re across the whole spectrum. But we also complete plenty of books for authors who have had their cover design done elsewhere and it’s astounding how often the file they receive isn’t print ready. We’ve written this article because of the dizzying percentage of authors using our design service that send us cover art that hasn’t been prepared properly.

So how do you make sure your artist delivers you a book cover file that is everything it needs to be? We’ve created this step by step book cover guide to help you ensure your cover artist doesn’t leave you short changed. Whether you end up using our services or not, we believe in empowering indie authors with the knowledge to grow.

Book Cover Tips #1 – What is your book’s trim size?

It’s fair to assume most authors will be aiming to release their book in print. So how big is your book going to be? It is the first thing an artist needs to know to prepare your cover for you and if you change your mind, or are not sure, before you commission the cover, then it will need to be reworked. You can rarely just expand or shrink the image to the new size. Words will be cut-off, characters won’t be centred or your printer will blacklist the cover outright for having elements outside the printable margins.

Also remember that the bigger your book, the more – in general – it will cost to make and post, so don’t go overboard without good reason. For more, visit our list of the most common trim sizes in inches, centimetres and pixels. Just remember that a book cover must include a front, a spine and a back when submitted to a printer.

If we receive just a front cover image, then we will need to complete the spine and back with something more generic. This could end up being a block colour with text and another asset over the top. This other asset could be a photo of the author, or another image from within the book. It’s a totally acceptable solution if you’re left hanging with just the front image, but does take more design work.

Book Cover Tips #2 – Have you considered bleed?

Perhaps one of the most common mistakes we see from illustrators working on covers is that they don’t consider the need for bleed. Bleed is the name given to the part of an image that extends past the trim size of your book. It’s an essential requirement of every printer. The bleed is a minimum of 0.125-inches in width the whole way around your book, and we have a much more extensive guide to the concept here.

Book Cover Tips #3 – Paperback or Hardback (or both)?

Paperback and hardback covers have quite different requirements. Hardback covers require a lot more bleed than a paperback. This is because a part of the cover gets wrapped around into the interior of the book. It’s how the “hard” part is kept contained. So your cover art therefore needs to have bleed of 0.625-inches added on all sides.

If you intend to sell both paperback and hardback, or are unsure, then simply get your artist to make the book with hardback bleed. As it is bleed – excess background of your cover – your book designer can trim it at 0.125” or 0.625” as required.

Link to the rest at Old Mate Media