Cover Evaluation

[Priscilla_June]

Wow. Bunch of replies. The gestalt I'm taking away from the comments is that this doesn't do the job.
-It doesn't scan quickly.
-It won't look good in thumbnail.
-The art style is, at best, meh, and at worst... Bad.

Yes, I generated this using AI. I asked it to build elements of the image and then I photoshopped those elements together to create what I wanted. I'm going to play with the image a little more and see if I can improve it, but I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and pay a professional.

Some of the choices were deliberate. The soldier is faceless because I don't want to create an image of what he looks like before the reader cracks the book open. I'd like for them to fill in the face and take some 'ownership' of the imagery. The woman is more detailed, particularly her red hair, because she's the focus of the story and the red hair plays a central part in that story. Which would pay off for the reader in the end. Worth it? Dunno. The font rots. It's terrible, it's too small, it's poorly placed, it's the wrong font, it got drunk and crashed my car.

Yep, it's a story about a woman being enslaved but I flatter myself (based on the many negative comments I have received) that I don't write typical sex-slave stories. Which annoys people who think that's what they're getting from me. I'm open to feedback on that, too, but it's not what I came to this thread for.

Thanks for all the comments.

For what its worth, love the hyper detailed red hair.

 

[Yarglenurp]

For what its worth, love the hyper detailed red hair.

Red hair is the best part, I think.

 

[Andi_Chase]

Does nothing for me, and if its AI I'd make I make it a point to never support anyone who uses it for covers or in their writing.

I prefer to support humans with actual talent.

I absolutely agree. Either find an actual artist to do your cover art or don't bother. If the art is AI, what's to say the writing isn't either?

 

[KeithD]

Red hair is the best part, I think.

It could have gone Georgia O'Keeffe and have an aura of "vagina" about it. It's moving in the direction already.

 

[lovecraft68]

I absolutely agree. Either find an actual artist to do your cover art or don't bother. If the art is AI, what's to say the writing isn't either?

If you have a knack for a good image and colors/fonts, you can make a cover on Canva. Going rate for cover to be made ranges from $5 on Fiver (but again, people on there are using AI now as well) up to about $20 which is what I pay and have been using the same person for the last 10 years.

You get the money for the cover back after a few sales, and you can write off the expense on taxes. This isn't a major financial investment.

 

[Andi_Chase]

If you have a knack for a good image and colors/fonts, you can make a cover on Canva. Going rate for cover to be made ranges from $5 on Fiver (but again, people on there are using AI now as well) up to about $20 which is what I pay and have been using the same person for the last 10 years.

You get the money for the cover back after a few sales, and you can write off the expense on taxes. This isn't a major financial investment.

this actually brings me back to my early high school days where i made covers for authors on wattpad/quotev. of course, i had no concern for using images i didn't have the rights to, but i was dumb.

 

[Otto26]

Made some changes to it for the experience of doing it. If nothing else it's a good reference to provide to an artist to show what I'm thinking of. My technique for assembling this was as follows:
-Deciding on a style. I dismissed realism because I was going to be photoshopping (actually GIMP) elements and I wouldn't get consistent styles from Gemini. I toyed with abstract line art before settling on this abstract style.
-I asked GIMP to generate the elements in separate prompts. The woman was generated from two different images generated by the same prompt. The soldier took forever and was one image that had to be edited. The burning town was the first image returned by the prompt and I ended up having to edit it.
-I edited and assembled the images in GIMP and then added the text. It's obviously a pretty low grade cover but it's workable if I chose to do that.
-It was an interesting experiment in producing a particular cover I have had in mind for a while. I think that one of the keys to using AI to generate images is not being particular about the results. If you have a specific image in mind you're going to have a lot of work to generate it.

My final product:


Final note: Updates to Gemini make it impossible for me to generate this image now. In repeating some of the prompts I got error messages. When I asked if images of soldiers were inherently violent and, therefore, forbidden for it to generate it basically told me yes.