Writing The Book Using AI?
No one would suggest that Artificial Intelligence be used to write a complete book. The writing performed by AI tends to be mechanical in composition. It also seems to be a bit choppy in regards to flow, with the text jumping from thought to thought.
The better uses of AI in the writing process are in the areas of research and the setup of the outline for a story or nonfiction book. There are usually many areas in a book that require research of a concept, technology, history and so on. AI does a very good job of scouring the internet for information regarding the subject words that you enter into its input field. It is also fairly good at creating a general outline for a book. Note that it is never advisable to use information provided by AI as is. It should always be checked and rewritten to obtain a human style of writing. Otherwise, it will create a very dry reading experience for the user. There is also the chance that text provided by the AI app might be copyrighted material, which could bring legal issues.
Book Covers Created Using AI
Although writing a book using AI is not recommended, producing a book’s cover using AI is a great idea, especially for author’s that lack the creative touch. There are now a fairly large number of graphic oriented AI websites, and recently AI websites have popped up that offer “Book Cover” specific tools. Just enter some descriptive text and click “Generate” to create a cover. A few pointers: The more descriptors you enter, the closer you can get to the cover that you’ve visualized in your mind, and if you’re not happy with the result, you can generate again and let the AI try again. You can also change some of the descriptors after you see the results. Additionally, images can be used to be used in the generated cover or to us as a style reference for AI to use.
Book Cover Based AI Websites
You will want to test a number of sites before settling on the one to build your book cover. Most of these websites offer a free trial of some sort that should allow you to get a feel for what they do and if it meets your needs. Some sites charge by the year, some by the month and some use a credit system. Generally, it is cheaper to sign up for a website than it is to hire a designer to do the work. You also get the advantage of trying many different inputs to generate various covers, as opposed to going back and forth with a designer, sometimes settling for a final cover that isn’t exactly what you intended.
There are a number of differences to take into account when choosing your AI provider:
- Some sites have better/worse databases of images to choose from.
- Some sites offer various styles to choose from (ie Disney, Anime, Sci fi, vintage…)
- Most sites offer ready to use templates that can be adjusted by the AI input.
- Some allow for inclusion of text on the cover file and some create only the image for the cover, and the user has to add the text later in an image program.
Pricing
As mentioned, there are a number of different pricing schemes. All sites offer a free or trial membership. This lets the perspective user test a site and get an idea if it fits their projects. It is not usually possible to create a full project cover using these free options. Some sites offer pricing plans that charge on a monthly basis. On some of these sites, the user can sign up for a month to month contract. Other sites that offer monthly charges require that a full year of payments be made up front. Finally, some sites use a credit system. The user can buy a certain number of credits at a time, renewing when they credits run out.
For the most part, it is more economical to use one of the AI sites than it is to hire an illustrator. It is, however, also possible to use a subcontractor site such as Fivrr.com which lets the use search for and choose an illustrator to design their cover. These contractors are often very reasonable.
On a final note, everything in this article describes the book cover process for print books AND eBooks.
Here are a few links to AI book cover sites. Use your own discretion in choosing a site. To search for more sites, simply enter AI Book Cover Generation in your favorite search engine.
https://www.lightxeditor.com/photo-editing/ai-book-cover-generator/
https://www.kittl.com/templates/book-covers
https://idyllic.app/ai-book-cover-generator/
https://www.promeai.pro/ai-image-generation
