Your Cover Art(ist) Matters - Affordable Options For Your Book's Cover Which Don't Require An AI/LLM
There's a surprising amount of affordable artists and artwork available for your books, all that's needed is a bit of networking and legwork.
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As active writers on Substack, we’ve all seen the arguments surrounding the use of AI/LLMs within our work. Whether it be used for images or text, for fiction or nonfiction, the debate about these systems continues to rage ever onward, and it will do so until such time as the public roundly rejects it, or quietly accepts it. Personally, based on my own observations of the past as well as intelligent arguments by folks better equipped to understand these patterns than I am, my expectation leans toward the latter of those two options. Given time, the public will largely accept the existence and use of AI generated material. We already see it happening with images and video, while the protestations of folks like myself tend to be ignored. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say our cries are unheard.
Make no mistake, I have no love for AI or LLMs. I won’t pretend that I’ve never played around with image generators before, though. When the technology was fresh off the presses, my friends and I all had a good few laughs seeing what early iterations of ChatGPT and similar services would generate from the most absurd prompts we could think of. We also cringed and chortled at some of the later generators that tried to present hundreds upon thousands of options in a manner akin to a Google image search. Such services often featured images that lacked even the most tangential relationship to the prompt you fed it. Clicking through to a new image would produce new suggestions beneath it, and it didn’t take long before the algorithm generated some truly horrid pictures to laugh in disgust at.
I, and I think most others, considered such use of these services to be largely harmless fun. That’s true to a degree, but it’s not difficult to make a compelling argument that such use also resulted in normalization. Casual use of new and novel technologies is one of the first steps towards wider acceptance, and while it may not be the largest contributor to the wider use of AI we’ve seen these days,1 it certainly played its part.
But we all know casually roaming AI generators for funny or horrid images to laugh at isn’t what many of us see as a problem. The discourse we keep hearing is about the abuse of such technology, its use as a replacement for human creativity rather than as a functional tool to support such.2 For those of you who know me well, you’re likely already aware of my stance: I don’t like AI, I don’t want AI, and I won’t use AI if I can help it.
Fortunately, I can help it, because I know that my writing is quality. I know it stands on its own merits, as has been proven by the kind support many folks on this very platform have shown me.3 Blathering about my personal dislike of AI isn’t what I’m writing this for, though. Rather than bitch and moan about a problem that a large number of us Substackers recognize and largely agree with, I want to offer solutions to one of the most commonly voiced defenses I hear for the use of AI images on Substack and beyond.
Whether it’s the want for an eye-catching thumbnail image on your latest essay or short story, or the need for a picture that fits as the cover of your book, arguably the single most common argument in favor of using AI images is that of monetary cost. The belief exists that it’s simply too expensive to hire an artist to illustrate these things for you. I will fully admit, I’m sympathetic to this argument. Between the two of us, my wife and I do alright for ourselves financially. We still struggle, still run into many tight spots (as we did over this last weekend with rent), but our situation isn’t dire. That said, I hardly make the sort of money that would allow me to drop hundreds of dollars on professional artists to help me design a cover for my book. Make no mistake, hundreds is what you’ll end up paying if you’re set on commissioning a big name in today’s art world.
Fortunately, I can say with absolute confidence that the worry of spending $500+ on cover art is easily assuaged. There exist multiple options for writers on the lookout for artwork that’s both affordable and of good quality. As an example, I’d like you to take a look at the images below.
Many of you have seen these images before, the top one in particular. These are two of the work-in-progress illustrations for the front and back covers of my novella, In the Giant’s Shadow. In the leadup to the book’s release at the end of last year, I mentioned that I commissioned these images from Chiflame, a friendly acquaintance who I met during the years I was working on my webcomic, Phoenix Rising. The feedback on both covers was nearly universal praise for Chi’s work – eye-catching and visually stylistic, the covers tended to create feelings of curiosity about the story. Chi’s artwork was thoroughly praised, and rightly so. He’s immensely talented, which is why he was my first choice among the various artists I’ve come to know.
Given the quality of these covers, people were naturally curious about how much they cost. The most common guess I got from those asking was roughly $200-$300, with the front cover believed the more expensive of the two.4 I’m sure many of you reading this now would assume similar in terms of the cost, maybe leaning toward the lower end given what we’re discussing today.
And your assumption would be wrong. The total cost for both covers was a mere $96. If I’d only commissioned the front cover, it would only have cost me roughly $60. An incredible bargain, no question, particularly considering his professionalism. Chi kept me appraised of the work every step of the way, ensuring that I was satisfied with everything from the initial sketch, to the grayscale drawings, to the final full color renders. Think about that for a second; $96 is all it cost for me to commission this wonderful art and come out with an excellent customer experience.5
Chi is far from the only artist I’ve come to know who offers quality work at affordable rates. X (Twitter), Instagram, Cara, Artistree, and even Substack itself are all places where a bit of legwork can lead you to quality artists of varying styles who take commissions at reasonable rates of $100 or less. Chat services such as Discord or Telegram can also lead to good results, if you find yourself in the right community circles there.
In fact, one such artist here on Substack showed up in my feed earlier this morning:
These are far from the only services or options available, too. Recently, Substackistan’s local horror and haiku writer,
, shared her success with her $10 monthly subscription to Adobe Express, which allowed her to create her own assets and design elements for her publication. then further expounded on the options by showcasing two book covers which she commissioned on Fiverr for only $35 each. You can find both of their notes, as well as Patricia’s commissioned covers, below; but it should be noted that both of these services offer built in AI powered assistance. I say this not to denigrate these services or the work that either of these ladies did/received from them, but expressly for the sake of awareness. It’s up to your personal discretion whether or not you opt to use these.Everything I’ve listed until now represents a means of finding cost efficient options for writers who feel like they’ve got no choice but to rely on AI. But what if even these options are beyond our limits? What about those of us who just don’t have the funds to afford even $35?
Fortunately, there exist options for you as well. Services like Canva offer a plethora of quality free options for designing book covers, banners, splash images, and more. Likewise, there’s a good deal of copyright free and public domain art that you’re fully permitted to use as you wish in your work, all created by human hands. I understand that some among you might recoil slightly at this idea. After all, similar to indie publishing, public domain and copyright free art have something of a reputation for being poor quality.
I would hope that those of you within the indie fiction space, especially the portion of it here on Substack, are able to recognize the reality behind this reputation. While it’s most certainly true that free use art does have its share of low quality work, it’s equally true that it’s home to a plethora of wonderful work. It’s little different to indie fiction in this respect.
In terms of available artwork in the public domain, the National Gallery of Art is a fantastic resource with thousands of available options. However, a word of warning when it comes specifically to seeking out royalty free and copyright free artwork. These two options carry a considerable amount of risk of surreptitiously feeding you AI generated images.
As an example, during my search for resources to link in this article, I was led to the website Pixabay, which claims to offer a plethora of royalty free and copyright free images for people to download and use. Some of these are available for one-time payment, others are available for free. My hope while perusing the site was that with careful use of its search function, users would be able to filter the AI images that I could already see where common to the site.
Alas, after attempting this myself and searching through about half a dozen different pages from supposedly experienced artists who claimed to be illustrating or painting for decades, I found their pages were swamped with just the sort of generic AI slop so very many of us have grown so tired of seeing. In one case, the “artist” in question claimed to be a fantasy illustrator and painter who’d practiced the craft for over 40 years, yet every listing on his page was obviously generated by an LLM. From his “Princess Jasmine Woman” with an elongated head, a sideways cleft above her chin, and a warped hand fused against her breast; to two nearly identical “Server Girl” pictures with stubby fingers melting into the cupcakes they were holding and faces that lived in the uncanny valley; the claims of so-called “artists” – or, as I prefer to call them, charlatans – like these serve to highlight the diligence we must practice if we want to do the decent thing and reward our fellow creatives with fair pay for the work produced by their hands.
In the meantime, I hope that the resources I’ve listed here will be of help to some of you. I’d also like to state that if you’re among the people out there on the lookout for a quality illustrator who offers reasonable rates, leave a comment. With the connections I made during my time publishing Phoenix Rising, I’ve gotten to know a stable of about 15 different artists who offer work in varying styles for good rates, Chiflame included among them. What’s more, you can also reach out to the single greatest resource you have at your disposal as a writer on Substack: your fellow writers. I’ve yet to see one among us who hasn’t been plenty willing to share when asked about the artists they’ve worked with in the past.
Or perhaps it is, I don’t really know. All I know for sure is that casual use does have a notable impact.
In the artistic world in particular, there are numerous arguments for why the use of such tools is far more of a detriment than it is a help. Being that I’ve got a foot both in the artistic realms of writing and illustration thanks to the webcomic project I used to work as the writer on before I started my Substack, I’ve seen the arguments for and against such systems by writers and illustrators alike. I will say now, the arguments against AI in the world of writing were and remain considerably more robust. I believe that’s chiefly due to how obvious the use of AI in writing tends to be, thanks to phenomena like the sudden and rampant proliferation of shockingly similar online articles by legacy and missing link media outlets within literal minutes of one another, as well as other cues that can be spotted in the grammar and syntax of text produced by LLMs.
Presenting arguments against this in the world of visual art is a more difficult task. A large part of this is because there are many people out there who take the tack that if the image produced looks good, then that’s good enough, it’s art. Pay no mind to the fact that the more you look, the more you’ll see the many strange flaws in AI images, so long as said image involves a human or animal, that is. A much greater challenge comes to the fore when dealing with landscape or architecture, particularly paintings. This is one form of art that LLMs have a much easier time imitating. Be that as it may, the fact remains that these images are nothing more than imitation, and as these models become swamped with yet further requests, we begin to see them turning inward for their development. The result, much like incestuous inbreeding, is visible degradation, and it makes one wonder will truly be as lasting as some would have us believe.
Seriously, my deepest thanks to each and every one of my subscribers and readers, paid or unpaid, regular or intermittent. Time given isn’t something that can be taken back, and I appreciate every second of the time you’ve all shared with me.
An accurate assessment.
In the interest of transparency, I will say that I had enough available at the time of commission to give him a generous tip for the work, as is my preference as an independent creative myself.
I am not there yet, but it is nice to know what sort of affordable options are available for creating book covers.
Covers are important and I'm glad you covered just how important and some of the options and such here.