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IWSG, February 2023: Indie Book Covers

2023-02-012023-02-02 John Winkelman

Lindemayer system experiment

Happy February, O my pixel pushers and ink rearrangers!  And for those who observe the Lunar New Year, happy Year of the Water Rabbit! I am feeling re-energized after a weekend at ConFusion 2023 where I volunteered to help run the ‘con, participated on a couple of panels, and hung out with and talked to many many many great writers and artists. ConFusion is my favorite event, and a great way to start the year.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for February 2023 is:

If you are an Indie author, do you make your own covers or purchase them? If you publish trad, how much input do you have about what goes on your cover?

I have played around with making covers for a couple of chapbooks, but never for an actual book, on account of I don’t have any actual books for which to create or commission cover art.

That being said, were I to commission a cover, I would make sure it was created by a human artist, with minimal or no use of any of the AI [sic] image generators (Midjourney, DALL-E 2, etc.) which have been recently in the news for, among other things, copyright infringement of the artwork on which the image generator’s base neural network was trained. Call me old-fashioned, but any art I pay for will be created by actual artist. And I say that as someone who has played around with generative art for over two decades.

More information on this issue here:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557098/generative-ai-art-copyright-legal-lawsuit-stable-diffusion-midjourney-deviantart
https://www.polygon.com/23558946/ai-art-lawsuit-stability-stable-diffusion-deviantart-midjourney
https://petapixel.com/2022/12/21/midjourny-founder-admits-to-using-a-hundred-million-images-without-consent/
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/midjourney-founder-basically-admits-to-copyright-breaching-and-artists-are-angry

Speaking of computer-generated art, I created the above image with my Lindenmayer System Explorer. If you want to duplicate this and play around with it, enter the following bolded text into the “import/export” field, click “Import Data”, then click “render.”

{“iterations”:”4″,”lineLength”:”4″,”initialAngle”:”270″,”angle”:”30″,”angleTaper”:”0″,”lineWidth”:”2″,”lineScale”:”1″,”lineTaper”:”-1″,”lineColors”:”222222,000099,990000,999900″,”backgroundColor”:”000000″,”axiom”:”[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+”,”grammar”:”F:[FF[F+F]F]F!fF[F-F]”}

Happy writing, everyone!

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Posted in Literary MattersTagged art, IWSG, procedural art, publishing

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January 2023 Books and Reading Notes

3 thoughts on “IWSG, February 2023: Indie Book Covers”

  1. Kyra Lennon says:
    2023-02-01 at 07:49

    AI is a gigantic pain, although it sounds like a good idea in theory!

    I don’t make my own book covers anymore because I have no skills when it comes to design. I am definitely more about the words!

    Reply
  2. J.S. Pailly says:
    2023-02-01 at 10:40

    I’m with you about AI generated art. I think there’s an appropriate use for that technology. For example, I have a friend who uses AI generated art as writing prompts. But for covers? Illustrations? Whole graphic novels? Anything where money is involved or potentially involved, I see that as a huge problem.

    Reply
  3. Patricia Anne Pierce-garcia Schaack says:
    2023-02-01 at 11:07

    Hi,
    I understand wanting your covers created by a real person. I prefer that too.
    All the best.
    Shalom aleichem

    Reply

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