I considered for a long time what to do about a cover. Originally I was thinking to just leave it as the default. Its free writing afterall, why waste time on something that would suck the joy out of my hobby? I considered hiring an artist to draw me one. I have enough disposable income that that would not pose me a problem, writing being my hobby and not my job. But I eventually came to a rather different conclusion. Why does it need to be something that isn't real?
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This took me twenty minutes with a smartphone and some stuff I had lying around the house, is weird/abstract enough to stand out among the mess of AI covers of characters in the most unimaginative poses imaginable and calls back to the book that inspired it. It cost me nothing but time and required no real talent. I even got a nice snack after I was done shooting. And that reminded me that you don't need to know shit about drawing to make a cover. You just need the imagination to turn the tools you do have to a new task. Make your characters in the sims or the Mii Channel or picrew and use that as a cover. Go out in your neighborhood and snap a pic of a balloon that burst and has just been sitting there a while. Go for a hike in nature and take a landscape shot. Make your characters in Mii maker, erase the background and then shop them into the landscape shot. Make a cosplay of them, they probably look a lot like you anyway, I know what sort of author posts here! Write the name of your novel in alphabet soup and snap a pic. Build a scene out of lego. Tear a ken doll in half and cover him in ketchup. Use your imagination and the tools you do know how to use. Art isn't just about drawing, its taking raw materials and turning them into something meaningful.
I never once considered using an AI cover. Besides my sheer contempt for the very concept of genAI, it just felt like putting a "Beware of hole" sign next to the bottomless pit instead of something more practical like a fence or a large metal cover. Its the most obvious, least inspired solution. And I believe in my readers enough to think they'll notice that.
As someone who writes for fun, who has like forty readers at most: Stop underestimating your own creativity. If you can paint a picture with words you can paint it with any of the plethora of other tools at your disposal. Stop relying on the one with the lowest skill ceiling just because it has a high skill floor. And have some fun with the process.
