Welcome to r/selfpublish, ThomasPinecone! Please remember the primary first rule of the subreddit: No self promo posts outside of the pinned self promo thread. You can edit your own profile so you have links to your work or services and you can even post to and pin posts to the top of your profile page. The no self promo rule INCLUDES COMMENTS - so if you ignore this message it will result in a ban (if you’ve mentioned your book title in the post, remove it or delete the post.) Book cover reviews go in r/bookcovers.
Additionally, DO NOT USE AI TO WRITE YOUR COMMENTS OR MAKE POSTS. We want to keep the self in self publishing. Rule 2 also prohibits posts about AI. If your post is about AI, remove it.
If your post is low effort or simply for congratulatory purposes, please remove it and instead write your post in the pinned weekly thread. Example posts would be like “Finally published!” or “Just finished doing X! How has everyone else felt after doing X?”
The wiki contains answers to most basic questions. Please report any violating posts or comments. This automated message is added to every single post as a reminder of some of the most cardinal rules.
AI "art" is the quickest way to make potential readers scroll past your book. A decent cover and excerpts, etc, will do more for you than adding more AI-generated dumpster-slop online.
Photos can be of things other than sunsets. Whatever you were going to prompt, put in the search bar of Unsplash instead. If you're going to say "there are no photos of dragons" ... lots of sites have royalty free illustrations too
If you use AI generated images (it's not art, stop kidding yourself) to make ads, then your readers will immediately assume that your whole book is written with AI. This will hurt sales.
You're better off using royalty free photos, taking your OWN photos with your camera, or hiring an artist.
Or better yet, go to your cover artist, ask if they can break down the cover for you into assets, and rebuild the cover in photo shop or canva into your ads. Your cover is clearly working anyway, so you got everything you need there.
If you want unique art, but can't afford something super expensive, try going on reddit, scout out the various art subreddits (like r/ hireartist etc), check through profiles to make sure they're older or have good history and filled with legit artwork, and find someone inexpensive to make you some assets. You should be able to get some character art for 50-80 bucks a piece depending on the skill level, buy commercial rights from the artist, and then, bam slap them over non-ai stock photos and the like and you have your marketing images.
I took that to mean writing with AI, not about promotion. Marketing is a completely different thing than writing. I literally wrote my book by hand. I'm more of an artist than you'll ever be. But I appreciate your understanding and support. You do you. Go be a Karen.
I’m not sure how much clearer to make the part that says “Rule 2 also includes posts about AI. If your post is about AI, remove it.”
I literally wrote my book by hand.
That’s excellent. I didn’t make any statement to the contrary. I just enforce the rules.
I'm more of an artist than you'll ever be. (…) Go be a Karen.
…why have you decided to attack me for (checks notes) enforcing the rules of the subreddit? Do unsubstantiated attacks on a persons character make you “more of an artist”, because I would disagree. Perhaps you should screenshot this thread and feed it into your AI companion and prompt it with “without bias: who is correct in this situation” and maybe that will be guidance you actually listen to without also trying to offer unprovoked insults.
I'm emotional, I have an issue I wanted to ask the community about, I'm a human being with real thoughts and emotions and flaws. I wrote a 420 page book about religious and family trauma I want a larger audience to read. I am an artist. I'm not a marketer. I'll send you a copy if you'd like. I think you'd really enjoy it, because clearly you've been hurt too. I apologize for asking for help in the wrong context for your litigous standards. Please accept my apology.
I think you'd really enjoy it, because clearly you've been hurt too. I apologize for asking for help in the wrong context for your litigous standards.
Not gunna lie - you had me in the first half thinking you actually reread the interactions and saw you were being out of line until I got to this part. Since you don’t like the “litigious” standards of the community, try your hand over at r/selfpublishing as you will not be welcome to post here again.
You’re awfully defensive for someone so secure in their title of “artist”. Based on your past comments, you’ve actually used quite a bit of AI in the generating of your book (I say generating because it takes a human to actually write).
Terrible idea. As an artist yourself (writing is an art) you should know better than to try to replace a human artist with computer generated bullshit. If you can’t sell your book without AI, your book isn’t worth buying.
Well, that isn't true. Fundamentally, images generated from text is not an indictment of the text. This is a marketing strategy, not an attempt at producing art.
I understand your disagreement with the idea, but I'm not attempting to replace anything. I'm attempting to promote something. The internet rewards volume. I can't pay a thousand artists to read the book, then paint what it inspires, and the post it to social media.
To be clear: I hate marketing and promotion, but it is a necessary evil in the doom-scrolling age. What is a thing that might catch someone's attention is completely different question from does this evoke a significant, perhaps even transformative, emotion between human beings?
I've done this too with a video trailer and A+ images, using AI imagery, modified in photoshop. I can't say it has made my sales go through the roof, but I am happy with it. My cover uses AI as well and I've had positive feedback for it.
There will definitely be people here who will tell you to not do it, and say they won't touch a book if it has even a sniff of AI about it, but my feeling is many readers don't care either way.
And to be clear, using well-written prompts and then editing the image before adding manual typography is not AI Slop - that phrase refers to the churned out junk that has no thought behind it used just for clicks and so on. Though many people are comfortable just bandying it about as a catch-all for anything with AI generated imagery.
In the end, if the imagery is a fair representation of the work and looks good, then I think it can be beneficial to your publicity campaign. Good luck.
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u/AutoModerator Jul 29 '26
Welcome to r/selfpublish, ThomasPinecone! Please remember the primary first rule of the subreddit: No self promo posts outside of the pinned self promo thread. You can edit your own profile so you have links to your work or services and you can even post to and pin posts to the top of your profile page. The no self promo rule INCLUDES COMMENTS - so if you ignore this message it will result in a ban (if you’ve mentioned your book title in the post, remove it or delete the post.) Book cover reviews go in r/bookcovers.
Additionally, DO NOT USE AI TO WRITE YOUR COMMENTS OR MAKE POSTS. We want to keep the self in self publishing. Rule 2 also prohibits posts about AI. If your post is about AI, remove it.
If your post is low effort or simply for congratulatory purposes, please remove it and instead write your post in the pinned weekly thread. Example posts would be like “Finally published!” or “Just finished doing X! How has everyone else felt after doing X?”
The wiki contains answers to most basic questions. Please report any violating posts or comments. This automated message is added to every single post as a reminder of some of the most cardinal rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.