It\u2019s a warning against leaping to a conclusion, or judging people or things by their appearance. It reminds us that beauty is more than skin deep, and that two swallows don\u2019t make a summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s much empirical evidence in the book trade, however, that \u2013 like it or not \u2013 the cover of a book sells<\/strong> the story, even if it doesn\u2019t tell<\/strong> it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this: We also know that artificial intelligence is worming its way into all our lives. Here\u2019s a tale of cover creation, from first-hand experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the writers I know moan about covers and publishers. Rarely does an author \u2013 other than a completely self-published one \u2013 have editorial control over the cover design. Big publishers have professional design crews, who often seem to bully writers. Many independent publishers use templates that permit only small modifications of art and typeface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Living up to the aphorism, such formulas of cover design point to something generic, to which genre<\/em> the book adheres. The cover is a tool of categorization, a typecasting, not a description of the individual distinctiveness of a piece of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what happens if we throw artificial intelligence into the mix \u2013 as a cost saving tool and to break the stranglehold of templates and categories? Having just been through the process with my novel,\u00a0The Fleetwood Half-Orphan Asylum<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, here\u2019s an account of what transpired and what it inspired. …<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read more<\/a> at<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A famous aphorism about life in general draws its analogy from books: You can\u2019t judge a book by its cover It\u2019s a warning against leaping to a conclusion, or judging people or things by their appearance. It reminds us that beauty is more than skin deep, and that two swallows don\u2019t make a summer. There\u2019s … Continue reading The route to publication \u2013 cover creation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism","category-don-nordberg-is-on-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/DNwriting-banner-large-1024x179.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n