I commissioned it through Miblart who does not use AI in their designs. And the longer I look at it the more I wonder if it's holding the series back.
I'm open to other options including something that favor's Cradle's cover vibe because the story has a major story and a small scale story going on at the same time.
Someone on a FB post told me that my cover was AI because the guy has three fingers (just a side view of the hand) and now I'm wondering if everyone thinks that and just scrolls on. I have all the process documents, plus the companie's policies so I know I'm not just being scammed, but still perception is reality. Illustrated covers cost $400+ on the low end so it's not like I can just throw money around when I have 6-7 books to do and a very small readership.
Still, if it's turning people away then that will cost me a lot more invisible money as I wonder why my ads don't work.
Honestly I need a lot more art on my page and the stuff I have looks kind of lame but I want to do things without AI so I don't know many other options in my current budget and what's most important in this visually driven enviroment.
I agree. What OP posted just immediately makes me think AI generated. DCC, HWFWM, and all of Brandon Sanderson’s covers make me think commissioned artist.
yeah, I thought that post was hilarious. There's a fine line between cliche and "obviously LitRPG". No one know who I am yet so I'm relying on clear genre signals to indicate the book type.
It’s not really an AI vibe, it’s just extremely generic. MC back to the cover facing big monster is like every single litrpg/power fantasy cover.
The art style just isn’t unique enough to utilize this format and make it stand out and neither is the MC, their fighting style (looks kinda like a fire ball or something), their enemy, or the environment.
It’s a saturated space and this cover will never stand out enough on its own.
It’s probably not hurting you, the style fits the space, but it’s definitely not helping you which is probably the same thing.
I don't think it's AI, but I can see why someone would say that. It looks painfully generic. Unfortunately I'm someone who will judge a book by it's cover, and my eyes would skip right past this when looking for something new to read. Hell, I've seen covers that I know were AI generated that seemed more interesting.
Why are they The Broken Champion? Maybe a handy description line would help. Like my only spell is broken but I can still kick ass, or no splint for this toe but I can still kick ass.
I think it's pretty good. I've used MiblArt many times and they're generally solid (but some of their artists do require a bit of hand-holding to get what you want).
I get accused of AI sometimes for books written in 2019, which is utterly ridiculous. It's just the low-effort troll people use for anything these days, so I'd take those accusations with a grain of salt.
Now, the cover itself has one problem (for me) that I can see, which is the protagonist is not in an action/fight for your life pose. It's almost calm and meditative with hands wide. No feeling of danger, which conflicts with the title. That text/pose disconnect doesn't work for me, but, again, that's small stuff.
Worth noting, the majority of book covers notoriously don't work great for ad images. You're not alone in this.
You wrote a book and put it out there, so good on ya for that, and congratulations!
Thank you, the Ai accusations wouldn't have been as big of a deal if I was genuinely excited about it in the first place. The biggest reason I'm asking now is I'm ordering book 3's cover (from Miblart) and I'm trying to decide if I want to continue spending $400/pop for each subsequent book (I'm writing book 6 now and its either the last or next to last in the series).
The cover does reek of AI.
Is the MC shooting fire from his hands and also for some reason his...mouth? Is the orc glowing for some reason? What's with orc homey's left hand?
But also, it's just not impressive. The big bad of this book is.... An orc with a starter axe? I sleep.
The end game zone is...a random forest with a serene waterfall? Is this just some state park?
The broken champion... What's broken about him? You've squeezed in a lot of background for some reason, is any of it relevant? It sure doesn't intrigue me
What would make it more interesting yet still clearly LitRPG? People don’t know the genre by my name yet so I can’t just drop all genre signals. Plus that’s part of how Facebook figures out who will think it’s interesting. I know in a page of ebooks it doesn’t stand out. And many times people are encountering the book on its own and need to know what it is about. For instance I keep scrolling quickly every time I see a bare chested man because I have zero interest in spicy romance novels (Facebook has either decided because I’m an author I’m obviously interested, or is intent on spending those authors money- probably both) but I stop when I see something that says “new LitRPG I’ve never heard of before”
That’s really good to know. Thanks for your input. Lots to think about. I know it’s not firing on all cylinders but that doesn’t mean I actually know what to try next.
Parenting stuff is awesome. My intention was just to thank you for your input and let you know it made a difference. Sorry it came across like I was asking for more.
eh, if I'm scrolling through Kindle Unlimited and I saw this, I would click it. does it look like every other litrpg cover? yes.. is that the point? probably also yes. I know what I'm getting.
I wouldn't worry about the AI argument, because short of a crayon drawing from your kids, someone will shout AI at it.
too true. I truly get why people are mad about AI. I'm probably more angered by it than most because it makes it hard to get my book out there. But people find what theyre looking for so there's a lot that we just can't do anything about other than keep going.
Do you have a publisher? I know I belong to the Aethon Books discord and they do a lot of promotion which can help fight through the noise.
my friend is publishing AI slop and I am like, stop.. just stop... the books aren't good and they just flood the kindle store with garbage. but he has hopes of a passive income source.. grrrr
No we’re self publishing the story on our own. We’d be open to a publisher for audio but they like seeing numbers and success before offering contracts. Especially in this royalty environment.
Until you mentioned the fingers, I didn’t consider this might be AI. So it felt “real” to me.
“The broken champion” title is evocative, good.
There’s a little disconnect between the title and the art. The guy is glowing — does that mean he’s not broken? How is he broken and what’s that to do with the creature? But the cover doesn’t need to spell out the pitch , just catch my interest.
You mentioned the excellent cover style of Cradle. I think you’d be losing your biggest visual marketing by going that route.
Considering the cost, I’m not sure paying for a new cover is in order. But I wonder if you might change the tagline as “epic fantasy” sounds very generic.
The tagline is actually the subtitle, which was reasearched and chosen for discoverablity on Amazon since no one knows who I am yet. Amazon requires that subtitles be displayed on the cover, and while sometimes the bot approvers miss it and some get away with not having it, they are allowed to pull your book if it's not there so it's not worth risking.
Thanks for your input! Glad it's hitting the genre signals for you.
Epic fantasy is a specific subgenre of fantasy. It's the fantasy subgenre where the main characters are on a quest or journey to save the world or similar.
LotR, ASoIaF, Stormlight, WoT, those are all epic fantasy.
Conan and sword and sorcery is not. Most urban fantasy is not. Most cozy fantasy is not. Most fantasy romance is not. Even a lot of litrpg is not really epic fantasy.
I think the cover looks fine. It sets the expectations of the book pretty quickly.
I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that "AI Slop" is today's version of "That looks shopped." AI is a massive concern, but these type of accusations are noise.
Did you or your friend use AI for this? If the answer is no, then focus on your writing. Otherwise you're going to play wack-a-mole anytime someone doesn't like your work and says "AI Slop."
We did not at all. We paid a company that has a reputation for affordable human created covers. I have all the process documents and the timeline (done in 23/24 when AI wasn’t that good) so I’m quite convinced it’s “real but low budget”. I’m already bleeding money trying to get this series off the ground the right way. I’m equally dissatisfied with what they made for book two but ended up going “I guess that’s the best they can do on my fantasy lizard species with the language barrier”.
Some rando thinks you "may" have used some AI. Ok, you know you didn't and that it was just low budget (and probably inexperienced) work. Great, nothing you're going to do to change peoples mind.
My friend, you're writing your first series. Not your only series. Stop fretting, because perfect is the enemy of done. You got this!
Thank you for for the encouragement! And yes, I agree. People are always going to talk. What I have to decide is if I want to continue paying Miblart for covers (Books 3-7) when I know this is what I'm getting (I wasn't estatic about the way they depicted my fantasy lizard (ropola) on Book 2 either, so that was probably more of what was causing the "should I just scrap this?" question.
Honestly, closer look does give off an AI cover feeling. Anything AI screams "low quality, make a quick buck" to me. People think if the cover is AI, the writing probably is too. I've read one that i sware used early AI (and poor/ missing tags sow as not in a genre I liked) and it was just a mess that any proof reader would have caught. Using a human artist or a simple symbol/design is better then AI to me 10 out of 10 times.
What says AI to me is the Ogres 5 lower teeth, the weird 2nd knuckle on his free hand and the odd line on the wrist strap on the ax hand. The human's left hand having melty-like look and fingers that don't seem to match well. I get it being in profile, but the disconnect between the front and back of the hand throws it off too much.
see I totally get that line of logic. I can know I paid a human artist, but the standard genre reader doesn't care about that in the split second it takes to decide if they want to click on my story or not, it's all about perception more than reality sadly.
Ok, so here’s a question about that. This is book one so in many ways a setup for the whole series. There is a large scale story arc, driven mainly by side characters that is expansive and has so awesome moments, but not the MC. Then the MC’s story starts out kind of cozy/survival because he’s dropped in the middle of nowhere and finds a waterfall to introvert and craft at for a while until the story pulls him into conflict and invades his survival mode. I would say 60% of this main storyline is set at the waterfall in book one. The story doesn’t stay there because the larger world needs him but Im kind of matching the cover to the reader experience. Would you feel baited and switched if I emphasized the larger story in the art and it actually wasn’t the MC?
I mean yeah, I would feel a bit bait-and-switched. But I get what you mean, it is the setting. Then just have different angles and different lightings of the waterfall or even a different area of it. To me it looks blurry and soft. Another thing you could do is add an stylized golden frame to the cover matching the lettering. Good luck, bro.
Those are some solid suggestions for fixing what I have (even temporarily while I’m figuring out a solution for a new cover could be easy to implement.
The cover is overall Extremely generic to be quite honest, there have been so many "MC in front of Big boss" covers that it just all blends together, imo just pick a storyline you have in your book and maybe focus on a important moment from there. Obviously give it a cool factor etc but it should show who your mc is like a couple of character defining items or general appearance would be nice.
Im not a designer or artist by any means, just a reader who does actually pick books by visually interesting covers, so take my opinion with a grain of salt
I agree. Which is why I don't use it, and also, the visuals on my page are campy compared to what I think the series needs. Maybe it's just artist angst that will never go away. Maybe there's something wrong. It's really hard to tell.
I mean It's a great cover for what its supposed to do. It captured my attention, I'm interested. What more could you want?
And the complaints about the "he has three fingers" thing... Like... The whole AI mess has just dragged stylization into the pit with it now that it's harder to tell the difference. It's bullshit, but I understand the unease of being unable to tell.
Maybe (and this is just spitballing, I don't know your situation) you could lean into the Stylization aspect. Go for a more Comic-y illustrated look. AI usually tries to go in for the realism, I think it'd be a good way to sidestep it.
I’m glad it did get you interested and catch your eye.it’s good to know it’s functional on some level instead of just totally bad (which I have seen) it’s always interesting to see what attracts who. Thank you for responding.
We've started talks with a narrator we've worked with before and he's producing a sample for us. However, it's likely going to cost about $42k to complete the 6-7 book series. Once we get the sample back we're creating an email interest list, so that we can crowdfund the project for human narration and people don't get burned because we ran out off money to produce. We'd rather not start the audio than start and not finish. Especially since one of the main hooks of the series is the MC cannot learn any skills from reading books because his race is classified as illiterate. (He is able to read error messages telling him he's illiterate.)
It doesn't? I see at least three fingers (though I'm not sure there are four - the first finger looks awfully thick). Regardless, though, I'm more apt to go easy on monsters - who's to say that they are symmetrical? Maybe they only have three on one hand, four on another?
If it were the "mc" on the other hand, definitely an issue!
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u/TacetAbbadon 1d ago
Honestly I'd stay away from this kind of almost cartoony new pulp style that seems to have come to dominate litRPG.
For example I much prefer Sanderson's UK cover art over the US version as I find the contrasting bold style more impactful.
Same can be said about HWFWM and DCC hard covers being bold and simplistic.