Cover Art - How Much Effort?

New member and new(ish) author here. I’ve been writing for a little over a year. Prior to finding Lush, I never even thought about cover art.

Before I published my first story, I wasn’t sure where to start. Then I saw a forum post that said it was acceptable to use AI to create cover art. I’ve been using ChatGPT. The amount of time I’ve spent is borderline embarrassing. Between the time it takes to render images, coupled with the number of “content violations” I’ve encountered… Yeah. Like I said, embarrassing.

Yes, I realize that there are probably some better options outside of ChatGPT. I just have not explored them yet.

I am curious… How important is cover art to you? How much time/effort do you put into your cover art?

Like you, I've also spent an embarrassing amount of time using AI (I use Perchance instead of chatGPT) to create cover art. My first couple of stories didn't have any cover art, but I felt my recent ones needed it. It depends on how related to your story you want the images to be. It seems that the more specific your story is, the more keywords you'll need to use. Which can be annoying

Quote by paddlingincognito
How much time/effort do you put into your cover art?

A lot. If I can find a sexy pic that sparks an idea or matches the storyline, I'll justs tick a title on it. Sometimes they need editing in Affinity to add fades or layers. Other time I use freebie generators, but the results are usually disappointing so it's a last resort.

Most of the time I spend an hour or two on cover art. Sometimes, like in my latest comp story, that equates to longer than it took to write!

Cover art in my opinion is just as important if not more so than the story itself. Same with the tagline. Why? The cover image can convey everything your story is trying to tell. I’m sure at one point in life you’ve heard the proverb “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It’s because that one image can convey your thoughts, feelings, questions, statements, etc, more effectively than words can. People are visual creatures, that’s how we primarily process the world around us.

So, if you have a great story and you know without a doubt it can achieve hundreds of likes, thousands of views, and awards, you might not get the recognition because the cover art wasn’t strong enough to hook someone into opening up your story.

What makes a good cover image? Nudity works, a degree of sexual activity does too (kissing, groping, suggestive positioning. So long as you follow the no genitals guidelines). Elements that capture the heart, soul, or idea of your story. The location of where your story takes place. For example, my story Humpday (But it’s Saturday) takes place in your everyday laundry room. I found an image that captured the exact feel I was going for. You’ll also want to look into color theory too (if you really want to get into the weeds of finding or crafting cover images).

When it comes to finding images themselves, I prefer stuff that has been produced by a human. Ai images are good (especially if you prefer cartoon style images) but they tend to lack the human element if that makes sense. Hunting for that perfect image for your story is just as satisfying as writing the story itself. I usually find my images on deviant art, general search engines (I use brave), shutter stock sometimes, and porn sites.

Quote by Evocative

Cover art in my opinion is just as important if not more so than the story itself. Same with the tagline. Why? The cover image can convey everything your story is trying to tell. I’m sure at one point in life you’ve heard the proverb “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It’s because that one image can convey your thoughts, feelings, questions, statements, etc, more effectively than words can. People are visual creatures, that’s how we primarily process the world around us.

This is helpful.

When I published my first stories on Lush, the cover art was pretty bad. It fit the story, but it was dark and gritty.

I was curious about how cover art impacts clicks/reads. The fact that the story was a five chapter monstrosity (25.000+ words) probably played didn’t help.

Up until now, my entire AI experience has been in ChatGPT and Copilot.

I recently updated the cover art. Because I was using ChatGPT, getting anything beyond PG-13 was challenging. Even prompting ChatGPT to “make a smile look more seductive” generated 'content violation’ errors. It was frustrating. I ended up with cover art I am happy with, despite still appearing a little “cartoonish”.

It looks like I really just need to branch out beyond ChatGPT, learn how to use some photo processing tools, and rethink my approach.

Quote by Evocative
Ai images are good (especially if you prefer cartoon style images) but they tend to lack the human element if that makes sense.

I used AI for a while but its sometimes as much work getting the prompt right so it gives you exactly what you want as it is to search some stock libraries for a good match. That said, I had some good results. This was the AI generated cover for my Christmas story from a year ago. Story was about a young woman whose Christmas shopping was more about indulging her penchant for exhibitionism than actually buying gifts.

And the story:

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/quickie-sex/minnies-merry-mall-christmas

My stories tends to be story focused so an image that relates to the story gets preference. If I can get an image that fits the theme and plot, I don't fuss much about how sexy it is but sexy is certainly a goal on here. See the pic above. Captures the story and character well and it's pretty danged hot, too.

I am obsessed with creating cover art and also story titles. I have google docs full of cover art for stories I’ve yet to write.

And people don’t think it takes any talent to ask AI for art, but prompting AI to produce quality work that fits your needs takes thinking and a writing skill in itself. I’ve sometimes written a story in my prompt to get the picture I want. This is one that I could only create once, then it caught on that I’d sneakily worded my prompt to get it to create a nude and it wouldn’t do any alterations. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Quote by KimmiBeGood
prompting AI to produce quality work that fits your needs takes thinking and a writing skill in itself

That's kind of what I was getting at with my comment on AI prompting being as much work as searching for stock art. AI is fickle servant at best and needs a lot of handholding to really get what you want, in my experience. If I was actually hiring it, it would probably be dusting off its resume before its probation was up.

Quote by Seeker4

That's kind of what I was getting at with my comment on AI prompting being as much work as searching for stock art. AI is fickle servant at best and needs a lot of handholding to really get what you want, in my experience. If I was actually hiring it, it would probably be dusting off its resume before its probation was up.

My sis just got certified in some sort of AI prompting. Her company wants them all to integrate it into their projects, debugging, coding, etc.

Quote by KimmiBeGood

This is one that I could only create once, then it caught on that I’d sneakily worded my prompt to get it to create a nude and it wouldn’t do any alterations.

I get that! I had ChatGPT create this image. When I prompted it to lighten the image or make it a little more life-like, nope. Content violations. In my head I am screaming “I am asking you to update something that YOU generated!”

And yes, I now realize that ChatGPT is not the right tool for this. Using ChatGPT for this is the equivalent of trying to find vintage ‘70s porn on Netflix. You might find a random documentary. But you aren’t going to find the full version of Debbie Does Dallas.

Quote by KimmiBeGood

My sis just got certified in some sort of AI prompting. Her company wants them all to integrate it into their projects, debugging, coding, etc.

My company is doing the exact same thing.

Quote by KimmiBeGood

My sis just got certified in some sort of AI prompting. Her company wants them all to integrate it into their projects, debugging, coding, etc.

I just approved two of my dev team to take a couple courses on AI development in January. We're planning to use it as needed when we build our new EHR (Electronic Health Record) and billing system. I'm project manager but won't be doing any dev work, just keeping things on the rails.

Quote by paddlingincognito
And yes, I now realize that ChatGPT is not the right tool for this.

I used Nightcafe for a while. They have multiple models you can choose from, all ones that specialize in image generation. Some of their models are a bit picky about NSFW content, though. That image I posted is about as racy as some will allow. I think some others here have made use of it as well.

I have used the site Mage Space, with a $10/mo plan. I apparently don't understand how to use most of its features, but some of its models will do racy stuff like this, while others will stubbornly include clothes you didn't ask for. To get a decent cumshot, I use words like "clear, translucent liquid dripping down her chest" -- if I say "white liquid splattered on her chest" then she might look like an ice cream sundae. See the differences below; the second image has fake looking cum, but I LOVE her face and just had to use it. I don't love Mage Space overall, but I figure it's worth ten bucks to generate a few covers and then I can cancel my subscription again.

To be honest, I think they both look like someone squirted decorative cake icing on them. Which is not necessarily a bad thing if the followup is licking said icing off. 😋

One of the more challenging things has been to get continuity across multiple covers for a multi-chapter story. The error I kept getting is “please verify that this is NOT a real person”. So now I need to add things like “fictional character” and “over 18” to all of my prompts. lol

Sometimes I put too much effort into my covers. I'm not even sure if people look at or care about them.

For NSFW romance pics, using Google Gemini is awesome, free, almost unlimited, and instant. For the rest, I do that on my PC.

I spend some time finding a good cover image that I think captures the story well, but by no means does it delay my writing or make me lose sleep at night. Good enough kind of feels like the answer.

So I'm working on cover art for my advent story. And I give what I think is a fairly detailed prompt. And I got something different but that might still work. It's a topless woman kneeling on a beach. Except I asked for a woman in a bikini standing on a beach next to a kneeling man. Way to go AI. I tried some AI editing to add the man in and he looked like something out of a Picasso painting. And not a good one. I only went back to AI for this one because I was having trouble finding stock that fit.

Quote by Seeker4

So I'm working on cover art for my advent story. And I give what I think is a fairly detailed prompt. And I got something different but that might still work. It's a topless woman kneeling on a beach. Except I asked for a woman in a bikini standing on a beach next to a kneeling man. Way to go AI. I tried some AI editing to add the man in and he looked like something out of a Picasso painting. And not a good one. I only went back to AI for this one because I was having trouble finding stock that fit.

I am looking forward to seeing it!

Quote by paddlingincognito

I am looking forward to seeing it!

Don't hold your breath. You might pass out waiting. I deleted the entire ending this morning and rewrote some other parts. Now figuring out the new ending.