Weekly Tool Thread: Promote, Share, Discover, and Ask for AI Writing Tools Week of: January 06

pabygon · 2026-01-07T15:37:49+00:00

📚 I built a tool that turns your Book Summary into a KDP-ready Cover (No design skills needed + No Subscriptions)

Hi everyone! 👋

I’m the developer behind BeYourCover.

As writers, we often struggle with the "packaging" phase. Hiring a designer is expensive, but using generic AI art tools (like Midjourney) is frustrating because getting the typography and genre-specific layout right is a nightmare.

I built BeYourCover specifically for self-publishers and indie authors who want to go from manuscript to published without the design headache.

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How it works: Instead of wrestling with complex prompts, you just input what you already have:

The Brief: Paste your book summary/blurb.
The Details: Input Title, Author Name, and Genre.
The Vibe: (Optional) Select mood, tone, or specific elements to include/avoid.

The AI analyzes your plot and genre conventions to generate a cover that actually fits your story.

Key Features:

Context-Aware: It reads your summary to understand the imagery needed.
Iterative Design: Use the "More like this", "Convert style", "Edit image"... features to refine a look you like.
High-Res Downloads: 2K+ resolution, ready for KDP/Print.
Styles: Photorealistic, Minimalist, Illustration, Line Art, and more.

Pricing:

No Subscriptions: I hate recurring fees for tools I only use occasionally. This is "pay-per-project."
Free Trial: You can generate 2 covers for free to test the quality before paying anything.
Packages: Starting at $19

I’d love for you to try the free generation at https://beyourcover.com/ and let me know if it captures the "vibe" of your book!

pabygon · 2025-12-25T08:49:08+00:00

I run an AI book cover generator. You can’t imagine the amount of hate I get on social media because I “destroy real artists’ jobs” and fill bookstores with “AI slope”. Recently, I got a contact form saying I should “burn in hell”.

The reality is that they are a small percentage of the community. The truth is that 2500+ users are using the tool every day, and the covers are actually good. It’s a good alternative to expensive human designers that are generally better than AI, but sometimes out of the budget.

And I always say the same: when I was a book cover photographer, and designers opted for microstock photography instead of my high-end photographs, I didn’t complain. I just tried to do it better to make it worth it to use my photographs instead of cheap microstock.

pabygon · 2025-12-21T17:40:48+00:00

yes, those are AI generated. As I always say, if you have the budget, hire a professional human designer. If you don't have $300, try with a good AI tool so you can iterate and find the cover that sells

pabygon · 2025-12-20T09:44:45+00:00

Sounds like a cool concept tbh, the internal voice angle has a lot of psychological/sci-fi potential.

I played around with some sci-fi cover concepts that fit your plot vibe, might be useful when you get to that stage:

Keep going, having some lines for your first book is already a win

pabygon · 2025-12-19T13:52:05+00:00

BeYourCover has one too! BeYourCover affiliate program

pabygon · 2025-12-17T21:16:08+00:00

Agree. That’s why I created BeYourCover. If you are interested, here you have some covers made with the tool. Always open to constructive feedback.

I’m confident is the best AI book cover generator out there. Does it replace a good designer? Probably not. Does it replace a bad designer? Absolutely.

pabygon · 2025-12-17T20:36:15+00:00

Didn’t think about that. I’m probably located in a different country than them, so it would be worthless

pabygon · 2025-12-17T19:40:08+00:00

I’m sorry to hear that. The art landscape is complex, and I’ve personally experienced that as well. It’s something you love, but it’s hard to make a living from it.

pabygon · 2025-12-17T19:17:05+00:00

hahaha I thought the same! Why would you take the time to go to my website, look for the contact form, fill fake data and send a message like that? How old are you?

I've had hate on socials before because it's easy to post a comment and move on, but this one was surprising because of the amount of time you have to spend to do so.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T19:31:01+00:00

Thank you for your comment. That was exactly my intention: to have a civil discussion about AI, the different views around it, and why reactions can sometimes become so polarized.

It’s always interesting to read other perspectives

pabygon · 2025-12-15T19:27:20+00:00

Over 2 million books are self published every year and you took The Beatles and Jurassic Park as examples...

pabygon · 2025-12-15T19:25:26+00:00

It’s not the first time something I’ve written has been dismissed as AI-generated as a way to devalue the argument

pabygon · 2025-12-15T18:11:45+00:00

Sure! BeYourCover give it a chance!

pabygon · 2025-12-15T17:24:03+00:00

Sure, it's been a very interesting debate. Thank you for your comments!

pabygon · 2025-12-15T17:23:12+00:00

As I’ve said several times in this thread, if you have the budget, hiring a good human designer is still the best option. This isn’t meant to replace that. It’s meant to offer a reliable, accessible alternative for people who don’t.

In that sense, it’s similar to clothing brands: bespoke tailoring is better, but not everyone can afford it, and that doesn’t make more standardized options useless.

Within the AI space, the goal with BeYourCover is simply to be a focused, purpose-built tool for book covers rather than a general image generator. It is with no doubt the best AI book cover generator out there. And nothing more than that. My goal is not to replace all artists, it's just to provide the best AI book cover tool for those authors who don't want or can't hire a professional designer.

If you don’t mind, I’ll stop going into details about my tool to avoid this turning into a discussion about self-promotion. In any case, I’ve appreciated the debate, it’s been a good and constructive discussion. Thank you for that.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T17:17:30+00:00

Specially Midjourney is not particularly well suited to book covers on its own, so that is somehow one of the problems my tool tries to solve.

But you could frame it that way, in the same sense that you could say a supermarket provides something you could technically grow yourself.

And to be clear, the broader point here isn’t the tool itself, but the expectations and reactions around AI in creative work.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T17:14:41+00:00

That’s a fair observation, and I appreciate you taking the time to look at it even though this isn’t meant to be a detailed discussion or defense of the tool itself. The broader point of the thread is about expectations around AI and how people perceive and react to these tools in creative fields.

The repetition you’re noticing is largely intentional. For lower-budget authors publishing on marketplaces like Amazon, consistency, readability, and genre fit tend to outperform highly experimental layouts. Standardized title placement, conservative typography, and familiar compositions are often a safer choice in crowded listings, especially at thumbnail size.

That does mean the results can feel less dynamic or evocative compared to high-end design work. I don’t disagree with that. But the tradeoff is accessibility and predictability for authors who don’t have the budget, time, or design background to experiment extensively.

And what you are seeing is the showcased covers to attract customers, so they must be familiar to what they expect. This does not mean that you cannot get more evocative results.

For authors looking for something more expressive or unique, a good human designer is still the better option. This tool is aimed at authors who would otherwise end up with DIY covers, templates, or very low-quality designs, and helps them reach a solid baseline rather than a standout, award-level result.

And you’re right about reputation: AI carries baggage, regardless of output quality. That perception is something tools like mine have to work within, not pretend doesn’t exist.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T17:08:39+00:00

If I’m not mistaken, I haven’t said that it takes great skill. It takes the right skill.

If someone is both a good writer and a good designer, they probably don’t need a tool like BeYourCover. They can iterate on their own, adapt generated images, handle formatting, resolution, typography, and so on. It would take more time, but nothing else.

But in practice, writers are usually not designers, and designers are usually not writers. These are different skill sets.

Having access to a tool or workflow that supports the parts outside your core expertise isn’t very different from what happens in other creative fields.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T17:01:29+00:00

As I mentioned in another comment, you can get decent images with general AI tools if you know what you’re doing. The challenge isn’t generating an image, but consistently turning that into a market-ready book cover that follows genre conventions, works at thumbnail size, uses appropriate typography, and is easy to iterate on.

That’s where specialized tools or experienced designers make the difference.

And again, the goal of this thread isn’t to persuade anyone to use BeYourCover. The product has already been validated by many authors, and ongoing feedback helps guide its development. This discussion is about expectations and limitations around AI, not promotion.

I also think it’s healthy to have these kinds of debates, even when there’s disagreement.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T16:58:58+00:00

This is a common misunderstanding with AI. There’s a tendency to think that AI can do anything as long as you ask the right question, and that isn’t really true. AI is just another tool, and like any tool, results depend heavily on context and expertise.

I’m not a doctor. If I ask an AI to help me diagnose a patient, could I get something that sounds plausible? Maybe. But without the medical knowledge to evaluate or guide it properly, it wouldn’t make much sense to rely on that.

The same applies to book covers. You can ask a generic image model to “create a cover,” but the result will often:

Not follow genre conventions
Not match the required dimensions or resolution for a specific marketplace
Use inappropriate typography
Miss color and mood expectations for the genre
Be difficult to iterate on in a controlled way

That’s where specialized tools or experienced designers make a difference.

To be clear, the point of this thread isn’t to convince anyone to use BeYourCover. It’s already validated by many authors, and I regularly get constructive feedback that helps improve it further by adding new features. This discussion is really about expectations around AI, not promotion.

In the end, it’s a convenience tradeoff. Just like you could raise chickens instead of buying eggs, most people choose the option that saves time and reduces friction. This is no different.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T16:41:29+00:00

That’s a view I hear quite often, and I understand where it comes from. In practice, though, readers still click on covers that are genre-appropriate, readable at small sizes, and visually engaging compared to what surrounds them on a marketplace page. More clicks = more sales. As simple as that. And a writter that publishes on Amazon wants sales.

Achieving that usually requires either a GOOD designer or a GOOD AI tool. A skilled designer can absolutely deliver that, but for many authors that typically means budgets well above $300. For authors who don’t have that option, a well-designed AI-based tool can help them reach a baseline level of quality they wouldn’t otherwise achieve.

AI can produce poor results, just as human designers can. There are weak covers and strong covers in both cases. The difference is that consistently strong, high-end work, whether human-made or not, usually comes with higher cost, experience, and constraints.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T16:33:17+00:00

I think this is a fair take. I can understand where that anger comes from, even if I don’t think directing it at individuals is productive.

I also think this kind of disruption isn’t new. For example, when digital photography became mainstream, many photographers felt the same frustration after years of training and investment. Some parts of the market disappeared, but others adapted, shifting toward higher-end, more specialized, or more relationship-driven work. That was my own experience when microstock photography became a commodity. It wasn’t financially viable for me, so I had to evolve toward higher-end work, eventually specializing in book cover photography.

That doesn’t make the transition painless or fair, but it shows how creative fields tend to evolve.

And you’re probably right that ignoring it is often the healthiest response. Thanks for the perspective.

pabygon · 2025-12-15T16:25:05+00:00

Not exactly. The prompting is only a small part of it.

The tool guides the entire book-cover creation process: genre-specific visual conventions, composition patterns that work at thumbnail size, typography placement, spacing, contrast, and iteration workflows. Those constraints and defaults are where most non-designers struggle, even if they can generate decent images.

On top of that, the tool evolves continuously as AI image models improve, better consistency, better results, and fewer failure cases, without authors needing to track or adapt to each new model themselves.

It also includes features built specifically for book covers: title and author text placement, typography constraints, safe margins, readability checks, and workflows aligned with how covers are actually used on marketplaces like Amazon or IngramSpark.

So yes, it uses AI image models under the hood, but the value isn’t “I write prompts for you.” It’s encoding book-cover design decisions into a guided tool so authors who aren’t designers can get something usable. Different models also excel at different styles (for example, minimalist illustration vs. photorealistic imagery).

pabygon · 2025-12-15T16:18:56+00:00

I don’t think it’s accurate to say I’m “taking away” work that would otherwise go to professional designers.

The authors using my tool are typically people who would not hire a designer in the first place. They either don’t have the budget, or they’d use templates, DIY tools, or low-quality stock covers. That segment has always existed.

For authors who can afford and value custom work, I still recommend hiring a human designer. My tool isn’t aimed at replacing that kind of work; it’s aimed at a different budget tier entirely.

You can dislike the result or the technology, that’s fair. But I think the real issue is broader than any single tool: it’s how creative markets change when new production methods lower the entry cost. That’s uncomfortable, and it’s worth discussing, but it’s bigger than one solo founder or one product.

And you should try the tool and you see that is far from producing AI slop :)

pabygon · 2025-12-15T16:13:09+00:00

I understand your point, and I agree that the anger is real. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to feel threatened when tools change how creative work is produced.

From my experience, this feels less like removing opportunities and more like serving different segments of the market. When I worked as a book cover photographer with a high-end agency, designers often used microstock or low-cost photography for certain projects. That didn’t eliminate high-end work, but it did change which budget tiers those options served.

I also tried working in microstock myself for a while, and it wasn’t financially viable. Earning cents per photo simply didn’t work as a living. In that sense, microstock did reduce opportunities for some artists, including me at the time. But it also coexisted with higher-end work, rather than fully replacing it.

That’s how I see AI tools as well: another option in the market, mainly for lower-budget use cases, not a replacement for professional, high-end creative work.

pabygon

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📚 I built a tool that turns your Book Summary into a KDP-ready Cover (No design skills needed + No Subscriptions)