All great stories begin with a flop, right? Let's just say yes to make me feel better. About three weeks after the publication of my debut novel, I made the decision to leave my publisher and effectively pull my debut novel Janis and the Reaper from distribution. Long story short (and all allegedly of course!), they treated some authors worse than dirt, they refused to market my book or put it in bookstores, and they changed their business practices to prioritize making money over helping people. Basically, I left and they kept my cover as collateral damage and now I am republishing so if you already own a copy: Hooray! It's now special!
Listen, I liked my cover, I really did, but I think we can all agree to come clean about it here and call it what it is: artificial intelligence. I didn't have much of a choice (alleged publisher time management issues) but I'm still apologizing for my misstep of using the cover anyway. That doesn't mean I don't like what the AI created and how my cover artist put the elements together, but I have to own up to the fact that it was made by a computer, not a person. And despite having a person putting the pieces together, a jigsaw puzzle doesn't belong in a museum.
Currently, I've commissioned a friend of a friend to mock up the next cover for me and so far they are doing a great job! It has been said before and I'll repeat it now: AI has no soul and nothing human-made can truly be replicated by a computer. AI also steals art from other artists in order to create AI art so it's really a lose-lose-lose. Not for me.
If I may also dive into the weeds a little bit here and make a point about copyrighting and AI...? I can? Oh, wonderful! Computer generated images can't be copyrighted. Feel free to browse through the legality of that in the link, it's dense but very interesting. What about in the case of my cover where the artist took AI elements and put them together? Nope! Still can't be copyrighted.
To summarize that last link, though you should read the whole article as it's fascinating, even with substantial adjustments on the part of the human artist, AI art is still non-human in origin and cannot be protected under a copyright. For example, a photo taken by a monkey can't be protected by copyright because a monkey isn't human. Kind of makes you think, right? If I really wanted to, I could just use my cover in perpetuity without ever attributing it to the original artist. But I won't. This AI art isn't worth the headache of being connected in any way to my previous publisher.
While the cover is created by someone else (verified human), I'm having to comb through my manuscript and do the copy, line, and proofreading edits myself while two volunteers transcribe the PDF into a Word document. Sounds like a lot of redundant work but it's because the PDF is the most recent copy of the manuscript I have from a program called Atticus. This allows authors to format their books for printing but when you download a PDF from them, it comes with some protections laced into the text that prohibits the PDF to be successfully exported into a Word document.
If the edits sound like a lot of work too, you're right! They should have been done before but... That's a story for another day. I'm going with the party line the book industry uses: that the previous misprints are now special editions!
I'm going through my manuscript line by line and fixing all of these errors. Some were inconsistencies with names or capitalization, misspellings, spacing issues like words smashed together, and leftover errors that referenced previous versions of the story. It's a lot and I'm embarrassed by them but it wasn't my job to find them. I found out after the fact when I received my author proof. C'est la vie.
I am hard at work fixing all of this and more. I have an amazing team behind me now who are only cheering me on and rooting for my success. Once all the errors are fixed, I will re-release Janis and the Reaper into the world. I have yet to select a new publication date, but it should either be in December or January. Once that happens, all outstanding orders on my website will be fulfilled and you can read all about Janis and Jay and their extraordinary adventure the way it was meant to be presented.
Thank you all very much for your continued patience again and I can't wait to share with you the next, proper, iteration. Stay tuned for a new cover reveal!
I'm so stoked!!!!! Can't wait to get my better copy!!!