…w/ cover designer Steve Leard
Show Notes
The design process for book covers involves receiving a brief from the art director or editor, generating ideas, and presenting options for approval.
Cover designers often have limited interactions with authors and primarily work through art directors or editors.
Pay and salaries in the design industry, particularly for freelancers, have stagnated and need to be addressed.
Thumbnails on platforms like Amazon have influenced the design of book covers, leading to a focus on legibility and larger elements.
The role of AI in design is a topic of debate, with concerns about the loss of creativity and the need for human decision-making.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:08 Interactions with Authors and the Design Process
07:03 The Design Brief and Constraints
09:02 Pay and Salaries in the Design Industry
12:04 The Impact of Thumbnails on Book Covers
32:31 The Role of AI in Writing and Design
34:00 Concerns and Fears about AI in the Creative Industry
35:06 Legal Ramifications of AI in Publishing
36:27 The Need for Accountability and Fair Compensation
37:21 Controversies and Criticisms of OpenAI
39:16 The Impact of AI on Artists and Creators
41:14 The Dark Side of AI and Social Media
44:34 The Use of AI in Social Media Platforms
46:18 The Potential Benefits and Limitations of AI
48:08 The Controversy of Cover Quotes on Book Jackets
53:43 The Frustration with Front Cover Quotes
Links
Transcripts (by Sunyi Dean)
sunyi (00:16.149)
So welcome to this week’s publishing rodeo and our usual chaotic disorganized selves. We have with us this week, Steve Leard. Am I saying your name right? I should have asked that before. Leard.
Steve (00:33.994)
Okay.
Steve (00:46.27)
Yeah, Leard, yeah, no, he did it really well, yeah. I get some weird versions of my surname. I always have to kind of clarify my surname normally.
sunyi (00:48.264)
Okay, I did it. Yes.
sunyi (00:54.865)
I get so many weird versions of my first name. My favorite at the moment is Sunyijin. But anyway, so I saw a bookseller article some months ago talking about a cover designer who’s launching his own podcast called Cover Meetings and
Steve (00:59.406)
Hehehehe.
Scott Drakeford (01:02.291)
haha
sunyi (01:14.615)
I subscribed to the bookseller and thought, oh, that sounds interesting, because anyone who listens to this podcast for more than five minutes will know I’m interested in all aspects of publishing. And I started listening to that and thought it was a really good listen. So we asked Steve, who runs this podcast, if he would come and talk to us about cover design in the publishing world. And he’s very kindly agreed. So could we ask you to introduce yourself, Steve, and talk a bit about how you, you know, how you came to be where you are and who you are?
Steve (01:40.23)
Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, firstly, thanks for asking me onto the podcast. It was really nice to be asked. Um, yeah, my name’s Steve Laird. Um, I’m solely a book cover designer. Um, I’ve been working in the publishing industry since 2012. Uh, before that I was working in design agencies and doing branding and things like that, but I decided to, to make the switch and, um, and, and come into the, into the publishing world. So, um,
My first job in the industry was with Bloomsbury, publishing in London. And I worked there for kind of the best part of three years. And then, which was amazing. It was a fantastic experience to be part of the team there. And I learned so much in such a short space of time. And I solely, I don’t solely design, but I generally design non-fiction books. It’s quite easy as a cover designer to get.
pigeon-holed into a certain genre. I don’t know how it happens, but you just get known for doing a certain thing and that seems to be my thing. But I think it suits me mainly and I think it kind of suits the way I design quite often. But I do like to do the old fiction cover now and again, just to kind of mix things up and keep yourself fresh. The worst thing you can do in this job is to go stale. So you always want to challenge yourself and push yourself.
So yeah, I was with Bloomsbury for about three years and then from there went freelance. I’ve been freelancing now ever since and I thought I might not be able to stick with just book covers, but so far, touch wood, it’s been like that. I always refer to it as the best job in the world. I feel really privileged to be working with books. It’s brilliant.
sunyi (03:34.347)
Do you interact with authors much? Cause I like from our side, we only interact really with our editors and we are very partitioned off. Um, and I just wondered like, because authors get told all kinds of things about book covers and I wonder how much cover designers know about that.
Steve (03:40.673)
Yeah.
Steve (03:53.027)
I feel like in the same, but on the other side really, I feel shielded from the authors generally. There’s been a couple of occasions where I’ve had contact with an author, but generally more often than not, I’m going through either an art director who is then feeding back to an editor or with the smaller publishers who don’t have a dedicated art department. I’ll be talking with the editor.
But yeah, it’s really, really rare to get exposed to the, I don’t know. I’m not sure if we’re not trusted. I don’t know. We might say something stupid, but yeah, it’s funny how there’s that.
sunyi (04:22.605)
No, I mean, I’m gonna ask.
Scott Drakeford (04:26.776)
I think it’s the other way around probably. They’re trying to protect you, yeah.
Steve (04:29.346)
Hehe
sunyi (04:30.051)
don’t trust us. So we get told things like, this is something a few friends might have heard in genre fiction that, you know, they get sent a cover by their editor, and they’ll say, oh, you know, I’m not happy this bit or that bit, or is this open to discussion? And the editors will say, no, the covers designer has just done one draft and it’s done, and that’s all we can offer you. And then the author’s like, oh, right, okay. And I kind of get the sense that might not be true. And
Steve (04:57.578)
No, that’s not, no, that’s never been my experience. No, no, it, you know, it, it tends, no, I feel like, um, I guess from my perspective, it feels like a cover is, is agreed on in house and, you know, there’s lots of channels that has to go through. A lot of people have to sign it off. And then at that, it gets to that point and then I get the impression it’s then presented to the, to the author.
sunyi (04:59.648)
If you could work us through the process.
Steve (05:26.982)
you know, in a kind of tada moment. And then at that point, the author can say, yes, love it or say no, hate it. And then, you know, sometimes that’s the case of just tweaking. Sometimes it’s completely start again. But my experience has been, yeah, there’s so much back and forth, like sometimes too much back and forth. But, you know, that’s not been my experience at all really. I kind of, I think you, I think, you know, you need…
sunyi (05:29.591)
Yeah.
sunyi (05:48.575)
Yeah.
sunyi (05:53.668)
No.
Steve (05:56.838)
You need the authors to buy into the cover as well. Essentially, I think as a cover designer, we’re creating something that is representing someone else’s art essentially. The author has to engage with it, otherwise it feels like it’s probably not doing its job. Obviously we have a responsibility to potential readers and things like that, but ultimately you want the author to be happy.
an email forwarded from an author who is raving about a cover and how much they love it. And you get one of those emails and it makes you smile, you feel like you’ve done your job.
sunyi (06:37.167)
I would say at our level, we don’t tend to get a lot of input from Me and Scott, maybe for sort of George R. Martin or some of the more important nonfiction authors you’re working with. But that said, I did really appreciate my cover designer, especially in the USA side. He went and like, watched YouTube videos and how to make paper art and cut up a book and stuff to try and do it. And I thought that, I mean, they ended up bringing a paper artist to do it for him. But I was impressed with that.
Steve (06:44.75)
Hehehe
Steve (07:03.509)
Yeah.
sunyi (07:03.775)
But so how does the process work? Like what happens when, you know, from the very start of designing a cover, are you given just like a brief and you work through that?
Steve (07:14.814)
Yeah, I think it’s generally the same most of the time, but it always feels slightly different for every book, which I think again is one of the great things about this job because no book feels the same, no job feels the same, which really keeps the process alive really. I think a lot of cover designers, you don’t want to feel like you’re just doing the same thing all the time.
Scott Drakeford (07:14.981)
Yeah.
Steve (07:39.846)
that could lead to you making the same moves all the time and things like that. So every book is different. So that normally makes hopefully the process a bit different as well sometimes. But yeah, we’ll initially receive a brief from the art director or editor. And sometimes we might have the whole manuscript available. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes you just get a little synopsis to just give you a little flavour of the book. But normally they’ll give you an idea of.
where they want it to sit in the market and things like that. And they’ll give you comparison covers, you know, which sometimes are useful, sometimes aren’t useful. And I think, and I think, you know, the more experience you have working with books, you know, when, um, to, to follow that kind of guidance and when to kick against it, maybe, um, and then from, from that point, I guess it’s just down to, to.
sunyi (08:17.227)
Ha ha
Steve (08:37.714)
idea generation and just having a play and seeing what happens. I’m normally given a couple of weeks from the point of being given a brief and then after a couple of weeks I’ll give a range of options to the art director or editor and then the fun begins in trying to actually get one of them approved.
sunyi (09:02.12)
So I remember from your podcast, you said sometimes that the briefs could be a little bit things like, make it look like a bestseller or, or people just shooting down ideas before really random reasons, like they don’t like the color purple, or they just they don’t buy it and they don’t have that kind of necessarily artistic feedback, but they’re just kind of giving like, does that question make sense?
Steve (09:10.251)
Mm. Yeah.
Scott Drakeford (09:10.735)
Ha ha ha.
Steve (09:24.114)
Yeah, yeah, it does make sense. Yeah, it’s funny. I mean, I’m shielded from a lot of this now being freelance because I don’t participate in weekly cover meetings with the publisher. But yeah, it was being in a cover meeting is a funny place because your work is really being judged and sometimes quite bruisedly. But then, yeah, it can be…
a confusing place sometimes because people will shoot a cover down because it doesn’t feel something enough. Or, you know, I don’t like that cover because it’s got a bird on it and just really random things. It’s like, huh? So you’re trying to translate why people aren’t responding to something. And obviously there must be a reason why it’s not engaging them.
but sometimes that description that’s being fed back to you is a little bit woolly. So you kind of feel like you’re, you’re guessing sometimes. But yeah, I think again, that’s, it keeps it interesting and challenging on our part for sure. But yeah, it’s nice to, I think that.
There’s no, there’s no such thing as a perfect brief necessarily, but you know, I think designers do work best quite often when there is a little bit of constraint. Um, you know, sometimes we, you know, on the odd occasion, we’ll get an open brief where someone will say, do what you like, which on the face of it, sounds like an amazing opportunity. Cause you know, you can go crazy, but normally when that happens, you’ll send them something.
you’ll quickly realize that actually wasn’t an open brief and they don’t actually like anything you did and here’s the actual brief. But I think designers work best quite often when there is an element of constraint because quite often that’s where creativity comes from. But also not at the same time it’s a tricky balance. You don’t want it too tied down because then you’ve got nowhere to go. I think a lot of genres have…
Steve (11:38.154)
almost like an agreed look of what a certain type of book looks like. But I think a lot of designers are obviously trying to push the needle where they can and, um, and push things forward essentially. So otherwise things just become stale.
Scott Drakeford (11:54.267)
Now, you said something interesting. It was actually, Son, you make it look like a best seller. I mean, on the face, it sounds like a ridiculous request. But is that a thing in your line of business? Is there a clear difference between, oh, this is a mid-list, don’t worry about it, this is a best seller, give it your best shot? What does that delineation look like on?
Steve (12:04.546)
Mm.
Steve (12:08.744)
Oh yeah, apps.
sunyi (12:16.119)
Thanks for watching!
Steve (12:19.17)
Hehehe
Scott Drakeford (12:23.661)
on your site.
Steve (12:25.806)
Um, I’m not really sure myself, to be honest, but, um, I think that is something that does get thrown around quite a lot. I don’t tend to get it too much with the types of briefs that I get given. I think it quite often is thrown more at people working with mass market fiction or literary fiction. Um, I think it, that whole, you know, make it look like a big book kind of feel. Um, which, which I think generally.
sunyi (12:28.631)
I’m sorry.
Steve (12:54.866)
loosely translates as see what’s selling really well in this calendar year and then try and make it look vaguely in the same world, but not exactly the same. That’s where you get all these covers which sometimes look very similar. I think publishers sometimes make
sunyi (13:13.599)
like Godkiller.
Scott Drakeford (13:15.543)
Yeah, same.
Steve (13:24.022)
They think a reason a book sells isn’t always because of the cover. You know, there could be a myriad of factors of why a book sells as your podcast always looks into. Um, but, but I think publish, publishers sometimes are a little bit lazy. I think with trying to replicate a look of a particular book that’s done really well and then think that’s going to just work exactly the same next time. Um, so yeah, I think that kind of make it look like a best seller thing.
It’s kind of meaningless, really, but we kind of understand what they’re saying when you hear those kind of things being thrown around.
Scott Drakeford (14:02.967)
Yeah, and I mean, I think every author would like their cover to look like a bestseller, right? So, so do they hand you, assuming other variables are held the same, right? Assuming it’s the same publisher, art director, whatever. Do they hand you a different budget, a different timeline, or is it really a matter of the ones that don’t come down the pipeline with making a bestseller? You just kind of do whatever you want.
Steve (14:06.085)
Mmm.
Steve (14:33.226)
Yeah, from my perspective, I try to approach every job the same really. I’ve never really been one to… It sounds very silly. I don’t necessarily want to work on bestsellers. Obviously I do because I want every book to be a bestseller as I just said. I don’t mind if I’m working on with a really small name author with low sales expectations.
sunyi (14:33.623)
I’m sorry.
sunyi (14:51.566)
Yeah.
Scott Drakeford (14:54.137)
Yeah.
Steve (15:02.91)
If I’m allowed to be creative, that’s kind of, that’s ultimately my priority is to, is to, is to do justice to the book that I’m given and, and I’ll create something which I think works well for the book and for the market and then fingers crossed it sells, you know, it kind of comes down to that from my perspective. Um, but then it’s, it, you know, this, this best seller thing is, it’s tricky cause
It’s when a brand comes to you and says, I want to look like Apple. You know, well, you be like Apple first and I’ll give you a brand which is like Apple, you know, what comes first? Ultimately the book needs to be amazing. You know, we can, we could dress it up and make it look however you like, but you know, the book comes first really.
Scott Drakeford (15:40.709)
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
Scott Drakeford (15:49.265)
Yes.
sunyi (15:59.759)
Do you have more freedom than like an in-house designer? Because I think you’ve done both, haven’t you? So how does that position compare?
Steve (16:04.417)
Yeah.
Um, I don’t, I don’t think I have more freedom. I don’t think as a freelancer, um, I think there’s, there’s pros and cons of being on kind of both really, I think being in-house, you know, you’re afforded more time with editors and things like that. And, um, you can build up relationships with, with
of art directors, editors and stuff. And that might help your process a little bit as well. I guess that I feel like I probably have been allowed a little, I’ve allowed myself more freedom being freelance in a way. I don’t know, this might sound strange, but if I’m in an office environment where there’s lots of different people, I might not be as inclined to do something
crazy as I might when I’m in my own studio and it’s just me and if I do something, it looks terrible, I don’t look stupid. But I guess I’ve done, I think again, the best thing about this job is it can take you into lots of weird places. The other week I was cutting out letters and setting them on fire and things like that.
That would be a bit harder to do if, you know, maybe if I was in house, I might, maybe I wouldn’t be as quite as inclined to do it. I don’t know. I’m not sure. But I feel like maybe, maybe it’s just because I’ve been in the industry longer now and maybe I’m a bit more confident to try new things and stuff than I was in earlier in my kind of publishing career. I don’t know. But I think, you know, talking on my podcast with a couple of art directors and people working in house, you know, it sounds like people are, you know,
Steve (17:57.87)
really encouraged to kind of stretch themselves working house and not be restrained by anything. So I think, I don’t think it makes too much difference. I think publishers generally give the space for creatives to be creative. Yeah.
sunyi (18:12.995)
And this is a dicey question. You don’t have to answer it. And also, you know, I’ll just say like off record, if there’s, if there’s stuff we ask, you can always tell me to cut it and you get to bed it before it goes out. But is there a pay difference between being in house and freelance and like, you know, what is the pay situation like in your industry, if that’s okay to ask, because I know for authors, it really varies.
Steve (18:17.846)
Ha ha.
Yes, cool.
Steve (18:31.275)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it’s a funny old area, this one. I’ve started in the podcast, I seem to have thrown myself into the middle of the conversation. But I think pay has always been one of those things in publishing generally, but I don’t know so much about other departments. But in art departments, it feels like fees for freelancers basically haven’t changed much in about two decades.
sunyi (18:49.651)
Mm.
sunyi (19:03.699)
Ouch.
Steve (19:04.334)
which obviously isn’t sustainable for a lot of people and puts people off staying in the industry, won’t attract certain talent. I think it tends to lead to lots of other problems where you get the certain type of person who can basically afford to work in publishing. That kind of feeds into this issue that publishing has been too middle-class and all that kind of stuff.
But I think it feels like in this past few years, collectively, a lot of designers seem to be talking about it more and being a bit more open about it. Cause I think there’s always been a fear for particularly freelancers to be talking about pay that you kind of feel like, you know, if you, is that kind of feeling if you cause too much of a stink that people are going to stop giving you work and things like that. And, you know, everyone I know working in the industry absolutely love this job. You know.
wouldn’t wish to do anything else really. But at the same time, people need to be paid what they’re worth essentially. And I think in the past year or two with cost of living crisis and things like that, I think it’s really jerked quite a few of us into pushing for free increases. I know a lot of people who have been asking for more money and I would encourage every…
freelancer to do the same if they’re listening, because I think it’s important. I think we need that collective movement really to push things on. I think pay, like salaries in-house have been really low as well. I can’t really speak, I’m much more, I’ve been out of in-house for a little while now. I’m not really sure on wages and salaries, but I think they’re increasing.
probably not enough if you’re trying to work as an intern in London. But hopefully it’s moving in the right direction, just probably a little bit slowly. But I think it’s something we need to talk about more as designers. Cause I think that’s the way things will change ultimately. And rights as well for designers, which is another big one, which is a bit of a minefield for freelancers as well.
sunyi (21:31.14)
I’ve got one quick design question and then I was going to kind of ask about the elephant in the room and it was in a second, that being AI. But I was really interested in one of your early episodes, you’re talking about how thumbnails have changed design. And just for anyone who’s not had a chance to listen to that podcast, would you be interested in going over that a bit and how it’s impacting the way book covers look?
Steve (21:33.004)
Yeah.
Scott Drakeford (21:37.447)
Yeah.
Steve (21:38.419)
Oh yeah.
Steve (21:48.055)
Hmm.
Steve (21:56.598)
You mean like thumbnails on Amazon and things like that. And yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s always been, you know, there’s a lot of people working in our industry who’ve been designing covers, you know, before the Amazon kind of came along and changed everything, where, you know, their only, their only real consideration was how it looked on a, on a printed jacket or cover. But since I’ve been working, there’s always been this weird.
sunyi (21:59.726)
Yeah.
Scott Drakeford (22:00.1)
Yep.
Steve (22:27.126)
tension between you’re creating a printed object, but then also people have this expectation that everything should be legible on a tiny little thumbnail JPEG. And for me, that’s not realistic. But I think, unfortunately, publishers wrongly, in my opinion, and some people might have a different opinion, but you will get a different answer maybe from someone else.
In my opinion, from my perspective, publishers are always being asked to increase the size of everything in the hope that it might be able to be read in a tiny little thumbnail. I think that the result of that is you lose contrast on covers quite quickly. If everything is just dialed up, everything just feels like it’s really shouting at you all the time.
As a result, you go into a bookshop and it kind of feels like every book is almost screaming at you. It’s like screaming for attention. And it’s a particular problem with non-fiction books as well because normally there’s a bit more copy on the cover. You’ve got subtitles to be dealing with and things like that. They want everything big. They want the title big, the subtitle big, the author big, the quote big, whatever icon or illustration you might have on there big.
sunyi (23:31.881)
Yeah.
Steve (23:54.294)
And before you know it, you just, you stop almost seeing the cover. It’s just like, it’s just like visual noise coming at you. Um, I wish publishers, I’ve spoken, yeah, like you mentioned, I’ve spoken about this on a couple of the episodes of cover meeting. Um, I wish publishers maybe would be a bit, a bit more flexible with, with how a book is put out in the world. You know, we have the printed object, which
We still value, we have JPEGs on Amazon, we have Instagram, TikTok. These books are being seen in a myriad of different ways. Why are we creating just one standalone cover which is supposed to be fit for purpose of all these different things? Considering things are so easily, you can change things really easily on a computer so quickly now. Why not have a version of a cover
book, why not have a version which is for Amazon? Why not have a version which is for Twitter, Instagram, et cetera? Yes, it’s a little bit more work for the designer, but personally I would do that if it meant that the book wasn’t spoiled, essentially. Sometimes I feel like the cover actually covers a spoil because of this kind of push for everything being big so it could be seen on a tiny, tiny thumbnail.
Also, sorry, I’m going to ranting here. Also, I don’t really believe people shop in that way on things like Amazon and things like that. You know, I don’t, I think the way you browse a bookshop is different to how you use Amazon. A thumbnail on, on Amazon or any other book retailer online is supported with.
sunyi (25:26.227)
No, no, keep going.
Steve (25:51.246)
copy right next to it, it has a thumbnail, but literally right next to it is the title, the author, the subtitle. It’s not like you have to read it just on that little thumbnail. There’s other additional copy available to you. I don’t think people would just sat on Amazon browsing through tiny thumbnails and then just clicking on one aimlessly. I don’t think people shop like that on Amazon personally. I could be wrong. But so I feel like this
Scott Drakeford (25:57.947)
Yeah.
Steve (26:19.054)
of forcing everything to work on a thumbnail is a big mistake and a frustration for me. And I think probably quite a big frustration for a lot of book cover designers because I don’t think it serves the book well ultimately.
sunyi (26:34.539)
don’t get illustrated covers anymore for our genre. I really miss those the 90s sci-fi fantasy painted covers.
Steve (26:40.318)
Yeah. Well, I think it kind of forces people into a certain way of designing almost. And, um, and, and again, kind of feeds into this, this phenomena of everything looking a little bit too similar. Um, yeah.
sunyi (26:59.571)
Right. If you don’t have a further question, Scott. So I very early on you had an episode with Michaela Ocano, who if for listeners tuning in, if you don’t know Michaela Ocano, but you read sci-fi and fantasy books, you’ve probably seen a cover she’s designed like Night Circus, Shannon Chakrabarty. Oh, God, who else?
Scott Drakeford (27:20.894)
Thank you.
sunyi (27:26.671)
think, oh, Naomi Novik, I think, some Patrick Rothfuss covers, definitely Jennifer Saint. So, you know, names that we would recognize. And she had a bit of a viral incident online about an essay she wrote about AI. And I was interested when she came onto your podcast to give her side of it. And that was helpful. But I have to say, I personally did still think that she was being a bit naive.
Steve (27:47.074)
Yeah.
sunyi (27:55.511)
But I’m interested to hear your take on AI and especially, you know, you’re talking about pay is stagnating publishers wanting to be lazy and cut costs. Yeah, what’s your stance on it? Go for it.
Steve (28:01.154)
Yeah.
Steve (28:05.738)
Yeah, it’s, um, well, yeah, it’s, I’ve, I’ve.
sunyi (28:13.335)
I’m sorry.
Scott Drakeford (28:14.4)
How many enemies would you like to make today Steve?
sunyi (28:16.96)
I’m sorry.
Steve (28:20.906)
Yeah, I really appreciated that conversation with Michaela.
Steve (28:26.318)
I think she, I guess, opened my eyes to the debate almost because it did hit like a bolt out of the blue with the AI thing, because it is such a quick emerging technology. We’re all trying to catch up still, no matter what industry you’re working in. Personally, I wish AI just would disappear, but it’s not going to. I think, I keep, I’ve been reading a lot about,
since I started the podcast, really, I’ve been in a bit of a rabbit hole with AI. It’s kind of terrifies me. But I feel like we’ve got a duty to learn about as much as we can, because I think if we do just bury our head in the sand, I think it could all go quite badly, quite quickly for anyone in creative industries.
I think, and I have read a lot of pieces where there is kind of a more positive spin on AI, but I feel like ultimately I think AI in its current carnation, obviously things are going to change, you know, exponentially year on year. But AI as it stands now is a very reactive.
form of creativity, you know, you can create something really quickly and it can look quite interesting sometimes, but ultimately it’s just replicating what’s been fed into it. Um, so within that, there is a challenge to anyone creative, um, to, to force yourself to, to be one step ahead of AI, you know, if, if you’re constant, constantly evolving your work, then AI will always be trailing
you know, in your path. I guess where the potential naivety comes from with that is ultimately who is in charge of making decisions with how to use AI. If, you know, if publishers decide to use AI to create cover designs, they might not look very interesting, but the person in charge of that publisher might not give a damn, you know, they’re, they’re cutting out a big cost from their perspective.
Steve (30:54.906)
And they’ve got something which looks okay. So I feel like we have to make sure that publishers and decision makers within publishers, uh, value creativity. Um, and everyone seems to be making the right noises so far on that front. Um, but things change and you know, someone will create a publisher.
where AI is heavily involved and traditional publishers will have to compete with that publisher. And then that’s where things start potentially changing. I think, um, kind of more broadly, I mean, I personally can’t see myself using AI to create work. I don’t see why I would want to. Uh, it sounds great. It must be the same for, for authors. Um, you know,
sunyi (31:44.727)
Hmm. No.
Steve (31:52.606)
I hear a lot of, yeah, why would you, why would you, um, why would you delegate that off to a, to a machine? Um, and also like writing a book is hard. Um, it’s, it’s not easy, but, but that’s the point, isn’t it? It, if it, if it was easy, it would be vastly less interesting, you know, a lot less interesting and, and everyone could do it. Um.
sunyi (31:53.779)
Yeah, we like writing, why would we want someone to do it?
Scott Drakeford (31:57.08)
Yeah.
sunyi (32:13.076)
Yeah.
Steve (32:22.126)
I think going through the struggle of writing something or creating something is that’s the joy, that’s the process, that’s the humanity of what we all do. I don’t understand this need to aid creativity in whatever guise it may be and this obsession with speed.
sunyi (32:31.792)
Absolutely.
Steve (32:51.45)
cover design or a 10,000 word essay in 30 seconds. What do we need it? I don’t understand why we need it fundamentally. All it seems to be doing is, um, helping people who couldn’t do it otherwise to do it. Um, um,
sunyi (33:11.919)
Yeah, you get a lot of writers who you get a lot of people in writing groups who have the kind of, I’ve got an idea, but I just need someone to do the writing for me, you know, the, the boring bit and it’s like, no, that is that is like literally the whole thing that’s like saying I need, you know, I want to have success, I just need someone to like do my job for me like well. And I think those people I mean.
Scott Drakeford (33:22.242)
So many.
Steve (33:22.898)
Yeah.
Scott Drakeford (33:33.803)
Bye now.
sunyi (33:35.227)
It just scared, there’s so many ads for AI, because I’m an old crusty person who still has a Facebook account. Every second post is like an AI ad. I block them, I block them, I block them, they’re still there. And the other thing that freaks me out is like, we used to see AI covers come up on social media and we’d sometimes post them to score and go like, oh yeah, that’s AI, you can count the fingers and see all the rough bits. And now it’s like, we post one and we are all looking at it, arguing for 15 minutes. Like, is it AI? Is it AI they’ve touched up? Because it’s getting better and they’re getting better at blending it. And that part…
Steve (34:00.621)
Yeah.
sunyi (34:05.432)
unnerves me as well.
Steve (34:07.166)
Yeah, no, it scares me to my core. But yeah, so I just, it’s one of those things where you start thinking about it too much and it’s hard not to be depressed by the time you come out of those thought patterns. But I just feel like as a community, whether that be authors or designers or anyone really, I think that kind of.
sunyi (34:30.857)
Mm.
Steve (34:35.853)
collective action, I think almost to kind of, I think people need to pull together. Cause I think as a freelancer, you know, you can’t, you can’t do anything on your own. Like, you know, we have to, I do, I really believe we have to champion ourselves and make sure that publishers and people running publishers, um, don’t, aren’t tempted essentially. Cause, um,
sunyi (34:58.963)
If it if it reassures you at all, a lot of people I know just anecdotally are getting anti AI clauses in their contracts. And there are there are specific publishers who are very resistant to and there are some who are much more minimal. And there and we’re getting it for audio as well. I think something that would help in the UK as if many people as possible join the Society of authors and we’re kind of using that as leverage.
Steve (35:06.014)
Yeah, I think that.
Steve (35:21.27)
Yeah.
Steve (35:26.271)
Yeah.
sunyi (35:26.425)
I was, I’ll start going.
Scott Drakeford (35:28.828)
I do think you make a good point, Steve, that like it or not, we as artists, whatever our medium are likely going to be competing with AI in some fashion. And AI is going to continue to improve to the point that, and this is just Scott talking, you know, don’t come after or send you or Steve for this. At some point…
sunyi (35:50.903)
Yeah.
Steve (35:51.576)
Hehehe
Scott Drakeford (35:55.755)
It’s going to consume the work of people doing things that aren’t all that creative, right? The people who are just churning things out to churn things out, who don’t go through a very exhaustive creative process, and who are okay with mediocrity or at the very least some form of uniformity rather than tied to their own sense of style or sense of
Steve (36:03.283)
Yeah, yeah.
Scott Drakeford (36:25.563)
personal accomplishment, where I think, I mean, I think that means that if anything, bespoke work and detailed, meaningful work becomes even more valuable, right? I hope. But my primary issue with the use of AI right now and what I hope happens and where I, I
Steve (36:27.059)
Yeah.
Steve (36:41.394)
Yeah.
Scott Drakeford (36:55.531)
There could be very big legal ramifications for people and publishers using AI right now because the companies putting out these tools are, as I’m sure you are all well aware, are training their models in some instances on copyrighted data, on copyrighted work. And…
That’s obviously a huge issue. You know, we had OpenAI’s CEO, who I don’t like very much, say, I haven’t liked him for a very long time. So I really did. OK, so this is tangent time, but I come from the tech world, at least sort of want to be in the tech world, at least from engineering and software and product and everything.
sunyi (37:31.063)
I’m sorry.
Steve (37:34.734)
Hehehe
sunyi (37:35.967)
was cool. You hated him.
Scott Drakeford (37:51.907)
And so he used to be the president of a group called Y Combinator, which is a, honestly, a really cool, um, startup accelerator that I applied to once upon a time. Um, and, and they fund all sorts of different startups, but, uh, that’s where he was before this opening, I think started, but he’s never had a startup success on his own. Like he, he started, he started a startup. If it raised a ton of money and failed miserably, he tripped somehow.
into being the president of YC and this super smart guy named Paul Graham has some sort of really, really creepy man crush on him. And so he’s been, he’s just been a parasite in YC for like 10, 15 years. And then somehow he brown-nosed his way into being involved in this open AI thing. And if you, I did this actually. If you go to chat GPT.
and you press it enough in asking whether Sam Altman, ah, shit, I shouldn’t say his name. I’m gonna get so much hate for this. But well, maybe not. We’re truth tellers, right? But if you press chat GPT enough and ask it whether Sam Altman has any personal accomplishments of his own, it will admit that no, he does not. After it says, oh, well, he’s been at,
sunyi (38:59.532)
I’ll edit it.
Maybe not.
sunyi (39:14.736)
I’m sorry.
Steve (39:16.334)
Hehehe
Scott Drakeford (39:20.083)
Y Combinator for this many years and he’s worth a bajillion dollars because he’s found his way into investing in all these companies probably without his own money. And maybe, okay, anyway. There are…
Steve (39:33.41)
Ha ha.
Scott Drakeford (39:37.999)
He has a sister who has made some really horrible accusations against him and her other brother as well. Yeah, I won’t go into that because I can’t speak to whether those are true. But anyway, I’ve had a problem with Sam Altman for a long time. Not really a personal problem because I’m not on that level to have a personal problem, but more a problem born of envy. Anyway, because if somebody’s going to trip into success, why not me? Anyway, my—
Steve (39:42.914)
Yeah, really dark, yeah.
Steve (39:56.823)
Ha ha.
Scott Drakeford (40:08.567)
My big problem is really that using AI in this age of companies that are producing these models without checking and without paying for appropriately IP and creators rights, a publisher or whoever, but a publisher who uses AI art is endorsing that.
bastardization of IP law, which is crazy because their entire fucking industry, their entire model, is based on IP. Like, they will rake people over the coals if somebody goes and tries to mess with their copyrighted shit, right? And the stuff that they’ve bought the licenses for, but when it’s somebody else’s IP, all of a sudden it’s okay. So anyway, yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s…
Steve (40:48.155)
Yeah.
sunyi (41:02.603)
Disney sex vault all IP yeah if you don’t know what that is people go google
Scott Drakeford (41:07.795)
Very recently I Don’t know I don’t know what it is and I’m not gonna ask Sonia about it because I don’t know that we want to Go that weird on the podcast, but apparently we’re going to
sunyi (41:14.071)
Okay. Anything, anything, okay, anything that you draw, as I said, anything you draw, like, that looks like a Disney character, right? They’re very strict about it, that means it belongs to them. So if you as an artist jokingly draw like, the Beauty and the Beast getting it on in a very like obvious, explicit way, that gets, they can’t publish that, but you can’t have it because it’s there. So it goes into this big vault full of other forbidden Disney images.
which I’d like to think of as the Disney sex vault, allegedly anyways.
Steve (41:44.994)
Hahaha
Scott Drakeford (41:47.335)
Cool. Yeah. Anyway, the OpenAI… Yeah. I’ll move on from that as quickly as I can. The OpenAI CTO was recently in an interview asked directly, are you training on copyrighted material? Are you training on YouTube videos? Are you training on these certain things? And her only response was…
Steve (41:51.95)
That’s an image.
sunyi (41:57.979)
Ha ha!
Steve (42:01.259)
I think
sunyi (42:03.095)
I’m sorry.
Scott Drakeford (42:16.943)
Ooh, I don’t know. Like, how do you not know? Anyway. Sorry, go ahead, Steve. Sorry.
Steve (42:18.03)
Yeah
Steve (42:21.602)
I don’t know. I don’t know how I don’t really know how anyone’s even going to find out. It feels like the horse is bolted. I don’t know. So.
Scott Drakeford (42:31.252)
Well, there are lawsuits, right? I haven’t followed the lawsuits, but there are lawsuits out there from, I hope, larger companies saying, hey, you used our, yeah, and larger names saying, hey, you used our copyrighted shit, like give us money or you’re dead. Hopefully that’s pursued because it’s super possible to train these models
sunyi (42:41.931)
Georgia Martin.
Scott Drakeford (42:58.971)
freely accessible and or paid for data, right? Like stuff that’s out of copyright, stuff that’s made open source, whatever. Like it’s possible. Or maybe just like pay people what they’re worth for their art. If that’s what you wanna do and you wanna create an engine that creates art in the style of Steve Leard, you pay Steve Leard for his book of work.
Steve (43:24.782)
Yeah.
Scott Drakeford (43:27.699)
and you create a model that can create what he does and you give him some percent of royalties on any output that is used commercially from his work in that model. Like it’s not that hard. They can do this. They’re doing incredible things with their technology. And then when they’re being held accountable for it, all of a sudden, oh, well, I don’t know how we’d even do that. Yeah, fuck you.
Steve (43:53.107)
I think as well as well as like a, you know, designers and artists and anyone using platforms like things, things like Instagram, for example, you know, we all upload our work on onto Instagram. You know, we all accept turns and conditions on using that site. We have no idea how that those images are being used. And I suspect they’re probably being used to train things like AI.
Scott Drakeford (44:08.859)
Yeah. Yep.
Steve (44:17.826)
you know, large language models and things like that. So it’s a kick in the teeth, isn’t it? When, you know, it could potentially do a lot of people out of a career. And we’ve actually helped it on, on its way. It’s ironic and extreme.
Scott Drakeford (44:30.267)
That… That, yeah.
sunyi (44:34.551)
The poisoning thing you mentioned Scott, I’d heard that is happening on LinkedIn, particularly, because LinkedIn already is like, I mean, firstly, LinkedIn is a hell site. If you’re on LinkedIn, what the fuck, I’m sorry for you. But, but LinkedIn has lots of corporate speak and it now is like fully AI automated. If you want it to be, you can tell it to write you like a profile and messages and all this stuff. But everything you write is being fed back into the LinkedIn AI. So it just becomes this kind of cannibalizing incestuous.
Scott Drakeford (44:34.951)
That’s a good point.
Steve (44:46.742)
Ha ha.
Scott Drakeford (44:49.64)
Yes.
Steve (45:01.485)
Yes.
sunyi (45:03.451)
like some kind of monster out of severance.
Scott Drakeford (45:06.027)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that’s not surprising because Microsoft owns LinkedIn and Microsoft also is a heavy investor in open AI and they have the rights to pre-AGI open AI tech. So that’s super not surprising. What Steve just said a second ago though, is really interesting and something that creators might want to take stock of that in using
Steve (45:06.786)
Hehehe
Scott Drakeford (45:34.267)
popular social media sites, we absolutely have agreed to, you know, certain terms that probably nobody knows what they are. And it’s less of an issue for us as writers, because it’s not like we’re uploading our entire book, you know, to Instagram. But we are sharing our covers, right? And we don’t necessarily have the rights to those covers. But when our publisher does it, is that an issue? When a cover designer shares their
their art to Instagram? Is that giving Instagram slash meta the right to use that in training models? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s in those T’s and C’s.
Steve (46:14.349)
Yep.
Steve (46:18.747)
Yeah, it’s such a minefield. And I think the frustrating thing about with AI is I could see a few potential benefits to AI, but it seems to want to do the fun stuff for us. And that’s what it seems to be being sold on. You know, if I had an AI that was essentially a form of a personal assistant and I could just talk to it.
and say, Hey, can you invoice such and such for X amount for this job? And it just does it for me. I can see how that would be useful, but I don’t want to, you know, I open up Photoshop and I’m, I’ve got windows constantly opening up to me, trying to get me to use AI and things like that. It’s like, well, no, that’s why I’m here. Um, so I just wish it would concentrate on the things we probably need a bit more help with and, um.
sunyi (47:10.515)
Oh my god, an AI to write confrontational emails for me.
Steve (47:16.18)
A lot of the things I find frustrating about my job probably could be solved by AI, you know, but, yeah.
Scott Drakeford (47:24.551)
Your CPA is crying in the background. See, that’s the problem with any, you know, especially tech that automates things is somebody’s cut out, right? And somebody’s got to change what they’re doing in some fashion. And I don’t, I don’t think artists are immune from that. I don’t think writers or visual artists are immune from that. And we do have to keep up and we are going to have to understand what the gaps in the market are going to be.
sunyi (47:27.255)
I’m sorry.
Steve (47:37.13)
Yeah. Yep.
Scott Drakeford (47:53.431)
in the future world that is going to go to that future state, whether we want it to or not. But yeah, I do think there are limits and definitely things we should be holding the people we work with accountable for.
Steve (48:08.83)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
sunyi (48:12.323)
you ever feel the need to provide like evidence? Is that a thing that happens now? Because I know there were some contested covers which came out in our genre and you know the designers are feeling like they had to show stages show their work.
Scott Drakeford (48:16.808)
Oh, yeah.
Steve (48:26.834)
Yeah, not so far, but yeah, I could see it happening. I can see it happening for sure. Um, but yeah, thankfully, thankfully not yet, but yeah, if you kind of get to the point where you have to evidence everything you’re doing, just in case someone challenges you, it could be tricky as well. Um, but yeah, I think there’s going to be all sorts of things that crop up, you know, as, as the, the industry battles with how to.
integrate AI into our world.
sunyi (48:58.615)
Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve now reached the unless you’ve got further questions, Scott, we’ve now reached the part of the podcast where I ask what kind of you want to tell us what the smallest hill you’d be willing to die on and it can be a really petty fun thing. So like our first one was JT saying, you know, he thought Kelvin was the one true temperature. And I can’t remember what was coming with the others were Sam, we forgot. So I might have to tack one on at the end for hers.
Um, but yeah, if there’s anything like that, no, nothing is too petty. Feel free to convince us.
Steve (49:36.566)
My thing is work related, is cover quotes on front covers of book jackets. I hate quotes on front covers. I loathe them. I wish it wasn’t a thing. That’s probably quite controversial in publishing circles.
Scott Drakeford (49:37.104)
Hmm.
sunyi (50:00.479)
No, I love it! Go for it!
Steve (50:05.418)
For me, as a designer, it quite often muddies the intention behind a cover and what we’re trying to communicate. I think most quotes are bullshit. I think they’re quite often made up. It often feels like David Pearson, who was one of the guests on the first season of Cover Meeting, I’ve heard him speak.
a different event where he says that the language that is used on quotes is so dialed up to the point where it becomes meaningless. Everything is fantastic, amazing, brilliant. You see it so often. I don’t know, does anyone believe that anymore? It just seems pointless to me. I don’t know if it’s just-
Scott Drakeford (50:48.236)
Yeah.
sunyi (50:50.291)
sure to force.
Steve (51:05.55)
that the kind of the publishing equivalent of just name dropping that someone knows such and such whoever’s appearing on the cover.
sunyi (51:10.807)
So that.
sunyi (51:14.251)
There’s, yeah, there’s two things with it. The first is the name. I think it doesn’t really matter what you say. But I have had a lot of people tell me, Oh, I tried your book because VE Schwab blurbed it. And but I think I think oftentimes like, like if I sit in a blurb, often the publisher will come back and be like, actually, can we reword it like this? It’s like, yeah, fine, right. So it does go through a filter.
The other area it helps is Amazon listings, where there’s like an editorial review section and the more you have of them, the more the algorithm likes, so they just try and get as many as possible. But anyway.
Steve (51:45.322)
I think, I think, I think they’re useful in, in certain contexts. And I think that’s what back covers are for. again, it’s just this kind of visual clutter thing. you know, there’s, there’s already enough on there. And I think, again, I think publishers, it seems like a real petty thing. Cause I think it’s one of those things I, it’s one of my favorite moans. I.
sunyi (51:53.415)
Yeah, that’s totally fair.
sunyi (52:15.647)
Yeah.
Steve (52:15.79)
I have it to my partner. It normally happens at the last minute. You’ve got a cover you’re really pleased with and then at the last minute they drop in a quote. It’s like, oh, I see. I have a moan to my partner who’s not a designer, she’s not in publishing, she’s not in this space and she just does give that kind of look of just, oh, get over it. Just get over yourself.
sunyi (52:41.028)
I’m sorry.
Steve (52:44.63)
I think it’s particularly with a lot of my work, which tends to be quite restrained and kind of stripped back and simple. And I think people just think, you know, we’ll just add a quote on there. That’s fine. But I think it doesn’t take a lot for a cover to kind of collapse. And if you add something on there, it can quite often affect…
like the balance of a cover and essentially how it’s communicating. So I wish we could go back to a time when front covers were for illustrative elements and titles and all the quotes are on the back cover. I think it doesn’t take much to turn the book around and look at all the quotes from the lovely people saying nice things in lots of dialed up languages about it. Oh yeah. So just away.
sunyi (53:39.563)
jacket. There’s somewhere away, yeah.
Steve (53:43.31)
So I’m prepared to die on that hill. I’m not going to change my mind about it. I will be, you know, fretting under my breath every single time it happens. And it’s never going to change.
sunyi (53:47.144)
Ha ha!
Scott Drakeford (53:50.262)
Ha ha ha.
Scott Drakeford (54:00.332)
That’s a really good one and I just scrolled through all of your covers that are on your site and I do notice that there are relatively few that have quotes on the cover.
Steve (54:10.462)
Yeah, I think, yeah, I, yeah, I, it’s that tricky thing of being a freelancer of the point where you, you know, am I being a bit of a brat about this and making a nuisance of myself as a fine line? But yeah, it’s, it’s
Scott Drakeford (54:13.103)
You fought for it, huh?
Scott Drakeford (54:25.184)
Yeah. Yep.
sunyi (54:29.823)
A lot of these I can’t see where you’d fit a quote on, like the left behind one where it’s like you actually need all of that space.
Steve (54:36.462)
Oh, they manage. They manage. But sometimes it happens without me even knowing about it. I’ll send off the files to print and I see the final book and it’s got bloody quotes been slapped on the front. That’s really, that’s a killer. But yeah, I don’t know. I think I’m due to moan about cover quotes in a.
Scott Drakeford (54:39.448)
Just shrink everything.
sunyi (54:40.16)
Uh…
Steve (55:04.534)
in an upcoming episode of my podcast with someone else who I know equally despises them. So I think we’ll have a good therapy session together at some point.
sunyi (55:18.983)
Yeah, on that note, actually, would you like to kind of plug yourself where people can find you your work your podcast? We do get some industry people that listen in so you never know.
Steve (55:29.422)
Yeah. Um, yeah, you can see my work at, um, my website is leard.co.uk. That’s L E A R D. Um, I’m on Instagram, um, at leard underscore design, I think my handle is. Um, and then the podcast is called cover meeting, which, um, yeah, you can find through, you know, any way you listen to your podcasts, um, I’m not sure when this episode’s going out because, um,
I’m actually a couple of weeks. I’m actually launching a dedicated website for it. Um, covermeeting.com, which in a couple of weeks, it should, it should be there for people to see and you can, you can find out a bit more information about the people that feature on the podcast.
sunyi (55:58.444)
weeks. Yeah.
sunyi (56:14.187)
I’m glad you’re doing that because that is always a pet peeve of mine when I look for websites on podcasts, just because it’s a lot easier to search episodes and you can’t find them and it’s like you can’t search Spotify is the most annoying thing. So if you’re making a podcast, guys, please make a basic, basic bitch website. It’s so helpful.
Steve (56:19.41)
Yeah.
Steve (56:25.94)
Yeah.
Steve (56:30.451)
Basic website. Yeah, it should be up. I think it is live at the moment. It’s just not fully functioning, but yeah.
sunyi (56:36.266)
Yeah.
I was on it earlier, I think. Yeah, anyway, yeah, thank you so much for coming on. That was a lot of fun and really informative. We really appreciate it.
Steve (56:46.814)
Yeah, cool. Thank you very much for asking me. Hopefully it’s been helpful.
sunyi (56:53.18)
Yep, I will stop there.
Scott Drakeford (56:53.595)
That was great. Thanks so much, Steve.
Steve (56:55.854)
cool.
Publishing Rodeo Podcast 