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@pragprog why do you use obviously AI-generated covers for your books? It makes them look cheap. This one looks passable but a lot of your others are just bad.
(Assuming this is not a rhetorical question, as you boosted it.)
We use a wide variety of initial image seeds at the beginning of our cover creation process, including author's personal art, stock photos, and some experimentation with AI, but all of the covers include a very significant amount of human graphic artist time.
Internally, we produce somewhere between 5-10 very different cover alternatives for each title, and authors have a significant voice in imagining and refining their covers.
Cover imagery is an area where it's impossible to please everyone, maybe even a majority. People hold very strong subjective views and often find it hard to believe others have diametrically opposed perspectives.
We try to offer our authors a much wider range of choices than most other tech publishers, but that sometimes means readers have a wider range of reactions to our covers. We value feedback on everything we do, even if it's critical, so we appreciate you taking the time to give us yours.
>all of the covers include a very significant amount of human graphic artist time
I just don't believe that. Just look at the details on these covers, which I found scanning your titles for about one minute:
1. https://pragprog.com/titles/utj3/pragmatic-unit-testing-in-java-with-junit-third-edition/utj3.jpg
2. https://pragprog.com/titles/mmteams2/creating-great-teams-second-edition/mmteams2.jpg (what, was a photo of three dogs holding a stick so hard to find?)
3. https://pragprog.com/titles/bhtmux3/tmux-3/bhtmux3.jpg (come on, this one is especially bad)
4. https://pragprog.com/titles/mvhtmx/server-driven-web-apps-with-htmx/mvhtmx.jpg (again, what there aren't any photos of bison looking at ponds you could find?)
5. https://pragprog.com/titles/tmbodies/charged-bodies/tmbodies.jpg
Maybe you make good books, I don't know, but if I opened a blog post and saw a header image like this I would not read it.
>I just don't believe that.
I assure you it's true - although your disdain for what they produce is pretty clear.
Many times, we're not looking for an actual photo - in fact, we've had an increasing pushback against stock photo/artwork seeds, especially from our authors.
It's a combination of reasons, including the fact that stock photo and other pre-existing artwork licensing is not exclusive. Photos/artwork we've used has ended up representing other things - that is a problem.
Other times, a generic photo is exactly *not* what we're looking for - the htmx cover is a great example of that (your #4). The htmx.org culture is distinctive - laser-eyed bisons of peace memes and all.
https://swag.htmx.org/products/htmx-laser-bison-of-peace
Happily, they loved the cover, (see screenshot) despite it being a safer choice than a closer match to their style.
Again, we know cover art is an emotional topic. We honestly appreciate your feedback - even though it's so strongly negative it steers you away from our content.
>assure you it's true - although your disdain for what they produce is pretty clear.
lol. Please explain what your human graphic artist "produced" in this cover: https://pragprog.com/titles/utj3/pragmatic-unit-testing-in-java-with-junit-third-edition/utj3.jpg
Was it the "pragmatic" text they photoshopped onto the machine next to the wobbly buttons and dials that morph into each other?
It's hard to understand the investment in deriding the cover art of a publisher with whom you have no connection.
You've expressed your strongly held criticisms; we've tried hard to reply with respect and candor. If you're looking for something else, it's unclear what that might be.
Not sure where the acrimony is coming from, but once again, thanks for your feedback.
@pragprog I'm looking for you to stop stealing art and either pay photographers or graphic designers to create your cover art, or even just have a big disclaimer that the cover art is AI-generated slop instead of human-created like your books (presumably?) are.
So, of our last 10 published covers (https://pragprog.com/titles/):
Rails Scales: AI train car, with about 2hrs hacking by graphic gut, stock mountain.
Rails 8: stock art
Creating Great Teams: stock art
Common Sense: stock art
C# Brin Teasers: stock art
Clojure Brain Teasers: stock art
Advanced Rust: stock art
Guiding Star OKRs: stock art
A/B Testing: stock art
Phoenix LiveView: stock art
We pay for all stock artwork, and spend a lot of time tweaking it in-house
Here's an illustration - these two comments are immediately adjacent in our notifications feed. We listen and hope to learn from all our feedback, over both the short and longer term. Thanks again for caring enough to give us yours.