On January 24, 2024, I created and began circulating a short survey for readers regarding book covers created using AI* software like Midjourney and Dall-E.

To clarify, I have never used an AI* software to create my book covers or any text within my books.

I decided to create this survey after seeing an influx of AI*-generated book covers on book retail websites. Many authors are aware of the flood of AI*-authored books that have entered the marketplace in the past several months—I’m not talking about those. I’m referring to the books written by real authors who chose to use Midjourney or Dall-E for their covers.

I considered that maybe readers didn’t care if a book cover was AI*-generated or not but I wanted to find out how they felt about it.

The survey asked the question: You find a book that sounds ideal for you. The cover was created using an AI graphic. Do you still buy it?

The answer options were:

• Yes
• No
• Maybe
• I have a hard time telling if an image is AI or not

Users could only select one answer.

The survey also asked: If you said NO to the previous question, which of the following reasons apply?

This question was optional. The possible answers were checkboxes so multiple answers could be selected. I also allowed users to add their own answers if they wanted to. The provided answers were:

• AI graphics steal from artists
• AI is bad for the environment
• I don’t like how AI looks
• I’m seeing AI too often now and so many of them have the same look
• If the cover is AI, I would be concerned the text inside would be AI too

In order to get a broad variety of answers, I posted the link to the survey in several Facebook groups with a focus on different genres and several book genre sub-Reddits. It was also shared on bookish communities on Bluesky.

Thank you to everyone who shared and took the time to respond to the survey.