I'd Rather Be Writing: Use ChatGPT To Generate In World Book Marketing Images

Instantly pull readers into your story world with the right kind of AI-generated image.

Apr 01, 2025

So, there I was, crafting my next digest edition for Read / Write / Run, and wanting to share the delightfully boring (yet award-winning) book I'm currently reading: The Goblin Emperor.

But it's 2025!

Who wants to lazily slap a book cover into a post like it's still 2023?

I wanted the cover to live in its own story-world, rich in atmosphere and context—without writing another word.

The kind of magic a meticulously Photoshopped image use to deliver.

Enter Yet Another ChatGPT Upgrade

OpenAI—lords of AI slop and copywrong—just upgraded their image generation tool. Which unfortunately has led to the Ghiblification of the world. But we’re not going to do that.

Because we’re craftsman. Artisan authors.

It got me thinking though, could I make something fun, that teased out the story. Added more the experience and saved me hours of design work?

Here's the original cover from Wikipedia:

Nice cover—but it needs more, right?

So, I copied and pasted it into ChatGPT 4.5 with this hastily-written prompt:

Create image can you place this book cover into fantasy and medieval writer's desk.

The first two words “Create image” come from pressing the three dot button and clicking Create Image (surprisingly 😉):

Hit the three dots
Then Create Image
Then paste or type in your version of the prompt.

And lo and behold on the very first try ChatGPT created exactly what I had in mind:

Note: It does modify the cover slightly but it’s hardly noticeable. Here the emperor looks a little annoyed instead of looking to the side in the original — let’s call it a fourth wall breaking happy accident.

Here’s a couple more one for my short story and another for my favourite book.

First My Short Story

The image isn’t even cover shaped, it’s a thumbnail.

Create image can you place this book cover into a cyberpunk writer's desk.

For Dune I tried something a little more complicated

I took my favourite book, and the vintage cover version from when I first picked it up as a lonely eleven-year-old boy on holiday in Swaziland (now Eswatini).

And asked for a little more.

Create image can you place this book cover in a vintage science fiction writer's desk complete with elements and doodads from the novel Dune, so that it feel like the writer travelled there and brought back souvenirs.

This would require some understanding of the book, so more than MidJourney could do.

But Dune’s famous, right?

This might just work…

Boom it worked!