Cover
The Cover view (⌘7) generates book cover art using AI. Choose a visual style, customize text overlays, and let Claude + DALL-E 3 produce a cover — or upload your own image.
Typical Cover Workflow
- Open the Cover view (
⌘7). - Click Suggest Ideas to have Claude analyze your Story Bible and propose four cover concepts.
- Click a suggestion to populate the form, or write your own foreground/background descriptions.
- Choose a style (Photorealistic, Illustrated, Minimalist, or Typographic).
- Adjust the text overlay settings (font, color, size).
- Click Generate Cover and confirm the credit cost (12 credits).
- Review the result. If the image is good but the text needs tweaking, click Update Text to recomposite without regenerating.
- Click the checkmark to set it as active — the active cover is automatically embedded in EPUB exports.
Cover Styles
Select a style before generating:
| Style | Description |
|---|---|
| Photorealistic | Cinematic lighting and depth of field — high-budget movie poster aesthetic |
| Illustrated | Digital art with rich colors and detail — professional concept art feel |
| Minimalist | Clean geometric shapes, limited color palette (2–3 colors), emphasis on negative space |
| Typographic | Abstract patterns and textures — atmospheric backdrop designed for text overlay |
Text Overlay
Customize the text that appears on your cover:
- Title — auto-populated from your project title
- Subtitle — optional
- Author — defaults to your account name
- Font — choose from the available font list
- Text Size — slider from 0.5× to 3.0×
- Text Color — hex color picker
- Banner Color — background strip behind text, with separate opacity slider
Composition Guidance
Two optional fields help steer the DALL-E prompt:
- Foreground — what should be featured (e.g., "a warrior in silver armor holding a glowing sword")
- Background — the setting or atmosphere (e.g., "a moonlit forest with ancient ruins")
Be specific about composition but don't over-specify. "A lone figure silhouetted against a burning horizon" works better than a paragraph of detailed instructions. The AI adds artistic interpretation on top of your guidance.
Suggest Ideas
Click Suggest Ideas and Claude analyzes your Story Bible to generate four cover concepts. Each suggestion includes a concept description, foreground, background, and recommended style. Click any suggestion to populate the form fields.
Generating a Cover
- Choose a style and adjust text and composition settings.
- Click Generate Cover.
- Confirm the credit cost — cover generation costs 12 credits.
- Wait for generation (takes 10–30 seconds).
The DALL-E prompt used is displayed below the controls for transparency.
The AI reserves space at the top and bottom of the image for your text overlay, so key visual elements won't be hidden behind the title or author name.
Updating Text Without Regenerating
After generating a cover, click Update Text to change the text overlay settings (font, size, color, banner) without regenerating the base image. This recomposites the text onto the existing image at no credit cost.
Uploading a Custom Cover
Click Upload Custom Cover to use your own image instead of AI generation. You can still apply the text overlay system to uploaded images.
Cover Gallery
All generated and uploaded covers appear as thumbnails below the preview. Click a thumbnail to select it.
- Set as Active — marks the cover as the official project cover (one active cover at a time)
- Delete — removes the cover and its images
Using Your Cover in Exports
The active cover is automatically embedded in EPUB exports. For the full publishing workflow from cover to export, see Publishing Workflow.
Next Steps
- Export — download your manuscript with the cover embedded
- Publish Metadata — generate blurbs and keywords for publishing platforms
- Publishing Workflow — end-to-end guide from draft to published book