Zombie Book Club

BONUS MINISODE - Human‑Creators‑First: Why We Are Choosing Real Artists & Authors  | Zombie Book Club Ep 126

• Zombie Book Club • Season 3 • Episode 126

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We’re rolling out a “Human‑Creators‑First” policy and explaining why our podcast will now prioritize authors who write their own stories and use human‑made cover art. In this bonus episode we unpack the hidden costs of AI‑generated covers—from unpaid training data to the erosion of artists’ livelihoods—and share concrete alternatives: finding independent cover illustrators, responsibly using stock assets, and leveraging skill‑sharing networks.

If you’re an indie author feeling pressured by AI tools, DM us and we’ll connect you with resources and real‑world help.



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SPEAKER_00:

Surprise. Surprise. Bonus episode. It's a it's a bonus. It's kind of an announcement.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We love you.

SPEAKER_01:

But it's unexpected. Yeah. For you, we knew we were doing this for a while now. Well, yeah, kind of, except we also just decided to do it today.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, we true. It's been building. Um, we love you. We are growing as people. And as a horde. And as a horde and a community. And there's something important that we really think we need to share with you now before 2026. Um, we've been in deeper conversations behind the scenes with a lot of awesome indie authors, artists, readers, and uh folks whose work we feature. And a really clear message emerged. And honestly, it's not one that we weren't aware of. It's just now we're ready to make a clear policy statement. Um but what we heard is that amidst what feels like a tsunami of generative AI that is getting uh violently shoved into our eye holes every day. My eye holes, uh, our book club is here to expressly support human-generated art and writing. And the too long don't listen of this episode, although please hear us out to the end, because like all topics, there is nuance here. We believe that books belong to people, real authors and real artists, not AI. And our mission is to celebrate human creativity now before it's erased.

SPEAKER_01:

Please don't erase my creativity. I'm having a hard enough time as it is. Well, that's when I just press the back button and delete you right now. Control Z. Yeah. So why are we talking about this now? Um, the uh the conversation around AI and publishing is happening as we speak. It's been happening for a while, but it's really ramping up right now. Um, more creators are facing the pressure to uh use AI to cut costs or keep up. And we want to help shape a future that celebrates human creativity.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We want uh we don't believe that generative AI is the inevitable outcome for art.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. For for a lot of people it feels that way. Um, but we we don't think we need it to take over every facet of our creativity. And every corner. And every corner just because it's cheap and easy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it's actually not cheap or easy. That's just how corporations want us to feel right now. They want us to feel like it's inevitable because they're hoping that they're gonna make a lot more money off of us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Look up the AI bubble burst.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um, so we just want our listeners to be informed before harmful norms take root. Kind of like a zombie infection.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Some might say it's too late. The infection has spread. But what we're saying is in our little corner of the internet universe, this is a safe zone.

SPEAKER_01:

It's an AI safe zone. Yeah. So we have a new policy that's going to center human creators first. You can even call it the human creators first policy. It kind of sounds like we're like trying to pass a bill or something. I mean, that has been part of my previous job, so there might be some influence here. Um we're prioritizing interviewing authors who write their own stories and utilize human-created cover art. And why, you might ask, is because we want a future where creators can still pay the rent. Um maybe even own a home. Gas. That's crazy uh no. We don't want creators with homes. We want homeless creators because that makes them hungry and that makes their art better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so when we're talking to folks about who we're going to be interviewing, we're just going to ask if AI has been used and inform them gently that if it has, then this is uh a book club that that focuses primarily on authors that don't use it. And it's not a a judgment call. Your choice to use AI, generative AI specifically, is your choice. Uh, and it's our choice what who we and what we feature on this podcast. And if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I am an AI author, and like this makes me uncomfortable or my feelings are hurt, or how, what do I do without AI? I don't even have another option. I can't afford things. I know that in the last few years it's come to really feel that way because of how much we've been bombarded with AI-generated art and the ease of pressing buttons to make it happen. And we have so many amazing examples of indie authors who are scrappily putting together really beautiful cover art and collaborating with artists and doing all kinds of things to make that possible. And so if you are somebody who right now is in that oh crap moment, um you are welcome to DM us and we're happy to provide you some suggestions if you're open to them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Did you know that I'm a cover artist?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, this entire policy is really about getting Dan business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That's how we're doing it. Actually, I've I have zero, zero business um because my career as a cover artist ended before it even started. Because I I'm I'm gonna say that AI probably had something to do with it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, for sure. Which wasn't really encouraging to even try. The other thing is like I've heard lots of really great examples of people doing like creative trades in exchange for art using stock art that is has the no AI button pressed, because you gotta do that nowadays. Yeah. Um, because they want you to opt in without thinking about it. You have to intentionally opt out. Um, and like you all know, I have my silly little chibis zombies. Maybe you want a chibi zombie. These are things that we'd be happy to talk about with you. But we're I'm not making the point that Dan and I are your one-stop shop as an alternative for the AI. I can't make everyone's cover art. Um, I'm gonna give Alice B. Sullivan a shout-out right now. Go check out her covers. She has a strict no AI cover policy, and she has great covers. And she's just one of many. I'll give another shout-out. Ross Killey author. Uh, worked for worked with um Dahmer art, and no, not the one you're thinking of. It's really this person's last name. Nothing to do with the other one that may be occurring to you right now, uh, who draws incredible zombies by hand. Um, and I don't know what their arrangement is, but he clearly made the choice to prioritize human art for his covers. So there's lots of folks out there doing it, and you can look to them for inspiration.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um something I want to throw out there too, uh, is that I know that not everybody has like a budget for making a cover. And you know, for for there's a lot of people that like have been longtime supporters of us, and you know, a lot like the the trade option um that you were discussing, the creative trade. I forget what you said, but skill sharing. Skill sharing. You know, for I if if one is needed and it can't be afforded, I might be able to do something.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And also people who are good at Canva, like another one that I know was done by Canva as Catherine Al Breen's Rod the Zombie Canva cover. She did it herself. Yeah. And if you're like, I don't know how to use Canva, but there are people who do and who can help you for very little money. Me too. My mom can use Canva. What I don't want this to turn into is a million people asking us for cover. Or maybe that's what you secretly that's our secret, our secret agenda is to be big cover art. I'm already too busy.

SPEAKER_01:

That's the truth. I gotta go get wood pellets after this. I there's there's just too much to do. Yeah. Um, so other people are standing up to um AI generative art. Yeah, some might say that our explicit policy is is behind the times. It is. Yeah. It's true. We haven't really said anything about it until now, with the exception of um, I want to say it was episode 47, our first mini sode, uh, where we addressed our own usage of AI in our episode thumbnails. Um, there was a period of time where I was making AI-generated thumbnails because I I didn't see the harm in it. Um, you know, I I wanted something that made our episodes unique and different from each other episode. Um, and that was a fast and easy way to do it. Uh, and somebody pointed it out to us, and it kind of sucked that day to have it pointed out because these were things that I was not proud of doing. Um, and that was the day that we decided, okay, we're not doing that anymore. And then Leah was like, I can draw little tiny chibi zombies, and that would be cute. So that's that's when we changed. Like we saw the error of our ways and we changed.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And then I got a lot better at Canva. I'm not gonna say I'm great at it, but like, and I don't have time to draw a chibi set of art for every single episode, especially now that we're doing one every week. Um, but through the magic of Canva, we can usually pull something basic together. Uh, I don't think it's episode 47, just as an aside, but we're gonna do a full episode in early 2026, probably out in February, about the AI zombie. Some might say Martha's notebook called It by Kurt Falster. Uh, but we're gonna get into the the depths of this discussion, but for now I'll just say there's an episode out there. It's after episode 45. I'm not quite sure when, but it's out there. It's our first mini sode. I don't think so. Yeah, we're gonna disagree about this. Our first in mini sodes about when a car exploded. Yeah. You sure we talked about AI in that one? I think so. Anyways, let's get back to it. Let us know. Let us know how wrong we are. Yeah, we'll confirm our own source when we do the longer episode. Um, but let's get into some examples of what we have seen and the le and the leadership that we're following from others. First of all, uh, this summer, 70, more than 70 authors signed an open letter calling on publishers not to accept AI-generated covers or content. Um that's pretty big. Yeah. Uh also this year, New Zealand's Premier Literary Prize chose to rule out two distinguished authors from New Zealand because their authors included covers with generated art. Um, and so a new rule moving forward is that any book must not contain AI-generated material, whether in text or visual elements like cover art. And that's just two examples. Like, if you just Google AI generated art controversy, you're gonna get so many.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um, also, this is something that I've noticed in my own findings. Like since 2023, around that era era, uh when AI-generated art started to become more prevalent, um, the writing community in places like Threads and Blue Sky and Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and uh literally any other writing forum or place where people discuss writing. This has been a conversation for that long that um the vast majority of authors are taking a firm stance against the use of any generative AI, like whether it's for the writing process, the artwork, even some some people are even um critical of use of promotional materials created by AI. Um, and a lot of them are not uh supportive of authors who do. So when a book comes out that has that's it's clear that like part of it was written by AI or has an AI cover, that tends to be a pretty big scandal in these writing communities.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So just a brief list of why AI-generated covers are a problem and our perspective, which we know some people are going to listen to this and disagree. Is first of all, they are trained on the work from artists who weren't paid for their work or fairly. So uh, for example, Shutterstock has this veneer of ethics because they claim to pay artists for their own AI generative work. However, I did some digging into how much they pay their artists. And this is specifically for folks who have contributed to their AI generator. This is not for individual licensing of images that are not AI that you can opt into. Because again, in this day and age, you have to opt out of AI. You have to make the choice. Yeah. You have to press a little toggle button.

SPEAKER_01:

And this is all kinds of artists. These are people who create font, these are people who draw um elements, uh, these are people who make frames that go around things, these are people that take uh stock photography of people and wildlife and landscapes or submit paintings.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So if you're an artist that is part of the AI contributor group for Shutterstock, uh the average revenue per image is 0.0078 cents. Which is almost one cent. Yeah. Uh the average earnings that's been self-reported from Shutterstock AI contributor fund is about three dollars a year. Per year. Yes. And artists who opted into this did that because they, you know, and I feel it, and I know people who feel it as fellow artists, the pressure because they're trying to survive. But the outcome is that it's actually not helping them survive, and now their work is being used for nothing. And so again, this is an example of where we are being duped as people. We are being told in every corner and every direction that AI is inevitable. It's everywhere, we have to opt out of it. And then there's the veneer of it being ethical, but you dig a little bit under the surface and you learn pretty quickly it's not. Um, it's undercutting illustrators who are already devalued and struggle financially. Uh, I'm gonna give a shout out to Jason Strutz, who wrote uh Returned, all hand illustrated and created by him. Um, I want to support people like Jason.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, they shortcut creative labor and they remove credit. And they frankly remove the soul of humanity because what is human like, what are we? What is the thing that makes us distinguish as humans? I think it's art. And we already in this capitalist hellscape undervalue it so brutally. This is not the time to to go ten toes down on even further undervaluing it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this essentially makes it absolutely worthless. So any creative expression is therefore also worthless. So, you know, you you might think that like maybe somebody doesn't deserve to make a lot of money by taking a a headshot and uploading it to Shutterstock, but this includes musicians, this includes people who make films, this includes actors, voice actors, um, painters, sculptors.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, that's why the screenwriters guild, the actors' guild all stood down, ten toes down again against AI in their most recent strikes. Uh, and we need to stand with them. And I want to be clear again, this is not about shaming anyone who's used AI. I have used generative AI, putting my hand up right now. Dan Az, we've already talked about that. But many of us don't know the ethics uh because, again, the way that our world is designed, it is designed to uh make us blind to the harm that these kinds of things create. So people like us are learning in real time what the impacts are. And there are so many things uh that this is harmful for beyond just human creators. Uh, and so now that Dan and I have done our own thinking about it, over many years of processing this, we are choosing community and art made by our community members over theft and exploitation because we know we've done too we've done too much reading, we just know the harm and we're not gonna participate in it personally anymore.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's not a world I want to live in.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

So, Leah, what can listeners do to help support um human artists?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you can follow your favorite cover artist, check the inside of books you have and see if there's a cover artist credited and if they've got an Instagram page, a TikTok page, whatever. Follow them. Yeah, we've we've mentioned a couple. Yeah, buy a small piece of art. I know most for most of us, original art uh is expensive. We're all trying to survive here, but just something small, a sticker, would go a long way. I say that as an artist myself. Every time someone bought something from my little uh booth this weekend, whether it was a dollar or fifty dollars, I was stoked. I was like, yes, you love my chicken sticker. That makes my day. Uh you can uh share or repost indie artists' work. You can leave a glowing review for a book that includes a review of the human-made cover. Uh, you can tip an artist. You know, a lot of them will have kofis um or other places that you can send them some money. Uh, and right now we're gonna live up to our own word. We're gonna give a shout out again to cover artist Carl Dahmer, who you can find at DahmerArt on Instagram. And go get Ross Killy's book, Nightmare Jungle. You can find Ross Killy at Ross Killy underscore author, both of them on Instagram, and those will be on the show notes. It's some of the wildest art I've ever seen. Yeah, it's really cool. Uh and again, just to remind you all, this is just the beginning. There's so much to say here. It was actually very hard to keep this short. I'm not even sure if we have. How many minutes are we in, Dan? We're doing okay. Okay, good. Uh, we're gonna do a full deep dive episode on AI for February or March. We'll see, because real things take time. Um, where we're gonna explore the environmental harms, artists' rights, and the future of zombie storytelling. We will bring in perspectives from all kinds of folks, artists, authors, environmental justice experts on things like data centers. Um, and we're gonna talk about in more detail what are the alternatives to AI for indie authors in this era? Because again, so many things are making it feel and appear as if it's impossible when in actuality, three years ago, we didn't have this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, remove AI from the equation. Digital art has never been more accessible than it is right now. Yeah. Literally, my mom can use Canva. My mom has never done digital art in her entire life, but she has an Etsy store.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, although we don't know if the art on her Etsy store is AI generated. We don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

I know some of it is my brother generated.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, that is true. So, you know, um support the living. Read human. Uh word what? Read human. Read human. Okay, delete that. No, I like it. I'm leaving it in. No. Okay, well, human music. Human music. I mean, this is my I was saying to Dan. So I don't want to live in an episode of Black Mirror. Oh, God. Where in a couple of months my um music streaming app title or Cobaz, because fuck Spotify, sidebar, uh is filled with music that is AI generated and soulless. I'm not interested in that. I want music from real artists. I want art from real artists, I want books that are generated from the minds of real people. And I want us to retain our soul as a species.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, if you want to listen to soulless music, listen to country.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, listen to not all country. You know, listen. If you want to listen to soulful country music, listen to Dolly Parton. Yes. Dolly Parton. You want some feelings. You don't want AI Parton. Oh my god, no, you don't. That's just horrifying. They can't replace Dolly. I want to uh restate what we said at the beginning, which is that we're growing people and we're trusting our community to grow with us. We don't have a perfect policy, we don't have a um magical ability to always know something's AI or not. We are specifically talking about that we are going to prioritize authors who utilize cover art made by real artists. And we're not out for blood or anything.

SPEAKER_01:

We're not trying to expose anyone. And I and I know that there's some people out there that do have AI covers. And I just want you to know that this doesn't mean that we think less of you, but we do want you to reconsider that decision. Um even if it maybe to you doesn't look as good. Um or it's more expensive. Uh, because in the end, I think you're going to be really glad that you did, because one, it's uh it's going to be accepted by the reading and writing community. So like by using an AI cover, you're actually shooting yourself in the foot with a large majority of people who don't want to support people who use this technology.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. But more importantly, please don't forget that we ourselves have been through this journey. This is not a statement of judgment. It is a statement of the world we want to live in. And we are hoping that more and more people join us in choosing this as well. And uh again, if you, last but not least, if you are an author who's not sure what to do, if it's not AI, come chat with us in the DMs. As long as it's with positive intent, that is going to be a private conversation. Again, we're not here to blacklist anybody. We're not here to call names, we're not here to be mean or to judge. We know it's hard out there and it's complicated. It's especially hard for artists in every facet. And we are choosing to value visual artists as much as we are choosing to value the writing artists that create the books and stories we love. Uh, in February, you'll get the full fleshed out thought process of where we are at by that point. And for now, the end is nigh, hopefully, for AI. Nice, Leah. I can rhyme. I do it all the time. That rhyme was right on time. That's great art. Somebody's gonna put our face up and throw darts. Probably. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe AI AI darts. They're not gonna actually print it out and and go get darts. They're just gonna imagine it through the power of AI. But thanks for listening, everyone. Uh, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye. No.

Contributor

Dan

Host
Contributor

Leah

Host