How I wrote, illustrated and printed 3 kids’s books assisted by AI. | by Sre Chakra Yeddula | Generative AI | Feb, 2023

Here is a have a look at your entire course of

Step 1 — The Writing Process

Step 2 — The Illustration Process

Step 3 — Putting it collectively for eBook

Step 4 — Putting it collectively for Physical copy

Step 5 — Publishing

The Writing Process:

To get began, you’ll want to decide on a generative AI instrument that meets your wants. There are many choices to select from, together with on-line turbines and software program applications. Here are some choices for you that I’ve tried as a part of this journey.

OpenAI’s GPT-3 Playground: With GPT-3 Playground, you may enter a immediate or define in your story, and the instrument will generate the textual content for you. For instance, you would possibly enter a immediate like “Once upon a time, there was somewhat woman named Sally who lived in a magical forest. She cherished to discover and have adventures.” The GPT-3 Playground will then generate a full story based mostly in your immediate.

OpenAI’s Dall-E: Dall-E is one other AI instrument that may generate photos from textual content prompts. Simply enter an outline of what you need your picture to be, and the software program will create it for you. For instance, in case you kind “A knight using a dragon whereas holding a sword” into Dall-E, it’ll generate a picture of a knight on a dragon wielding a sword.

Midjourney: Midjourney is a instrument that helps you write and illustrate your kids’s e book. With Midjourney, you may enter your story textual content and specify the type you need in your illustrations. The instrument will then generate a full e book for you, together with each the textual content and illustrations. For instance, you would possibly enter your story textual content and specify that you really want your illustrations to have a colourful, cartoon-style. Midjourney will then generate a full e book with each textual content and illustrations based mostly in your specs.

AI Dungeon: AI Dungeon is one other instrument that means that you can generate textual content based mostly in your inputs. With AI Dungeon, you may specify the setting, characters, and occasions in your story, and the instrument will generate the textual content for you. For instance, you would possibly enter “Sally is in a magical forest, and he or she encounters a dragon. She should discover a approach to defeat the dragon and save the forest.” AI Dungeon will then generate a full story based mostly in your inputs.

Artbreeder: Artbreeder is one other instrument that may assist you create illustrations in your kids’s e book. With Artbreeder, you may specify the type, colour palette, and temper you need in your illustrations, and the instrument will generate them for you. For instance, you would possibly specify that you really want your illustrations to have a mushy, dreamy type with a pastel colour palette. Artbreeder will then generate illustrations based mostly in your specs.

These are just some examples of how you should utilize generative AI instruments within the strategy of writing and illustrating a kids’s e book. By utilizing these instruments, it can save you effort and time and nonetheless obtain professional-looking outcomes.

The choices are plentiful, so it’s vital you decide the instrument that matches your function. Here is how I settled on my decisions. I primarily boiled the alternatives down to 2 classes.

AI Text turbines:

These are instruments that generate textual content from a big corpus of books. They use pure language processing, machine studying, and synthetic intelligence to supply textual content based mostly on the given immediate.

I selected GPT-3 because it gives nice flexibility in producing related outcomes with few parameters and has a big coaching set.

AI Image Generators:

These are instruments that generate photos from textual content prompts. It makes use of neural networks to generate realistic-looking photos based mostly on the given immediate.

I selected Midjourney and Dall-E as they’d a complete set of options, supply a number of picture codecs and supply an easy-to-use API. I couldn’t select between the two so I selected them each and cut up their use between 2 books. This manner I can supply a superb comparability between the two.

Once you’ve got chosen your instrument, you’ll want to give you the overall concept for a e book. I’ve discovered that counting on the turbines to generate an concept for a e book is produced somewhat uninspiring outcomes. See under a number of the rejected concepts that ChatGPT generated that clearly warrant writing an entire e book about. Remember that these instruments are educated on already written works and therefore will discover it actually troublesome to give you a very authentic by no means completed earlier than idea. Their very best quality is to help you in producing content material after getting the thought. This is the key sauce of manufacturing good content material.

Once you’ve got your concept, the subsequent step is to supply content material. At this level, don’t worry in regards to the high quality of the content material. This was my greatest drawback for me in finishing these initiatives previous to AI’s assist. I struggled to get the phrases on the web page. This is the place AI excels, it may shortly generate great amount of content material from just a few prompts.

Once you’ve got the preliminary copy, then it’s time to refine and tweak it for max influence. AI know-how is fairly good at producing generic content material however not as nice at creating personalised and nuanced output that resonates with readers. This is the place your personal work is available in. You must tweak it to your distinctive voice, type and message. The gotcha from earlier than nonetheless stands true right here. AI is nice at producing works based mostly on the previous, you’ll want to produce content material that’s new and distinctive.

I’ll describe this course of and my expertise in nice element under:

Once i had a basic concept, I despatched the prompts over to ChatGPT and produced content material. This took a number of tries to get the prompting proper. Below are just a few examples of the prompts that I used efficiently and a few that I needed to reject.

Successful prompts:

- Give me a kids's Story for a 4 12 months advised that That thematically
makes use of fruits and equates them to emotions In the about story are you able to
additionally give the strawberry the distinctive persona of with the ability to
perceive emotions.
- Can you even have these strawberry educating the opposite fruits it is
energy
- Write me a bio a couple of tremendous hero group known as math squad with
the members being plus-man, minus-girl, multiply and one other 
one among a canine superhero
- Can you add some puns into this textual content.

Rejected prompts:

- What can a title be if this was a kids's e book
- Convert the above right into a script
- Introduce three fruits and provides them distinctive personalities
- In the about story are you able to additionally give the strawberry Is an emotional
attribute That Comes out
- Make the above right into a 1000 phrase story for a 4 12 months outdated with thrilling
and pun stuffed dialogue
- Can you generate a catchy title for this childrens story

You can see a sample constructing right here. Its delicate and can’t be defined however prompting is an artwork kind by itself. See under for a superb breakdown of a profitable immediate each for a textual content generator and one for a picture generator.

Once you get the cling of it, I discovered that the velocity with which I used to be capable of produce high quality prompts received quicker. At this level the entire story was simply {that a} large blob of story content material. This is the place the human factor is available in. I took the story and utilized fundamental rules of splitting the story up into chunks based mostly on expertise (I’ve a 3 and a 4-year-old to whom I learn these sorts of books each day so I’ve a cling of what good web page construction must appear like). For folks which can be unfamiliar with the method. There are nice sources on Upwork and Fiverr that you may rent for a fast turnaround.

The Illustrating Process:

Once you’ve got gone about splitting your story. The inventive aspect of you is now on name! The first step right here is to storyboard the story. This is vital as a result of it offers you a good suggestion of web page construction. The prompts you want for the artwork generator (extra on that under) and the dimensions of the e book (Click right here for my suggestions on measurement and construction of the e book). Below is an instance of my storyboards. As you may see there are a number of edits to web page construction and the way it must be laid out. Storyboarding can also be the place you may create a tough sketch of what you need illustrated. Now prior to now this may have been a difficult step for those that have a tricky time illustrating or sketching. Not anymore! you may simply write in textual content what you need your sketch to appear like after which use the picture prompters to both sketch it or totally illustrate it for you.

Here is my storyboard for one among my books.

Image prompting:

Once you’re completed storyboarding, the subsequent step is to start out illustrating with the assistance of picture prompters. This is the hardest a part of the entire course of. Before we get began let me do my rant on this topic.

Image prompters or Text-to-Image turbines are probably the most inconsistent of all of the generative AI instruments on the market. No matter how good your prompting is that they have main drawbacks. Some of those are the restricted decisions of inventory artwork, the shortage of colour and element, the inconsistent outcomes they generate, and their incapability to offer any type of coherent outcomes from one immediate to a different. They additionally do NOT do nicely with faces.

The above disadvantage is vital to know as a result of this determines your artwork type and the form of output you’re keen to supply and settle for. This wasn’t that large of a deal for me personally since I’ve the flexibility to take a sketch and modify and make my very own illustration, however I can see how this could be a stumbling block for a lot of. I’d advocate for these of us to take some extra assistance on Upwork and Fiverr to complete or to finetune the art work.

See under some examples of me utilizing Sketchbook on my pill to additional illustrate the pictures from the picture turbines.

the way to produce high quality Images

I need to describe my expertise and supply my suggestions on the way to produce high quality Images.

First, decide an artwork type that doesn’t want a number of element. for instance, I picked a layered paper type for one e book and an illustration type for the opposite. don’t decide photorealistic or very detailed character items. That will derail your journey actual quick.

Secondly, attempt to separate your picture into background, foreground and characters. This permits the AI engine to supply extra constant photos. For instance, In my books, i wished to do a burning metropolis as a background with robots in it. The very first thing I did was generate town by itself. This allowed me to get much more background photos of burning metropolis for the reason that AI didn’t need to account for robots or characters. It saved the outcomes constant as nicely. Create your foreground or character photos individually. I’ll discuss how one can put all of this collectively in under sections.

lastly, attempt to save your prompts and use the parameters. Parameters like facet ratio, stylize significantly improve your expertise. In the Dall-E engine use the picture editor to its most potent capability.

Here is an effective cheat-sheet so that you can get cracking.

Midjourney Vs Dall-E:

In my expertise I ended up utilizing Dall-E for extra inventive work. It was actually good at producing artwork kind photos that regarded like artwork and never pc generated. It did wrestle with element although. Midjourney however was capable of generate good detailed illustrations and pictures however you may simply inform that it was a digital kind artwork or AI generated. It lacked the finesse and the layering that actual artwork would have.

Putting all of it collectively.

Before we get into this part, i’m going to sidebar right here and ask you to undergo my e book measurement part right here. Come again after getting completed studying that, understanding e book pointers is essential to supply high quality content material.

Back? alright so now that you’ve your textual content and your photos. Its time to place all of it collectively. There are numerous nice choices for this a part of the journey that aren’t AI instruments. Some examples are

Adobe Photoshop : A strong picture editor that has numerous options that can assist you with the composition of your photos and texts.

Adobe InDesign: A flexible format program that can be utilized for a wide range of initiatives together with books, posters and extra. It’s nice for web page layouts and interactive paperwork.

Canva: An internet-based design instrument that makes it simple to create photos, movies and displays. It’s excellent for individuals who don’t have the time or sources to learn to use Adobe merchandise.

Inkscape: A vector graphics editor that can be utilized to create photos and illustrations for books.

GIMP: A free graphics editor that can also be open supply. It’s nice for producing prime quality photos shortly and simply.

All of those instruments will assist you get artistic together with your content material and ensure every little thing is put collectively in an expert manner.

My favourite of all the above was Canva. Its easy internet interface and good function set made it the proper alternative for initiatives like mine. It allowed me to shortly and simply create skilled wanting e book layouts. It additionally permits me to take my work from my laptop computer to my pill and even my cell phone.

Protip: Spring for the professional model due to instruments like “Image background remover”, extra photos in templates and many others., These are a godsend when you find yourself enhancing Images generated by AI.

Here are just a few screenshots of my work in progress utilizing Canva.

Now that you’ve gotten your e book all designed it’s time for the massive kahuna!

The Publishing course of:

The publishing course of simplified is in 2 classes, publish with a writer or self-publish. What no-one tells you is that self-publishing is really easy even probably the most novice, rookie, new to this entire factor individual like me was capable of do it in 1 day. There are some gotchas although and I’ll cowl them under.

Here is a good video that I used to know the self-publishing course of.

Here is one other one speaking about e book trim sizes and pointers.

The first is to know what are the favored out there choices. Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark are the massive hitters. For the sake of simplicity, I picked Amazon KDP.

The interface to self-publish on Amazon KDP may be very intuitive and can be utilized with out a lot prior expertise. Some gotchas embody.

Use the kindle e book creator to make your kindle e-book. This simplifies the method quite a bit.

Use the Amazons inbuilt ISBN generator to simplify the barcodes which can be wanted on each e book. Pro tip: Kindle books don’t want these, paperbacks and hardcovers are the one ones that do. Only draw back right here is getting an ISBN generated on amazon means you must get a brand new one in case you publish outdoors of Amazon’s ecosystem.

Gotchas of publishing on KDP:

• Pay consideration to trim sizes, Safe areas and margins.
• Use the Amazon KDP trim measurement calculator to design your Canva or different
  instrument’s web page format. 8X11 will not be precisely that!
• Order proofs in several finishes to truly see the way it seems,
  Matte Vs Glossy, Premium paper Vs commonplace paper.

Once completed. Order your proofs and use AI instruments like Jasper.AI and many others., to write down your abstract and descriptions. Then Publish away!

Book and Trim sizes:

Book and Trim measurement setting is essential. Use the KDP calculator right here to be sure you have the appropriate setting.

Here is one other one speaking about e book trim sizes and pointers.

Pitfalls to concentrate on:

While generative AI instruments will be extremely useful, there are just a few pitfalls you have to be conscious of. One of the largest challenges is that the AI algorithms aren’t at all times excellent and might typically produce surprising outcomes. You might discover that a few of your textual content is misinterpreted or that the illustrations aren’t precisely what you had in thoughts.

Licensing Considerations:

Another vital situation to contemplate is licensing. Some of those generative AI instruments include restrictions on how you should utilize the content material you create. For instance, relying on whether or not you paid for the service you might solely be allowed to make use of the e book for private use and never for industrial functions. It is crucial to know the licensing agreements for the instrument you select to make sure that you’re utilizing it legally.

Controversy over honest use:

Now this is a vital matter for me to deal with.

Do works produced by means of generative AI’s not give sufficient financial and title contributions to artists and authors whose works are getting used for the underlying dataset?

The reply to that query based on me is Yes. Although the artwork or work being produced is exclusive it has used some baseline information to give you it. I’d posit that the least the instruments can do is cite references and sources for the content material. For the financial compensation half. I don’t have a superb reply, We must wait and see how this panorama performs out.

In conclusion, generative AI instruments supply a incredible alternative to assist us write and illustrate kids’s books. Whether you’re an skilled writer or simply beginning out, these instruments may also help you deliver your tales to life in a quick and handy manner. With the advantages of utilizing AI, the method of making a e book has grow to be simpler and extra accessible. If you’re enthusiastic about exploring this new know-how, give one among these instruments a try to see what sort of wonderful outcomes you may obtain!

The tremendous incredible wonderful math-ventures of Math Squad — https://a.co/d/9G37icg

The Feelings Garden — https://a.co/d/cgh4oJj

The Anti Coloring Coloring Book — https://a.co/d/ex00ThH