Judge My Book By Its Cover

I am compiling my essays on the history of people believing in extraterrestrials

I am now about 55-60 percent finished compiling a book from the essays I have written here about the history of people believing in, and communing with, extraterrestrial beings. It is not a book about UFOs. In fact, flying saucers do not appear until halfway through my outline. Per my intended subtitle, this is a book about a form of spirit-communication that has been practiced in America since the dawn of the nation.

I had Grok AI generate a few random book covers based on the title and got four choices that were … good, actually? I do not think I will actually use these, but they are fair mock-ups of what I intend.

The best front cover, according to a poll I ran on X, is the one above. I have a few small changes I would want to see at the corners, and I dislike the nipple-shape of the saucer underbelly, but I like the antiquarian idea and the saucer seeming to burst forth from the cover. It promises the reader that the text will age well. Men will be the primary audience for this book, and they prefer things on the cover instead of people.

I like this as a marketing look. A little flying saucer hovering over the book like a book light works for me, though I would probably prefer a nighttime aesthetic to make it spooky and have the saucer’s light stand out on the cover, as though the aliens want you to see the title.

The thing that Grok AI got right with this one is the fake-photorealism. It’s very much like the photography of Eduard ‘Billy’ Meier, a Swiss UFO prophet that is already in my book. If the reader has ever seen the poster of the flying saucer on Fox Mulder’s FBI basement office wall, they have already seen his most famous photograph, uncredited. AI is probably the perfect technology to capture the ‘uncanny valley’ look of Meier’s photos.

Finally, I really liked this. It looks like one of the books I would pull eagerly from a shelf to read as a child-skeptic. I like the cerulean blue, the clouds reflected on the bottom of the saucer to suggest high altitude. Something like this might be a terrific back cover, with the blurb in the darkness of outer space just above.

Go ahead and judge my book by its cover. I anticipate wrapping up the draft in January and getting the book proposal out in February. Fingers crossed. Hope everyone had a happy holiday.