The AI Process For Linda’s Books
Using AI Art to Save our Wild Forests Through Books
AI is widely regarded as one of the most controversial innovations to emerge since the dawn of electricity and the internet. Historical accounts even tell of individuals who once rejected electric power, seeing it as evil or of the devil, before it naturally became part of everyday life. From a business and marketing perspective, AI’s steady expansion into nearly every industry has stirred valid fears around job security. Yet when there is a willingness to adapt, this technology can transform existing roles rather than eliminate them. Like any powerful resource, AI can serve either positive or negative ends, depending on how it’s harnessed.
In creative spheres—especially art—critics often argue that AI “steals” styles or techniques from human artists. One way to address this concern is by training AI on an artist’s own work, allowing them to preserve their unique style and aesthetic while scaling their output. In Linda’s case, AI-generated illustrations are used in her books to scale book sales, and proceeds from these sales go directly toward her mission of protecting and expanding wild forest habitats. By safeguarding established habitats that nurture old-growth development and acquiring more land to cultivate thriving ecosystems, Linda ensures these invaluable landscapes can continue to flourish in a fast-growing world. This approach shows that AI need not overshadow human creativity and can be utilized to expand human efforts in saving our wild planet.
Linda begins by sketching a rough draft of each book cover in Procreate, a digital art program that replaces the traditional paintbrush and canvas with a tablet or computer. This preliminary step allows her to capture the desired color palette, aesthetic, and overall vision for each project.
Once her initial draft is complete, Linda uploads it into MidJourney to train the software to replicate her artistic style throughout the book. This approach ensures a cohesive look across all the images, a critical factor for children’s books that rely on visual consistency. While it’s possible to have AI generate images on demand, doing so without training rarely results in a unified style and color scheme across multiple pages—a shortcoming Linda addresses through this focused, and sometimes tedious, training process.
She repeats these steps for every page. Although it requires less time than creating each scene by hand, it still takes hours—or sometimes days—to refine each illustration to her standards. Yes, AI can produce a quick image in seconds, but Linda believes that maintaining quality and consistency is worth the effort, especially in a format where visuals play such a significant role.
After generating the images, Linda returns to Procreate or sometimes uses Canva for further editing, a stage that can be quite involved. AI’s well-known quirks—like occasionally adding extra fingers—often demand thorough adjustments before the illustrations are ready for publication. Although it’s technically feasible to use the initial AI-generated image, Linda understands that her audience expects a certain level of polish, prompting her to meticulously refine every detail until each illustration meets the quality her readers deserve.
Producing a quality book still requires a significant investment of time and effort, and Linda’s process is no exception. After using AI-assisted methods to create illustrations, she must also format and design the book, write the story, edit, publish, and handle every other step of the independent publishing journey. While AI streamlines certain tasks—especially compared to drawing each piece by hand—it doesn’t make any part of this endeavor “easy.” As a self-published author, Linda relies on these tools to save time, but the creativity and dedication involved remain substantial.
Linda’s motivation for incorporating AI is largely practical: it helps her scale her products and earn a living. Today, nearly everyone can be an author, artist, or musician, which is a wonderful expansion of creative expression. However, it also saturates the market, making it difficult for artists to stand out and earn a sustainable income. By speeding up the illustration process—reducing what could be six months or more of work down to one or two—AI enables Linda to release new children’s books at a more frequent pace, build her reputation, and make a living doing what she loves.
This approach supports Linda’s conservation efforts to save our forests. She has long dreamed of publishing books that reveal the magic and beauty of the natural world to both children and adults. Thanks to AI’s efficiency, Linda can devote more time to telling these stories, all while keeping her work financially viable. She views technology the same way she views any tool: it can be misused or employed ethically. It’s possible to abuse AI by copying art and plagiarizing authors, but it’s equally possible to train AI on one’s own designs to scale up a business without infringing on someone else’s intellectual property. In Linda’s eyes, this is no different than earlier debates over whether digital art programs like Procreate or Photoshop were considered “real” art, arguments that dissipated once people saw the care and dedication required to create digital artwork.
WRITING AND AI
When it comes to writing, however, Linda does not rely on AI. It isn’t because she’s opposed to using AI for storytelling, but she finds current publicly available models incapable of producing genuinely inspired work. While they can piece together a passable poem or narrative, the emotional depth, nuanced character development, and captivating plots—hallmarks of a talented author—are lacking. ChatGPT, for instance, may form coherent sentences, but reading its output can be dense and repetitive, more reminiscent of a dry textbook than an engaging novel. Furthermore, it often recycles the same structures, which is how educators began spotting AI-generated student papers. Linda believes AI might be useful for straightforward nonfiction projects, but only with thorough fact-checking, as misinformation frequently sneaks in.
Writing has been Linda’s passion since childhood. She filled notebooks with poetry, songs, and short stories, turning to both books and the solace of the natural world when her home life was difficult. At nineteen, she wrote her first complete fiction novel and immediately translated it into a screenplay. By her mid-twenties, she had published her first biography—a testament to her relentless drive to become a recognized author. She considers herself an author above all else: the stories swirling in her mind demand to be put on paper and shared with the world. For that reason, every word in each manuscript must come from her own mind and hand.
That said, Linda acknowledges AI’s usefulness as a mild editor—especially for shorter texts such as children’s stories—and she finds it more efficient than generic web searches for certain research tasks, like setting the right location or verifying historical details. Even then, she double-checks anything AI provides because of its occasional inaccuracy.
For those who have followed this discussion about AI and ethics, Linda appreciates the genuine curiosity. She recognizes that many people are concerned about the moral implications of using such technology. Yet when employed responsibly, AI can give artists the freedom to make a living from their craft without resorting to theft or plagiarism. Linda invests immense time, passion, and excitement into each book, determined to spark a sense of wonder for the wild world that has always inspired her. Through every story she creates—whether aimed at children or adults—she hopes to encourage an appreciation for nature’s magic and beauty, proving that we can embrace new tools while preserving what makes art (and the artist) truly unique.
We can choose to be afraid of new technologies that are ever-emerging or we can use them to shape our world for the better and expand human creativity.