covers, alas
I was very lucky with Homestead, which first was published by a very small press. In that case (and it will probably be a singular experience) I got real input on the cover. I even supplied the photograph, which I adore, still. Did it help sell books? Who knows.
Bantam has been very good to the Wilderness series, but their ideas about marketing and advertising don't coincide very well with my own. However, that it something I must, contractually, leave to them. They send me rough first versions of the covers with little notes that say "Isn't this gorgeous!" which does not mean: do you approve? Publishers are very wary about authors getting involved in developing cover art. I guess they are afraid I'll insist that this painting my daughter did when she was four is the perfect cover, or that I'll want something expensive, a detail from a painting they'd have to pay royalties on. They don't care, really, about my taste: they know their readers.
Or they think they do. I have no idea how much real market research goes into covers. I'd love to read some of that work, if it exists. I haven't been able to find it. My suspicion is that it's all done with Magic-8 balls.
Q: Will the public like this cover and therefore buy the book?
Magic-8: It is decidedly so.
Each publishing house has a history or an approach to the cover art issue. It's not something that can be negotiated along with the percentage you get of mass market sales; it is what it is. Like, you're dating somebody who is seriously addicted to coffee and you detest the smell and taste of the stuff. Either you (1) decide it's not going to work (2) decide to learn to put up with coffee or (3) fool yourself into thinking you can change the person in question.
I knew I couldn't change Bantam, which has a cover approach that is fairly traditional and (this was somebody else's word, but it fits) staid, but was I going to turn down my first big contract because of that? Not likely.
If, as discussed some time ago, there are as many of 20,000 new novels published every year, that means 20,000 original book covers have to be designed (and I'm completely ignoring non-fiction, so this number is way low). Most are nothing much to talk about, and just adhere to a pattern established for the genre. But there are some gorgeous covers out there and some beautifully designed books. I have been known to buy a book I have no interest in simply because of its cover and design.
And finally this admission: what makes me happy, the covers that really click for me, will not work for everybody. Would a cover of my choice work for more people than the cover that the publisher designs? A question that will most probably never be answered.