I enjoy great cover art and there are some fantastic cover artists out there. Martiniere is great, so is Nicolas Bouvier (Sparth) http://www.sparth.com and David Levy (Vyle) http://www.vyle-art.com. There are more…

It would be nice to see an alternate version release with each; one that the sellers need to see and one that the fans would much more enjoy. (Not that the sellers version would be bad, just different I’m sure.)

I am a fan of great stories…and great scifi/fantasy art. I believe you can tell an entire book’s worth of text with just one incredible cover art piece.

I do like the idea of a poster-release with the book too.

I will say, though, that certain artists will get the nod from me more often than not. I will buy just about anything with a Michael Whelan cover because, for some reason, the publishers who use him have taste that is similar to mine. But Darrell K. Sweet is a total toss-up, which is hardly surprising as the man churns out covers like mad.

From a sheer artistic standpoint, I like Whelan, Yvonne Gilbert, John Jude Palencar, and Jody Lee. Artists such as Stephen Youll are technically good but I’m not too fond of the unrealistic, sometimes gravity-defying outfits that never show wear.* And any time I see cover art that I like I’ll pick up the book and check to see who the artist is… and sure, I’ll read the back.

If the cover art is horrible, I’ll check the publisher. Baen gets a lot of leeway. :D

*For the past three years I have been working with high school photography. It takes approximately twenty minutes in a car for a modern, high-quality outfit to show wrinkles and/or spots. Somehow, I’m skeptical that fighting, say, a dragon is going to be less hard on clothes.

In a book series there’s a third dimension as well, which is maintaining a consistency in feel across a series.

Thank you for this. I love having series of books on the shelf that all match, and it annoys me probably more than it should when this does not happen. The change in covers for A Song of Ice and Fire upon the release of the fourth book pissed me off, since nothing is going to match my copies of the first three now.

I’m not sure the John Harris spaceships match the story especially well, but they look ok.

Covers sell books!

Ditto to that. Though I don’t usually buy books based solely on the cover (I usually feel the need to at least read the DJ flap copy to close the deal), it is often a strong selling point, particularly with authors I haven’t read.

I bought Jay Lake’s Mainspring largely for the Martiniere cover — I hadn’t read anything by Jay Lake before, and probably wouldn’t have bought it otherwise. While I liked Jay’s writing style well enough, I really don’t think that the “Clockpunk” subgenre is my cup of tea. That said, I’ll likely buy Escapement (the sequel to Mainspring) when it comes out, because of the Martiniere cover.

Yes, but I would bitch and moan the whole time. It was the John Harris cover, a favorite, that caused me to pick up a book by the then unknown-by-me author John Scalzi and fall in love with the series. When I saw the release for the cover image for Zoe’s Tale I got a HUGE smile on my face. More Harris!!!

“As everyone already stated here I also do not buy books based on covers” Allow me to be one then who does exactly the opposite. Unless I know an author and am buying their book based on the fact that I liked their previous offering(s) I buy books all the time based solely on cover art. I have always been a fan of book cover illustration and I could type a looooong list of authors who I may not have discovered, or certainly wouldn’t have until much later, if the cover art of the book had not reeled me in and said “take me home”.

I realize each person has their own tastes in cover art and that is good. For my money the Harris covers on your books are far and away the best and also some of Harris’ best work. Again, that is my opinion. I also think Martiniere is one of the premiere cover illustrators working today. I never see a Martiniere cover without wanting to take it home. And more often than not I do.