Newly published authors are at the mercy of their publishers for determining the cover art of their new book. Most people I’ve come into contact with have been happy with their covers. When your publisher is willing to spend the money, you get covers like the above contest winner.
I’ll be spending the rest of the week working on the dust jacket cover artwork for my mother’s upcoming historical novel–which I’ll shamelessly plug when it’s in print 
Her novel is based on the real-life story of a famous outlaw sheriff in Livingston, Alabama shortly after the Civil War ended. Having retired from writing after previously selling two historical romances through Dell Paperbacks and HarperCollins, she is thrilled to see this novel go to print.
We did a lot of research into commissioning artists for the cover art. I cobbled together some concept designs using stock images, with the intention of providing them to a cover artist as a basis to work from. But as I put them together I realized one cover looked promising. My mother loved the cover, so that’s what she’s going with.
I’m trying to talk her out of retirement (can a writer ever really retire?), but she is resisting. She had a lot of fun (I think) doing rewrites based on my suggestions. Now if I can talk her into getting that mystery novel ready for submission…
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