Quote - Caveat: I'm not saying all authors have lousy visions when it comes to covers...all I'm saying is that the cover should be a collaborative effort between the author and the artist and the author should be able to take advice from the artist trusting that they know their field of expertise.

True, although in my experience, usually the more "involved" the author wants to be, and the more of a set idea the author has, the more difficult it becomes to do things from an artistic point of view.

I've had the Art Department refusing the pass a cover onto the author until I painted it over, because while they hired me on the strength of my Poser portfolio, somehow they didn't want my images to look like Poser (DOH!). Then the author promptly remembered to add lots of visual detail about the main characters that wasn't there before (she's too tall, her face needs to be longer, her features different, more muscle, more of a tan, his hair should be longer and have a curl, her hair too, his hair shouldn't be falling over his face despite the fact that it was mentioned it in the description) which caused me to have to re-render and repaint the whole cover again. Or there was that author that had a fixed idea of what he wanted, which really didn't work as a cover at all, then proceeded to make my life hell with what was it, 4 remakes? The difference being that in the first instance the AD didn't do their job, as the author should have given all those details beforehand if she was so particular about them. It was a bit like being a throw-away comodity, in that everybody took for granted that I would just redo stuff ad nauseam until the author was happy. In the second instance, the AD was backing my position, and it was a LOT better from a professional point of view.

On the other hand, my best cover work so far has been where the author gave me a bunch of ideas and a general "feel" of what he or she wanted to achieve, and I took it and made it my own. It's a lot more rewarding when you just click with it.

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