Some folks love the smell of new car. Some folks faint for the scent of meat cooking. Some people would sell a child at the hint of freshly baked bread.
Me, nothing warms my soul quite like “New Cover”. Nothing has me up nights in a cold sweat quite the same, either.
Getting a new cover is a special moment for an author, getting the first glimpse of the image that is going to represent their couple and their story. If we’re lucky, it’s beautiful. If we’re not…well, it’s time to think up a really good joke. But in either case, knowing there’s a new cover on the way is much like waiting for labor to start.
You smile to yourself randomly, imagining how your new cover might look. Will it have your hero’s eyes right? Will your heroine have just that right mix of cute and pretty, but not so pretty the reader will hate her? Will they have 80s hair? Will they be dressed?? What will you have to explain?
You worry if you’ll be able to give this book the future it deserves. Will you find the right angle to promote your new cover? Can you get it in front of enough people to ensure it’s chances at success? What can you do now to schedule the best exposure?
What if something goes wrong and the cover is awful? Are you prepared to take on all the extra work of an ugly cover? Can you put in the time it takes to redeem it? How on earth can you make readers look past it?
And then suddenly, when you’re least expecting it, the cover is there. It’s in your hands or on your email screen. With a half-smile/half-worried brow, you scan it for the least imperfections. Start meting out pros and cons. And in the end, no matter how bad or daunting or even fabulous the cover is, you lean back and smile because you’re one step closer to seeing this puppy hit the stores. The worry is over and the plans you’ve put together can roll into action.
Just like Christmas, all that waiting leads to the moment when anticipation meets fruition and then…
Then you’re left slightly bereft, with a whole new cycle to prepare yourself for.
Or do you do something different? What’s your process for new covers? What are your fears and how do you handle them? Do you ignore the fact that a cover is coming? Or are you like me and you stress out so much you find out you’re sleepwalking? Are you mad for that new cover feeling? Or am I the only one?
Dee
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Getting a cover means the book is real. No matter that you’ve done umpteen edits. Until there’s a cover, it’s an abstraction.
I get the email with the ‘cover art’ in the subject line and hold my breath.
I’ve had covers I had to let grow on me, but just like my kids, they’re all my darlings.
Yep, I’m holding my breath for my next cover (for Invisible out in February).
Breach Of Trust was just about perfect. My heroine wears stockings (which fascinates the hero) and some of the “action” happens in the car.
I even love that there are singles under the 100 dollar bill. I joke that’s tip money (what better place to keep it?).
I’ve been fairly lucky so far. I love my covers, love getting them. I immediately print them out and carry them around with me.
But yes, I stress over how they’ll represent my characters. When I got the cover for Hot Shot, I had trouble going back to revisions….I had pictured Gabe in my head one way and seeing him through someone else’s eyes was disconcerting.
I don’t stress about them so much anymore — my Special Edition covers have thus far all ranged from OK to fabulous — but I always hold my breath.
I’ve given up expecting the models to even remotely match the image in my head of the characters (why does it always seem as though the plumper the heroine, the more anorexic she looks on the cover??
), so I just hope for a nice cover that captures the tone of the book. When I was still writing for Intimate Moments, but marketing had decided SIMs were all dark and suspensy and stuff, the covers almost NEVER reflected the stories inside. Depressing, that.
But now it’s all good.
Since I don’t have any control over the cover and what goes in it, I prefer not to think about it. Since I’m also a graphic artist, I know in my head what I’d like to see in it. Of course, what’s up here *taps her head* never matches with what I get.
My hero has black hair, and I get a dirty-blond one in the cover. 
My heroine has green eyes and is blonde, she ends up with light brown ones and red hair in the cover. My hero has short hair, but he ends up with a mullet (AGH!) in the cover. 
I used to get depressed when this happened. (Especially when I got emails from readers telling me things like, “The hero in your cover has dimples, but you never mention his dimples in your story” or “Why is your heroine a redhead when you describe her as a platinum blond in your story?”) But I quickly learn that the cover isn’t important. That I shouldn’t care if my models depicted in them don’t match with my characters. The important thing is there’s a cover. So now I let the graphic artist do whatever they want, take free artistic license, with the cover.
The only thing I know I have 100% control is the story, and that’s where my efforts go. I make sure it’s polish till it shines. I don’t care if it takes me months of editing, sending it to be critiqued, re-writing… In the end, I write the kind of story I can feel proud of, that I like.
Not something to please a publisher and fill their pockets with $$$. That’s my “baby” there, and I won’t let anyone butcher it for the sake of sales. 
I’m currently waiting on two covers. I’m excited about them both. One because the artist did a great job capturing my hero in the first two she did. On my other one, the artist is a guy who worked on “Star Wars’ as an artist. I’m expecting great things and I can’t take myself into any caution. Covers do make me pick up books and that’s mostly what I hope I get for my own.
I’ve been very lucky so far – I love my covers.
But as others have said, I don’t really have control of that aspect of things and the things that jump out at me probably aren’t thing that will jump out at others.
As Terry said, getting a cover means that the book is “real”. What could be better than that?
I don’t know why I get so twitchy, exactly. I just love that sensation of taking that first look at my covers. I have a new one and it’s all I could do not to flatten my lungs, I sighed so hard in relief.
Then, once the promo is set up and everything, lol, I’m like…what now?
Nope, just love that new cover feeling.
Dee
I love seeing my covers for the first time. The cover for Blue Remembered Heels is just perfect and exactly as I describe the scene in the book. It has this amazing retro feel. Definitely one of my favourites.