The art director of the publishing house decides upon the look of the cover and with their layout team, creates the general design. They then go to a studio and confer with the photographer and artist/illustrator they have hired. The group agrees on the design of the cover, choosing the model, research props, etc… The model (or models) is called in at a later date once the details have been ironed out.

Cover art may be an actual painting (done from photographs you contort yourselves for) they may be straight photographs (mainly for contemporary books) or photographs retouched with paint. It depends on the style of the publishing house. Either way, your job is still the same.

Picture this, male models are called in to do a cover for a pirate novel. They give you the required tight breeches, open (if any) shirt and black boots.

The average pay for a model is $125-150 per hour. The more covers you do, the more well known you become, the more your price can go up and up until they can't even afford you! A shoot takes place over several hours but due to scheduling, most photographers can only book one hour at a time so your day may be broken up rather oddly.

You may do your cover shoot in June and not even see it until the next year. This is not because you looked so horrible that they had to spend months retouching the cover. Publishers plan their schedules far in advance so that while you may be shooting in June, the book's release date isn't until August of the next year. Believe it or not, that's a quick turnaround time. Now you know why it's wonderful if you can book more than one cover and work with more than one publishing house.