Change a Cover Get a New Audience?

Since marketing has been a big topic around here lately, I wanted to address how marketing is done in areas where an artist may have little or no control: covers of the books they write.
Take Eileen Favorite, author of The Heroines, and Votre Vray Creative Woman. Her hardback edition cover appears above (at the top of this post).

Then, her paperback edition, which is due for release in February 2009, has a cover that looks absolutely nothing like the hardback. Why? Perhaps the publisher thinks a new cover will bring a new audience. Maybe the paperback edition fits more in line with the price that people who like romantic historical fiction might be willing to pay, so the cover looks like a more of a romance novel than the hardbound edition.

From an author's viewpoint, good news is that the hardbound edition is popular enough to warrant the paperback. The book isn't changing, just the cover, and some people who overlooked it in its original form just may grab a copy -- or several to gift friends and loved-ones with.

From the viewpoint of a creative person who is not an author, the message is clear. You CAN rework a small portion of the marketing or ideas associated with work you've already labored over and send it back into the world in a new format or with a different twist to attract a new audience. If your first round was acceptable, your second round might just turn out to be phenomenal!

Best wishes to Eileen in the paperback edition release!