Why aren't you budgetting and commissioning artists for  $1000-2500 cover art images for your books instead of using easily forgettable stock art?

First of all, at my budget, I'm looking to spend about $600 unless a Kickstarter gets big enough to pay out bonuses. For example, the cover of Conquest of the Universe was commissioned. I also have a cover for Alpenglow, which is going to be a smaller book, that was $400; I don't have that in production yet.

Second, just to state this clearly, several of my books have custom art for the cover. Aside from CotU, The Eliminator and Do Not Approach both have custom covers. A lot of my books have stock art on the cover because they are small books and would not be sufficiently profitable if I spent $150 to $600 on the cover.

Third, I guess "forgettable stock art" is supposed to be a dig. I have Dean Spencer, Eric Lofgren, Storn Cook, etc. who make beautiful art.

Fourth, the cover for Planetfall, I made from a public domain image created by NASA.

So the theme here is, the right cover for the job.

You make it seem to us like you can handle book projects better than ICE looking at your posts in this thread, plus sell more copies and get more profit from your projects than they do.
Yet the examples in the links provided to us earlier tell us you've sold tops 50 or so out of one example of books from the links.
It just doesn't add up with me.

I've never had anybody complain about the art in my books.

As far as my sales, most of my books sell at least 50 copies. Do Not Approach has made Copper in two different versions, besides another dozen backers on Kickstarter. A Fistful of Denarii, with "forgettable stock art" by Jon Hodgson, is an Electrum seller, having sold hundreds of copies.

So, now that my cards are out on the table, I'd like to know, how much did the cover to Core Law cost? Obviously no one owes me an answer. But that's what I'm wondering about. It doesn't look like a $600 cover.

If I had the opportunity to remake a classic, well-known game, I would make sure it has an eye-catching cover. If I produced a book on a shoestring budget, and despite that, it became a Platinum seller, I would be running a Kickstarter campaign to get it the look it deserves, and shoot for Adamantine. If I had Rolemaster, I wouldn't plan on making it an art book, through and through. People who play Rolemaster are paying for black text on white paper, with headings and subheadings and bullet points. That's the aesthetic. I wouldn't put a picture near every heading because I thought it needed one. But I would want an amazing cover, and I would make sure that illustrations for my original fantasy characters looked professional.

And yes, I'm backseat driving. But this as a fan of Rolemaster. I just want to know, why won't you publish the book I want to give you money for?

How much do you, personally, make per hour on your books?

That's tricky to answer, because I make several different kinds of books, and sometimes there is a long tail. But for the smaller books that make most of their sales in the first six months, probably about $10 an hour.

How much would your small business need to grow to be able to commission art for $30 000 to cover the five main RMU books?

I don't know where you are getting that figure. $3,000 would probably get you nice covers for all five books; for twice that, you would have your pick of artists.

Why should we at all assume they could predict such sales?

Well, if you run a Kickstarter, it's a cinch.

Gotcha! That makes total sense. Thanks for that hint.

What especially fascinating about Flying Carpets is:

"The carpet can support up to 100 pounds per square foot of carpet (seating space can also be a limiting factor)"

In other words, about 500 kilograms per square meter, and the carpet's size is NOT limited in any way. So one could indeed weave a carpet 10 meters wide and 100 meters long, and have it carry stuff weighing up to 500 tons!

Would this mean flying ships are basically just flying carpets with wooden attachments?

Ah, but there is Flying Carpet, the spell (or group of spells) from the Psychographer base list! This is extraordinarily cheap, at material cost for the carpet plus 589  silver pieces for a carpet that can run at 50 feet per round, or about 3 meters per second (about 10 kilometers per hour)! Faster versions do exist, but this is by far the cheapest entry-level aircraft I have found so far!