As part of my presentation, I have a question and answer session. It's no surprise that the students are very curious about how to get published as well as what happens after you've had a book accepted. Because that has been so interesting to them, I thought you, too, may benefit from a bit of the information I've given them.
In my experience and from everything I've heard from other authors, once you contract with a publisher to publish your book, it becomes a product to them that they want to sell. Since the cover and title are a big part of their marketing plan, the publisher has all control over them. The good news, though, is publishers usually hire knowledgeable people to come up with titles and covers they believe will best sell your book. While this might seem a bit hard to swallow, the good news is I have never been disappointed with my publisher's choices, both in my magazine articles and with MISSING. True, a few changes took me a bit of time getting used to, but overall, my experience has been a good one and I've learned to trust my publishers' marketing departments.
So, a bit of advice. While you're looking at which publishers to submit your books to, look at their current books and see if you like their covers and titles, because once your book is published, it will likely keep both for a long time to come.
One more good thing! I do get to keep my title to my second novel, TRAPPED, which will be published later this year. I'm definitely excited about that, because I have always liked this title.
