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I wanted to see what people were saying before jumping back in on this topic.
I look at cover art differently depending on if it's a traditional publisher or an indie. Mostly, I reference SF&F since that is the genre I read the most. I tend to ignore cover art with non fiction. In SF&F, one can tell a lot about what sort of book it is based on cover art. In general, cover art is chosen by the publisher, not the author. The publisher is trying to get the look and feel of the book across to potential readers. Thus, you had the barbarian warrior with the bulging muscles in the Conan knock offs, urban fantasy/romance tends to have a romance style cover, 80's style traditional fantasy typically had a medieval warrior. Space opera might have a space battle, or guy with a blaster on the cover. Usually you would have a scantily clad girl on the cover because the golden age of SF is 14 and 14 year old guys like looking at scantily clad girls.
When the 90's urban fantasies came out (pre-romance) you might have a fay in a run down section of town. Baen's urban fantasies might have an elf and a sport's car. Either way, if you paid attention to the cover art, you had a pretty good idea at least of what sub-genre the book was.
The caveat that I would throw out is I'm mostly talking about books that hit the major book stores (B. Daltons up through B&N) where I live from the mid 70's through the early 2000's. The same book could have many different covers since each publisher might chose a different cover and when a book was re-published, the publisher might not have the rights to the cover art any more.
I agree that you couldn't necessarily tell if the book was well written from the cover art, but it would tell you a lot about what sort of book it was. Important to a genre reader, not so important to a non genre reader.
Indies are a different matter. When I scan the catalogue on Amazon (something I rarely do anymore), I don't bother with books where it's obvious that the author used some sort of generic cover, i.e. Magna characters, or a picture of someone dressed in a costume. I might miss some nuggets, but the point is to avoid wadding through the muck. If an author puts the effort into getting a quality cover, odds are they at least know a little about writing books. So cover art is a filter. I do find that most of my new books are recommendations, though the cover art can make a big difference if it's Amazon's recommendation rather than a recommendation I read here. An example is the cover of Stiger's Tigers by Marc Alan Edelheit. Basically Roman legion set in a fantasy setting. That cover tells you a lot about the book. That's what a good cover does.
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