On my specific case, Su-Liam, if the map doesn't reflect the type of world with enough precision, it can be seriously backfiring. All so more since it will be put in the cover. Studies prove that a reader will spend about 50 seconds at the cover and only chose the book among the others that have a precise cover guiding him toward the type of story he / she is seeking for. In my case,The main problem is to have the people watch this map and think "That's interesting, that story is based on a map?".
All of my book have at their end a full map (before I found this site I was asking someone to make it for me and it cost me around 140 e / featured areas) which was way to costly), the biography of the characters (where they came from, things not said about them in the story, etc) and general topic about the world (other kingdoms / planets / technology / laws / etc). My editor said that since it was why I was in high demand (I'm a private author, I write books for people (e.g demands of a book for a nephew birthday, a daughter Christmas, or for child who have difficulties with taking interest in commonly found books) thanks to these end-book; we might as well turn them as features implemented on the book itself.
I left my editor about a month ago because we disagreed on his fee royalties, but I still think it's a good idea to implement it on the thinks like this straight in the book like before a chapter, end-page notes, etc to reduce the amount of data given at the end of the book. Also in (http://www.djennyf-lloro.net) I will put all my books available as an on-line version; some will be paid book, other free. I'll put on a wikipedia with the different universes, characters, maps and so on. Thus leading people toward them in my books.
Hopefully it will give back the people the love of quality book over scandal books, and show that there is still hope for books made to give you a real pleasure of reading rather than just exciting your curiosity.
I'm ready Ravells. But we should take it over from the black and white map, doing something with it that is a political map... I'm just annoyed by the current turning of that map, anything I do turns out totally screwed up. And I can't go further in the story without a real map or it will be totally wacky.
Mika.