Weaver
Sage
I don't know if it's dying, but it has certainly weakened. Cover art doesn't seem to be taken seriously by the author: they'll just slap on any "cool" picture they want, regardless of whether it's accurate or relevant to the story. I hate hate hate a majority of cover art. I feel it should be elegant, subtle, and/or meaningful. It needs to capture the essence of the story.
I agree that many self-published ebooks do appear to have cover art that is 'just slapped on' with no thought for relevance to the story, but how is this any different from the covers of many traditionally published books with their cool-but-wrong covers? Maybe they assume the readers won't notice that the cover art has nothing to do with the story, although obviously some of us do notice.