During the years that I've been messing around trying to get Abraxas back in print, I've toyed with the idea of self-publishing it more than once. There were a couple things that stopped me, though. First was cover art. I'm not a visual artist. I can barely draw a smiley face. I teach political science for a living and sometimes have to draw a picture of the state of Illinois where I live. Too often it looks like a penis. So, no, I'm not drawing cover art, and I don't own the rights to the cover art that was published on the first print edition of Stones of Abraxas. What to do?
Well, it turns out there are artists out there who are willing to produce cover art for you for a reasonable price. (Define reasonable as something even I can afford.) I found an artist who's also an author in her own right who's been through this self-publishing dance a few times herself. She has generously offered to produce covers for the first 2 Abraxas books. At that point I foolishly thought that all I had to do was offer suggestions for what would look cool on the cover. BTW: After a conversation with my teenage son, we decided a dragon on SOA was just right. He said that a dragon always attracts his attention.
I told Marianne, cover artist extraordinaire, about our love for dragons, and she asked me how big the cover should be. Apparently that's something I'm supposed to know and it's based on the publisher I'm using and the thickness of the book and other complicated formulas. I didn't know there was going to be math. So now my job is to figure out which publisher I'm going to use for the print version. From what I can tell, the ebook version is easier in terms of cover dimensions because you don't need room for a spine or back cover.
In the next couple of days I'll be back with details about my print publisher selection and cover dimensions. Wish me luck!
Kim
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