Family obligations have been eating all my time lately, but last night before I went to bed I started poking around looking for cover artists. Boy, that was a mistake. It was probably a combination of doing that and watching too much tsunami footage (and today with the nuclear reactors--hang in there, Japan!), but I was having stress dreams about cover art all night. First I tried to look up artist who do sci-fi book covers, and it turns out that there's, like, five of them and two are retired. It seems pretty likely that I can't afford the remaining three, and even if I could, they probably wouldn't be willing to work on an obscure self-published book anyway. Then I tried to look up artists who specialize in self-published or electronic books, and there's a number of companies who do that, but they mainly do what I would call graphic design--putting a bunch of different stripes on your cover and whatnot. That I actually can do--it's the representational art that's kicking my ass.
So I was a little bummed, and then I realized that I'm probably going at it the wrong way: What I really need is just the representational art--I can do the lettering and make it into cover myself. There's going to be a sci-fi convention around here pretty soon, so I think I'll go and have a gander at the art there--maybe I can strike a deal with somebody. (ETA: And I just looked on Etsy and saw some promising things there.)
The other thing I've been thinking of is how to maximize the ad I bought, and I think what I'll do then is have a sale--drop the price of Trang to 99 cents that week (or should I say, THAT WEEK ONLY! ACT NOW! OMFG YOU HAVE TO BUY!--I'll be able to channel Ron Popeil one of these days). Hopefully that will trigger some impulse buys.
Tomorrow--Trust!