More Work on the Cover for the Self-Published Sci-Fi Novel

 I'm creating a spaceship for the cover of Iron Dart. Iron Dart is part two of my series of science-fiction novels. The first novel in the series is Galaxy Dog. (Get it here at Smashwords).


As I was tinkering around in Blender, I started wondering what the best size to make the cover was. I found a nice post on mattmaldre.com talking about just this. According to the post Amazon likes:-

... a minimum of 1000 pixels on the longest side; Ideal height/width ratio of 1.6; For better quality, we recommend that images be 2500 pixels on the longest side.

And that's good enough for me, for now. 

There is still a lot of work to do on the cover: the spaceship is the wrong color, the starscape is too busy, the planet is in the wrong place, the text doesn't exactly `pop` etc. but at least it's the right shape now. Also the book only has three chapters, so far, so there is plenty of time to get it to all come together.

Alongside the art, I'm going to try and get the book to readers at various stages of the writing process. I've been hesitant to do this with previous books because readers might not like the books and might say mean things. Now I think I'm thick skinned enough to deal with it, so I'll need to do some research and see if there are people out there with an insatiable appetite for sci-fi and who are willing to give feedback.