"Self-publishing on the Cheap"

I started a new project this week. Yet another book on self-publishing. I decided to write it after having read countless books on the subject and finding most of them saying the same stuff, most of them out of date, all of them lacking humor, interest, just taking themselves way too seriously.

Although I am well into the narrative, I took my usual cart/horse side trip to the cover. Specifically a picture on the cover.

I want the cover art to show a Kindle and a paperback book alongside one another. The Kindle will have pages from the book displayed on it. That's no problem. But the cover of the book will also have a book alongside the Kindle, and the book on the cover must be of the book. So the picture of a book will have a picture of the same book, which will have a picture of the same book, and on into infinity or until the picture of the book is one pixel. Like pointing a mirror at a mirror.

I bet Salvadore Dali would have known how to do it.

I'll be starting on the cover soon during breaks from writing. Here's how I will start trying to make the effect I want:

1.Place a book with a blank cover next to the Kindle.
2.Take the picture and load it into GIMP twice. (GIMP is a free image processor.)
3.Make image #1 smaller, rotated, etc, and put it in image #2 as a layer covering (replacing) the book in image #2.
4.Close image #1.
5.Duplicate image #2 as image #3.
6.Promote image numbers. 2 becomes 1, 3 becomes 2. (Just for the purposes of this explanation.)
7.Iterate steps 3 - 6 until image #1 is what I want.

I think it's going to drive me nuts. Post a comment if you have any ideas that might help.