I knew that the idea of an e-Book Cover Design Award was a good one when people started to submit their covers in the comments of the article, even though I said I was just thinking about it!
So I gave in to necessity. Now I’ve set up a submission page, and invite your entries.
Past e-Book Cover Design Awards
e-book Cover Design Awards, August 2011
e-book Cover Design Awards, September 2011 Part 1
e-book Cover Design Awards, September 2011 Part 2
e-book Cover Design Awards, September 2011 Part 3
e-book Cover Design Awards, September 2011 Part 4
e-book Cover Design Awards, September 2011 Award Winners
e-book Cover Design Awards, October 2011
e-book Cover Design Awards, November 2011
e-book Cover Design Awards, December 2011
e-book Cover Design Awards, January 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, February 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, March 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, April 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, May 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, June 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, July 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, August 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, September 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, October 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, November 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, December 2012
e-book Cover Design Awards, January 2013
e-book Cover Design Awards, February 2013
e-book Cover Design Awards, March 2013
Here’s what I hope we’ll get from this:
- Have a look at a range of e-book cover designs—sometimes you can learn a lot by looking at books outside your genre. I know I’ve often picked up graphic and marketing ideas that way.
- See what other self-publishers are doing with their e-book covers—I’m amazed at some of the e-books and covers people send me in email to have a look at. The creativity people bring to this challenge is pretty amazing.
- Get inspiration for your own cover design efforts—this is true throughout the design world. Every designer has a “swipe file” or “morgue” or tearsheets with particularly attractive elements. I once designed a book based on a graphic I saw in Oprah magazine, and it turned into a very effective book design.
- Learn why some covers work better than others—sometimes you have to ask yourself, “what were they thinking?” when you see little thumbnails that are straight reductions of a print book cover, and are now unreadable. Isn’t the book worth more than that?
Lots of e-books are being published every month. Every one of those e-books has to have a book cover of some kind. And even though it’s a bit of an anachronism to even call them “book covers” since there is no physical book and therefore no book cover at all, we seem to have agreed on the term. If a collection of digital music files can have an album cover, I suppose a collection of digital text files can have a book cover.
Let’s Have Some Rules, Please
Here’s how I’d like to run this so we can all get something from it:
- Use the submission form
- Please link to a cover at least 200 px. wide (and preferably at least 300 x 300 px.)
- There is no restriction on publication date, but the e-books must be published at the time of submission, and I’m interested in current trends
- No PDF e-Book covers, that’s a different genre entirely
- We love designer credits!
- No inappropriate subjects, please.
- We reserve the right to remove any entry for any reason.
I’m looking forward to seeing what arrives in the inbox. Every calendar month we’ll collect the submissions and publish them, so you can put yours in any time, no worry about deadlines.
Thanks for participating. I can’t wait to see your books.
Send to Kindle
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
Does your family know that you did a Thursday blog?
Joel,
Tried 4-5 valid URL’s to submit my cover for your contest. None worked. Any ideas?
Cheers,
Pete
Pete, I assume you are submitting through the submission page linked at the end of the article. I just tried it and it seemed to work fine. What error are you getting? If it still doesn’t work, please email your submission info to marin.bookworks (at) gmail.com Sorry for the bother.
Pete,
Smashwords asks for jpeg covers a 600X800 pixels, are you wanting even smaller? 300×300? If so I need to shrink my smashwords cover down even more. I only have my covers saved as jpeg files, not sure what you meal by “link to a url”. Sorry, not that computer savy. Need some directions.
Kelly
Hi Joel,
I submitted a cover a couple of days ago and am looking forward to how it compares. This is a great idea. :)
Will we be able to enter a new cover each month after the previous month’s contest is over? I’ve got a couple of others that I really like too and it was tough deciding which to send in.
John
Hi John,
Sure, you can submit a (different) cover every month until you run out. Thanks for participating.
I think this might have to be the best contest I’ve ever stumbled upon. I love book covers. Excited to see the results.
Patricia, here are the results of the first month’s contest. The next one should be up around the middle of October, enjoy.
e-Book Cover Design Awards August 2011
Hi Joel,
This might be a dumb question, but how do you link to a cover? I have a jpg but I don’t know how to link to a URL. (tech challenged)
My book is for sale on Amazon.
Thanks!
Elle, we’re just looking for a location where we can grab the cover of the book. If it’s Clockwise you want to enter, use this URL:
http://ellestraussbooks.blogspot.com/p/clockwise_02.html
Hi, Joel.
I would like to submit a cover for a short story that was designed for me by a Smashword writer and cover artist, and I have a couple of questions.
1) Do you require MY name and email address or that of the designer?
2) Regarding the cover URL, is it sufficient to provide you with the URL of the Smashword page where the story appears? If so, the story is called Vampire’s Night Out.
3) In the information box, can I say something about the story or do you only require information about the designer?
Thanks. A.M.
Arthur, thanks for your interest in the Awards.
1. Your name and email address
2. Any web location where we can grab a graphic of the cover that’s at least 160 pixels wide. We need the specific page url.
3. The remarks box is intended for information about the design only.
Good luck!
I just submitted my entry for the cover awards, but I had one little difficulty. I wasn’t quite sure what was meant by ‘link my entry to’, so I just put the Amazon page for my book. The submission form wouldn’t accept that; it said it was an invalid URL. Same thing with my Amazon author page. I ended up just putting the link to my blog.
Where do we find the page that shows past and present submissions and awards?
George, use the links at the beginning of this post to see all the entries.
Hi Joel
Just wondering why you consider PDF a different genre. I would love to enter some covers and get your thoughts on them, but I publish PDFs instead of e-books. I like the control PDFs allow you on page design, but as far as the cover is concerned, what is the difference between the two formats?
I love this idea, by the way. I see it being a great help for self-publishers.
Thanks,
Troy
Hi Troy,
The typical PDF e-book cover is letter size (8.5 x 11) and sold on the author’s website. The typical ePub (or Kindle) e-book cover is a small to tiny rectangle on an e-book retailer site.
One of the reasons I decided to create this monthly competition is to help new self-publishers understand how their books compare to other books from a variety of publishers on these sites, almost none of whom sell PDF ebooks.
Hope that helps.
Who is supposed to submit the design…the author or the designer?
Book, as far as I’m concerned the author, the designer or the publisher can enter here, but books can only be entered once. Thanks for the question.
I’m blown away by some of the cover entries; gives me something to aspire towards. Great idea for the contest, I’ll be entering regularly from now on.
Derek,
I hope you’ll submit the terrific cover you did for Prophecy, that would be great.
Besides the fun of looking at a lot of covers, the posts are inspirational, with so many ideas for covers. And they are a great way for authors to find designers, so it’s all good.
I did not know what to expect upon entering this contest. I’m glad I did. I learned a lot from viewing all of the covers and from your excellent observations. I hope my next cover will capture the tips you provided. Thank you.
Hello! I submitted my cover (I think) for your next contest. I was redirected to another page on the site. If that is normal, then it worked. Will you please confirm that the submission went through so I don’t submit multiples?
Thank you,
Tamara Henson
I have the same question as Tamara…. I attempted to submit my cover for the next contest, but there wasn’t any indication that the submission was successful. Many thanks!
Well, I am a ebook cover designer and how could I enter this ebook cover design competition please?
Thanks
Justin, there’s a link to the submission page near the end of the article, but here it is again:
eBook Cover Design Awards Submission Page
I’ve always found the eBook Cover Awards to be packed with good advice but I was surprised to see in your rules section, “No PDF e-Book covers, that’s a different genre entirely”. I’ve never heard you say that before nor does an archive search bring anything up. Did I miss something?
Cheers
K
Hi Kirok,
The rules section was part of the original design of the awards posted about a year ago. We’ve excluded PDF ebooks from the start because, as I said, they are a completely different format with different design criteria. I’m principally interested in the way book cover designers (pro and amateur) are managing the transition from print books to ebooks.
My apologies, I checked everywhere except this thread! I see where you’re coming from now – not our niche: we do graphic novels, digests and A format paperbacks on the Issuu platform.
Hi, I’m just wondering when the ebook cover design awards for July are going to be posted.
Loving your site and contribution to the industry.
Thanks!
Hi Angela,
We haven’t updated this page yet, but you can see the entire competition here:
July 2012 eBook Cover Design Awards
Hi Joel, not sure if you’re aware, but the link to the August covers page is giving a 404! And while I’m here, a quick thank you for your posts, I’ve learnt loads from you! :)
I submitted my cover and I believe I put the wrong url to amazon in the form. How can I adjust it to the correct one?
Joel,
On your submission form for the monthly ebook cover awards there are two URLs requested. The first is for the book cover. Is the second one for a publisher site or…?
Thank you again for a great presentation today at BAIPA (despite the technical issues).
LHB
Hi Lori,
It was great to see you at BAIPA and glad you enjoyed the presentation, I certainly had a good time.
The second URL is for a site you would like us to link to when we do the post. In the past we didn’t link the covers anywhere but I’m thinking we may change that and this way you can specify where you want that link to go. You might choose the Amazon or BN.com or iBookstore page, or your own website, it’s up to you.
Trying to get my Children’s Book with sound converted so it can be viewed on multiplatform devices.
So far I have run into several disfuctional conversion sites that have no physical addresses, do not call back,or just plain seem to not be to up to date on all the devices.
Do you have any suggestions or does your company do the conversions for multi devices?
The book is published and on the market. It is full color 34 pages, sound with every page.
Thanks, MJ
Hi Joel,
Wondering what’s happened to this valuable monthly award page? I miss it and hope it resumes!
Thanks!
Hi H,
The January awards were published on February 11, 2013, and the February awards post will be published on March 18, next Monday. Thanks for your interest.
Thanks Joel! Sorry I didn’t see the Jan award post. I’ll go back and find it.
Thanks again ~ and for all you do!
Thanks Joel! Sorry I didn’t see the Jan award post. I’ll go back and find it.
Thanks again ~ and for all you do!
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