e-Book Cover Design Awards Submissions – What You Need to Know

POSTED ON Jun 10, 2019

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By Shelley Sturgeon

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be publishing our next e-Book Cover Design Awards post which will include submissions we’ve received through the month of May. This will be our 98th e-Book Cover Design Awards post.

Our premiere e-Book Cover Design Awards post was published on September 12, 2011 and we’ve been publishing this contest every month since then.

As many authors have discovered, this free contest is an excellent way to get some exposure for your e-book.

Joel and our guest judges have critiqued A LOT of e-book covers since that first post with typical contests including between 50 and 100 submissions, but today I thought I’d talk to you about the submissions that we haven’t included and why, so that if you’re thinking about submitting your e-book cover to us, your submission will be seamless and you won’t be disappointed if it isn’t included in our post.

16 Reasons Why We May Not Have Included Your e-Book Cover in Our Contest

1. Image Size

E-book cover images used in our monthly contest posts are 200 pixels wide. Most of the images we copy using the Cover URL link that is provided in the submission form exceed 200 pixels and that’s perfectly fine. We can resize larger images to make them smaller without losing image quality. But here’s why it’s important that the images you make available to us are at least 200 pixels wide.

In this example, the first book cover image is 100 pixels wide and the second image shows what it looks like when it is resized to 200 pixels wide.

See how the larger image is fuzzy and blurry?

In this example, the first book cover image is 300 pixels wide and the second image shows what it looks like when it is resized to 200 pixels wide.

The image remains sharp and clear at the smaller size.

This is why we need you to provide access to an image that is at least 200 pixels wide. We want your e-book cover to look its very best.

2. Image format

Preferred formats are:

.jpg
.jpeg
.png

Unaccepted formats are:

.html
.webp

3. E-book Format

We consider PDF books to be e-books where this contest is concerned and here’s why: Why a PDF Isn’t an Ebook.

4. Non-specific Cover URLs

We frequently receive URLs to homepages for blogs, cover designer websites or Facebook pages. Where exactly is the e-book cover? Good question. Finding Waldo among the content on the site would be less challenging sometimes. 😃

Here’s how you provide the specific URL for your e-book cover image to use in the Cover URL field.

Go to the webpage where the Cover image appears. For the sake of example, let’s use the cover of Joel’s book The Book Blue Print which appears on The Book Designer homepage.
Right mouse click on the cover image.
Select Copy image address. In this case, the image address is https://www.thebookdesigner.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/TheBookBlueprint-sidebard-ad.jpeg. (If you click on that URL you will see only the book cover.)
Copy that URL into the Cover URL field of the submission form.

5. Duplicate Submissions

Sorry, but we will only include your e-book cover in one contest. If you submit your cover to second contest, it will be rejected.

The only exception to this is if you have redesigned and re-issued your e-book (a second edition) using a different ISBN.

6. Unpublished e-Books

If you want to submit your cover to our contest, it doesn’t matter how long ago you published your e-book, but the keyword is published. Your e-book must be published at the time of submission. And, yes, we do check publication dates.

We want to include your best work in our contest and by publishing your e-book with the cover you submit to our contest, we know you’ve made a commitment to that cover. And, FYI, we don’t consider books available for pre-order as published.

7. Login Required to Access the Image

Please don’t send us a URL for

Dropbox
Google Drive
your Amazon account
your website
some other site where you’ve stored your image online

requiring us to log in to access the image. Sounds silly perhaps but it happens several times a year. We can’t access the images without the password and we don’t want your passwords.

8. 3D Images

The e-book cover images we use in our contest are two dimensional. Boring perhaps when you consider how interesting 3D book cover images can look, but hey, we’re talking about e-books with virtual covers that can’t really be 3D, right? And, it’s important that all of the covers in our post are similarly displayed to make it easier to compare them to one another.

9. Too Many Submissions Per Contest

As per our Monthly e-Book Cover Design Awards page:

“Maximum of 3 submissions (1 submission = one standalone cover or a series design with up to 3 volumes from the series) per month per category (fiction/nonfiction).”

That might sound a bit confusing, but it means that you can submit a maximum of 18 covers a month IF you submit 3 volumes for each of 3 Fiction series and 3 volumes for each of 3 Nonfiction series.

Still scratching your head trying to figure that out? Leave a comment or send me an email if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to clarify.

10. Entire Series Submitted As One Submission

Although we will accept 3 volumes of a series in a contest, each volume must be submitted individually. So, that means you would need to complete the submission form three times–once for each volume.

11. Print Books

Hate to state the ultra obvious but the contest is called the –>e-<–Book Cover Design Awards. 😊

Yes, we get a lot of print book cover submissions from some super enthusiastic authors and designers, sometimes for some pretty amazing covers, but I can’t include them. Sorry.

12. URLs Point to Two Different Covers

There are a couple of scenarios that come into play here.

The URLs provided for the Cover URL and the Link my entry to URL point to completely different books.
The URLs provided for the Cover URL and the Link my entry to URL point to completely versions of the e-book cover for the same book.

Okay, admittedly, depending on the day, this one can be a real test of whether my coffee’s kicked in or not. 😃

Bottom line: The URLs need to show the exact same e-book cover!

13. e-Book Titles Differ

Similar to above, please make sure that the e-book title on your submission form is for the same e-book as the cover images accessible from your Cover URL or Link my entry to links.

14. Award Badges on the Cover

We know you’re proud of your e-book and you want to let the world know that if your e-book has won an award, but for the purposes of our contest, we want to see your e-book cover in all its original book cover design glory—without badges and ribbons attached please.

15. Submitting Full Print Book Cover Spread

For this contest, we’re only interested in the front cover of your e-book. While it can be argued whether e-books have back covers (some authors use a virtual back cover for advertisement, etc.), I’m pretty sure e-books don’t have spines so please don’t send us a URL for a complete cover spread showing front and back covers and spine when you make a submission to our contest. We can’t use that.

16. Other Reasons

Only the author, the publisher, or the designer can submit a cover, no “third parties.”
No inappropriate subjects, please.
We reserve the right to remove any entry for any reason.