The first edition of the eBook Cover Design Awards came out in August, 2011.
Since then we’ve displayed hundreds of covers, and 2012 was the first full year we had winners for each month. I thought it would be interesting to look at all the winners for the year in one place, so I’ve gathered them together here.
Just looking through these monthly winners shows some of the imaginative directions designers are exploring. The ebook cover is a unique and new type of display for books. While it’s not surprising that, in most cases, ebook covers closely mimic their print book ancestors, designers are finding new ways to project an image, to create a brand, and to capture attention.
I’m very excited about the directions ebook covers might take from here. Re-imagining what a “book” cover is for a totally new kind of text (one that’s only a book in a metaphorical sense) opens up a pretty wide field for invention.
I hope we see a lot of invention and re-thinking of the ebook cover in 2013.
Stars Enter the Rating System
The most difficult part of publishing these awards is usually picking the final winner. At the end there are 3, 4, or 5 covers that each could win. But you can only have one, and that’s where the dithering starts.
In the reposts of our winners on the Indie Reader site, we’ve included “others to look at” but now I want to institutionalize these worthy covers.
Starting this year, we are also awarding “gold stars” like this: ★ .
Each month I’ll use these stars to let you know which other covers were in the final list of potential winners. Hey, getting a gold star is a good thing, right?
And yes, if you go back to look at the January eBook Cover Design Award post, you’ll see I’ve added about 10 gold stars, so check them out.
A Request for You Designers
The only part of the awards that needs upgrading seems to be the badge itself. The one we’re using now came about in rather a rush.
So here’s my request to all you designers out there:
Design a new badge for this monthly contest. Submit your designs and include a place to note whether it’s for fiction or nonfiction, and a place for the month and year the award was given. And we’ll need a badge for the gold star winners, too.
I’ll publish all the submissions and pick a winner, who will receive a $100 Amazon giftcard in appreciation, plus a link with each badge and the admiration of your peers.
Sound like fun? Send your submissions to [email protected] with the subject “Badge Contest” by this Friday, March 8. You can submit a JPG or PNG for the contest, and we’ll request a layered .PSD, .AI or .INDD file from the winner. And if you’ve got more than one idea, enter them all.
Good luck, and thanks!
2012 Winners
Drawn from a pool of 1,290 covers submitted (1,043 fiction, 247 nonfiction), here are the winners in fiction and nonfiction for the year:
January 2012
Nonfiction: Sarah Russo, How to Order Italian Coffee in Italy, Designer: Sara Rosso
Fiction: Camille LaGuire: The Man Who Did Too Much, Designer: Camille LaGuire
February 2012
Nonfiction: Katharine Miller: 30 Failures by Age 30, Designer: Katharine Miller
Fiction: Tamara Henson: The Pathos of Rowan Jun, Designer: Tamara Henson Coffey
March 2012
Nonfiction: Pere Ibañez: EneME, Designer: Pere Ibañez
Fiction: Kate Wickers: Blackbird Has Spoken, Designer: Andy Fielding
April 2012
Nonfiction: Clay Rivers: Walking Tall: A Memoir About the Upside of Small and Other Stuff, Designer: Clay Rivers
Fiction: Masha du Toit: The Story Trap, Designer: Masha du Toit
May 2012
Nonfiction: Spike Wyatt: Going the Half Hog, Designer: Damonza
Fiction: Diane Capri: Fatal Distraction, Designer: Jeroen ten Berge
June 2012
Nonfiction: Benjamin Wallace: Giving The Bird: The Indie Author’s Guide to Twitter, Designer: Patty Wallace, MonkeyPAWCreative
Fiction: JC Leland: An End to the Means, Designer: Damon Freeman
July 2012
Nonfiction: John Waldron: A Father’s Angels
Fiction: Eric Edstrom: Afterlife, Designer: Melvin De Voor
August 2012
Nonfiction: Alicia Morga: Create iPhone Apps That Rock: A Guide for Non-Technical Folks, Designer: Kyle T. Webster
Fiction: Del Law: Beasts of the Walking City, Designer: Damonza
September 2012
Nonfiction: Ali Binazir: The Tao of Dating, Designer: Kit Foster
Fiction: Christopher Geoffrey McPherson: Sarah & Gerald, Designer: Matt Hinrichs
October 2012
Nonfiction: Miles Anthony Smith: Why Leadership Sucks, Designer: Moxie Creative Studio
Fiction: Julie Gerstenblatt: Lauren Takes Leave, Designer: Gary Tooth and Brett Gerstenblatt (designers) and Liz Starin (illustrator)
November 2012
Nonfiction: Charles Novacek: Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance, Designer: Kimberly Glyder
Fiction: Laura Rahm: The Ming Storytellers, Designer: Caryn Gillespie
December 2012
Nonfiction: Åsmund Seip: 100 Days of Love, Designer: Åsmund Seip
Fiction: Brian LeTendre: Courting the King in Yellow, Designer: Brian LeTendre / Jeff Rodgers
So, which are your favorites? Let me know in the comments.
Photo: bigstockphoto.com
