Contest Announcement: Cover Up!

[ladyseishou]

There are 75 days left until the start of National Novel Writing Month! To celebrate, Nano Writers announces our final contest:


One of the cool features available to NaNoWriMo writers is the option to upload your book's cover artwork to your novel info page. Many writers find their cover art a source of inspiration for writing (and finishing) their NaNo novel!

Creating a book cover for your novel is fun and easy! Check out our quick tutorial on How to Create your own Book Cover in Four Easy Lessons

To create a book cover for your NaNo novel, all you really need to get started is an idea for your story and an image editor: Photoshop or GIMP - a free image manipulator - work great. Or try our Book Cover Tutorial based on the online editor provided by tinypic

How to Create your own Book Cover in Four Easy Lessons

1. Find an Image
   
   Using your story idea or at least the genre of your novel (a working title is ideal) as inspiration, find an image that fits the mood or theme of your novel-to-be by looking through one of the many stock image, royalty free sites on the web. Two of our favorites are:
   
   Stockvault.net
   
   stock.xchng
   
   Additional sites are listed in this thread at the NaNoWriMo forum.
   
   You should also note any special conditions that the photographer specifies for the use of his or her work. Often, as long as the photograph is used for noncommercial work, nothing more needs to be done. But sometimes, permission from the photographer is needed if their work will be displayed publicly.
   
   

   For the contest book cover, I downloaded several images from stockvault for consideration...
   
   shy girl... ...blinds... ...an alley...
   
   These are all images that suggest (to me) "cover ups."

   
   
   Your picture will be the main image of your book cover.
   
   
2. Crop Your Image
   
   Most book covers have a rectangular shape, with various height to width proportions (additional information here. NaNoWriMo rules however specify that the artwork for your cover should be no bigger than 230 x 300 pixels and have a file size less than 50 kb.
   
   Luckily, there are many ways to crop and/or resize your image but the method we'll use for this tutorial makes use of the online image editor provided by tinypic, a free photo and video sharing service.
   
   

   After deciding to use the image of the blinds, I uploaded the picture to the tinypic website by selecting the file from my computer (previously downloaded in step 1), typing in a tag (blinds), and clicking on the green "UPLOAD NOW!" button.
   
   After the image finishes uploading to the site, links are provided so that your picture can be shared on your favorite blog. But we want to do a little editing, so look for the Edit link under your picture on the right hand side of the page and click it! Your image is immediately loaded into the Fotoflexer editor.
   

   
   If your picture is ready for your title and doesn't need cropping, select the decorate tab from the row of tabs above your picture. And go on to step 3.
   

   
   But in my case, I wanted to crop away some of the dark edges of the original image. This was done by clicking on the crop icon from the basic menu, then "drawing" a box around the part of the image that I wanted to keep and then clicking on the crop selected area button. I decided also to cut away a bit more of the picture so that it was roughly book cover shape.
   

   
   Don't worry about pixels now and take your time to get the image you want! Start over if you need to by using the undo button.
   
   
3. Title(s) and Special Effects
   
   Now select the Decorate tab (if you haven't already). Have fun! All the buttons do pretty much what they say and are easy to use.
   

   
   I first selected a dark border and then the font type for my titles before adding a "mask" sticker (still working with my "cover up" theme) to visually connect my main title and subtitle.
   

   
   Additional effects are available by selecting the Effects tab: blur edges, greyscale, cartoon, etc. All the image manipulations are interesting and fun to play with.
   
   When you are satisfied with the final design of your book cover, go to the next step...
   
   
4. Size Your Image
   
   Select the Basic tab again and then the Resize button. Type in the number 300 in the second box (after the "x" sign). The number in the first box should "auto-size" and your book cover will be resized to comply with the NaNoWriMo rules. To check, select the Resize button again. The two numbers should be about or less than 230 and 300.
   
   Select the blue Save a copy button at the bottom of the page and you're done!
   
   Copy the link that tinypic provides for your finished book cover and paste it in your Dreamwidth journal for inspiration or better yet: enter your artwork in the Nano Writer's Cover Up Contest!
   

Details for the Cover Up Contest may be found here...

The rules:

• Create a book cover. Ideally, the artwork should be for or about your 2009 NaNoWriMo novel.
  
  
• All images should be resized to comply with NaNoWriMo's posting rules. In other words, your finished book cover should be no bigger than 230 x 300 pixels and less than 50kb in size. Artwork that exceeds these limits will be disqualified.
  
  
• Entries for contest consideration should be uploaded to the appropriate Contest Entry Post anytime during the week of October 5 through midnight October 11. Each Nano Writer member may post up to three (3) book covers for consideration. Please do not leave feedback or comments for any of the artwork until the winner of the contest is announced on October 16.
  
  
• The following information should be posted for each entry:
  

  
  member name:
  title of novel:
  genre:
  

  
  
• Please note: any artwork that could be considered to be adult in nature (including images or text that may be offensive or hurtful) should be posted behind a cut with additional warnings added to the header so that members may decide for themselves whether or not they wish to view the work.
  
  
• The winner will be selected by random drawing and will receive:
  
  A new Levenger Circa Compact Translucent Notebook
  
  
  More information about the notebook is available from the Levenger website.
  
  In addition to the notebook, the winner's artwork will be reproduced and punched so that it may be used as an inner cover for the Circa notebook!
  
  
  
  Any questions about either the book cover tutorial or the Cover Up contest or other comments or suggestions are welcomed! Our ongoing Build a World project continues tomorrow with part 17!
  
  Until then, keep writing!