This month, we're partnering with Story Cartel to host the Covering the Classics Contest (wow, that's a lot of C's), a contest to re-imagine the covers of ten classic books. These books will then be read as part of Story Cartel's new book club, an online community to read and discuss the classic books of yesteryear.
Here's the question: If you could re-imagine the covers of classic books, what would they look like?
This is your chance to put your personal mark on some of the world's most revered books plus win some cool prizes. Sound interesting? Read on for the rules…
Prizes for the Best Classic Covers
This could be a fantastic way for you to build your platform. For the winning designers, we will:
- Publicize your name (or business name) in the book you covered
- Post your winning cover on The Write Practice and Story Cartel and share it on all our social media pages
- Share links to your blog, Twitter, and Facebook page
Winners will also receive the full Write Practice library, including:
- #1 Amazon Bestselling Let's Write a Short Story
- The Show Off Anthology
- 14 Prompts
- 15 Days to Write a Submit a Short Story
- And a part-humor, part-reference book about grammar that we're releasing soon
That's over $30 in prizes, in addition to the publicity for covering a book that will be read by thousands.
Author Jeff Goins and I will choose the winners. Jeff is the Amazon bestselling author of The In-Between, Wrecked, and You Are a Writer, and the creator of goinswriter.com.
How to Enter the Covering the Classics Contest
Entering is easy. First, design a cover for one of the following books on the Story Cartel Book Club Reading List:
- Emma by Jane Austen
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
By the way, you have unlimited entries, and can choose to put your mark on one cover or ten covers.
Then, email your cover to classiccovers (at) thewritepractice (dot) com by Saturday, August 31 at 11:59 pm EST. That gives you three weeks to come up with your re-imagined cover. Again…
The deadline to submit your classic cover is Saturday, August 31 at 11:59 pm EST. You can submit your cover here.
Oh, and want to see what not to do? Check out these embarrassingly bad classic book covers.
How about you? If you could re-imagine the covers of these classic books, what would they look like?
I am so in! I will start thinking up some designs right away! 🙂 Thanks for the great opportunity! 🙂
Excited to see them, Devin!
So you mean build a cover… not just come up with ideas? Ha. If that’s the case, I’d have to do a red background with some black or gold wavy lines because I’m no artist! I’m barely a decent sketch artist…
That sounds very modern, James. 😉
Hello!
Nice contest!
I am a young writer. Russian writer! But I don’t drink vodka and dance with bears:)
I would be glad if you viewing my blog.
http://merzlikinpavel.blogspot.ru
Hello! This sounds like a brilliant competition. I love designing covers and would love to have a go. Are there any specification requirements for the cover (size, dpi etc?)
Good question! A standard 5 x 8, front cover will be fine. Whatever DPI you find best. Thanks!
Would it be cheeky to do a low-res version and then provide a high-res version in the (unlikely) instance that I win? I’ve chosen a stock image, but the larger they are the more expensive they get! 🙂
That’s a great idea. Totally fine. 🙂
I was total working on a Lord of the Rings cover and then I looked back. Wait a minute, that one isn’t on the list. Dope! Dope! Dope! Dope! Dope! Dope! Dope! Dope! Dope! Dope!
What happened to the Covering the Classics Contest who won?
Thanks for asking. We actually JUST posted the finalists here: http://storycartel.com/blog/classic-covers-revealed/
We’ll be sharing the winners on The Write Practice soon. Thanks!