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For those who have been following my Facebook & Twitter posts, I have been working on a an ebook (not to be confused with my forthcoming print book, “The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis & Life in the Kingdom” with Likewise Books/IVPress, due out in November).

The ebook, which is entitled “Living Christ Together: Reflections on the Missional Life”, a collection of essays and articles.  Drawing from nearly 10 years of blogging & writing, it will include stories, reflections, quotes and questions about life, faith & mission.  My plan is to release it on the Amazon Kindle store for $1.49.

One thing that is still lacking is a good, quality book cover design.  As I don’t have the money for a designer, I thought it might be fun to have a design contest.  People can submit their cover ideas to myself and a small group of local judges.  The top three finalists will each receive a free copy of the ebook.  Their submissions will be displayed here and everyone can vote.  The winner will receive a copy of “The Cost of Community” when it is released in November (possibly along with some other book prizes as well).  The winner will also get listed credit in the ebook, including their name and a URL to their website of choice (as long as it is appropriate, of course).

I will be accepting submissions starting today, closing by April 8th, 2011.  Submissions should be emailed to jamiearpinricci AT gmail D0T com.

UPDATE: Obviously any images you use must be completely copyright free.  Do not use images randomly from only that you do not have full license to use.  All such submissions will be excluded.

Feel free to ask me questions in the comment section about taste, design, etc.  All such questions will be answer in the comments for all contributors to see. Here are the Kindle cover specs:

Amazon KDP accepts two types of files for cover images:

• JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
• TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

Amazon KDP applies additional compression to images when displaying them on its website. For best results, images should be uploaded with minimal compression.

Dimensions

Minimum 500 x Maximum 1280 pixels

Recommendations for the size of your cover art:

• Minimum of 500 pixels, horizontally
• Maximum of 1280 pixels, vertically

Save at 72 dots per inch (dpi) for optimal viewing on the web.

Color

Product images display on the Amazon website using RGB color mode.
RGB is the color mode native to the web and most color screen displays. RGB stands for red, green, and blue. These three colors displayed at varying levels of intensity create over 16 million colors.

The RGB color space is used for product images. Use color images whenever possible and relevant. The Kindle reading device has a black & white screen today but Kindle applications for other devices, such as iPhone or PC, take advantage of colors.

Borders for White Cover Art

Cover art with white or very light backgrounds can seem to disappear against the white background. Adding a very narrow (3-4 pixel) border in medium grey will define the boundaries of the cover.

Tags: Books, Missional

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Books, Missional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.