I actually regretted for once living in Oz as I had the perfect cover in mind. Oh well, c’est la vie!

But kudos to you for addressing it head on and discontinuing the contest once you saw it through someone else’s eyes. My hat goes off to you. Good guy!

Anita

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and concerns about my crowdsource the cover contest. As a freelancer, writer and designer, myself, my intention has always been to be respectful.

So, here are a few thoughts:

First, with regard to the contest being limited to the US, I wanted very much to open it up to everyone, but the publisher’s legal department said it needed to be limited to the U.S., because the laws about contest/drawings are different in every country and it would be nearly impossible to comply with all of them.

With regard to the notion that this contest somehow takes advantage of designers by asking them to work on spec, I have to tell you, I am blown away by this perception.

First, please understand, it has never been my intention to take advantage of anyone. In fact, quite the opposite. My publisher already has a very competent staff of designers who will already come up with different ideas and vie for the cover internally. The normal process would be to keep it in-house. To exclude everybody else. And that would be the end of it.

But, I also knew that getting the cover of a book from a big NY publisher offered a certain level of prestige. And, I knew that a lot of the people who read not only my personal blog, but my articles on FSw were designers who would love to have the chance to add a cover from a major publisher to their portfolio and would also benefit from added public exposure of their work, even if they didn’t land the cover.

So, I asked my publisher to allow me to open up the opportunity beyond their in-house designers to potentially give a relatively new designer not only the chance to win something but also give something to the bigger community in the form of a lot of public exposure to their work.

So, we structured our cover-contest very intentionally as more of a “shared online gallery show,” where we’d select certain artists to be in the show, promote that show and get a lot of people through the doors of that online gallery to see all the different works on display, give a huge amount of exposure and publicity to everyone in the show and then even guarantee that one person would have a sale by the end of the show.

By doing it this way, at a very minimum, contributors would benefit from the broad public exposure we will create during the “gallery” phase.

The notion that submitting a design to this shared-gallery contest would be considered working on spec or abuse in any way actually never occurred to me. And, as both a designer and someone who has shared a lot of business advice right here on FSW, myself, I still don’t get the analogy.

Because, what we area actually doing is opening up the opportunity to participate in a process that is going to happen, whether we run the contest or not, but would traditionally have been closed to outside contribution. Indeed, that internal process will still happen, but I’ve convinced them to not only consider outside contribution, but honor and compensate the people who genuinely contribute through the vehicle of (1) substantial public exposure during the gallery phase and (2) monetary payment, for the winner.

As an example of how this can benefit all, I am also a copywriter. I recently submitted a sales letter to a competition, where the top 20 or so letters were publicly displayed and then reviewed on the way to announcing the winner. Knowing this was the process was the reason I chose to compete, because, even if I didn’t win, I believed the exposure was more than adequate payment. In fact, the exposure landed me connections, respect and potential revenue streams that, over the next year, will be huge for my career.

With the book cover contest, I wanted to find a way for everyone who cared to contribute to have the opportunity to experience a similar benefit, in addition to the potential benefit of actually winning.

It is my deepest desire to not only show respect for, but further the best interests of freelancers of all specialties, including designers. That’s’ why this promotion was crafted in this very specific way…to not only open up a previously closes process, but share a lot a benefit with all who participate, too.