Contest: Design New Cover Art for Corporate High School!
/Subject: Design a new cover for the novel Corporate High School. Your work may be on the cover of a second edition!
Replace this cover with something better!
Medium: Paint, ink, photography, digital, or mixed media
Submissions open: September 1st
Deadline: December 1st
Winner announced: December 31st after a period of public voting [Your entry will be accompanied by a link to your online portfolio if you wish.]
Prizes: $100, promotion of your work, credit in the second edition
Entry Fee: Zero dollars and zero cents. Open to all.
Submit to NotAPipePublishing@gmail.com
Here's what we're looking for: The piece should focus on the protagonist, Harriet, a 17 year-old African-American high school student. She's pretty but not in an overly sexual way. She has natural hair though she has it done in ringlets for one scene, so that would work, too. She begins the story as a somewhat naive character, innocently accepting the status quo, and by the end she has become a much more fierce advocate for her own autonomy and for change, so you could depict her either way. If you choose to, you could include her friends as well. Her best friend Sky is Harriet's age, white, and very thin, with straight blond hair. Her friend Gina is the alpha female of the group, aggressively sexy and a snob. You could also include the males of their group, along with Ken and Graham, Harriet's romantic interests in the novel. Too many characters might be too busy an image though, so use your own artistic judgement.
As for the setting, if you want to go for something indoors, it would be appropriate to show one of their classrooms, a large space where a hundred students look at a teacher who is on a screen teaching from a distant location to classes all over the country while wearing what looks like a Walmart greater's uniform (but without the trademark logo. I don't want to get sued). If you'd rather do something outdoors, the book is set in a world ravaged by global warming where the sea levels have risen so much that most of the world is flooded, and the city where Harriet lives is on a mountaintop of Mt. Hood, Oregon (now an island). The buildings are domes or egg-shaped ovals to protect them from the super-storms. Out in the inland sea around the island, they can still see the wreckage of what was once the city of Portland. That could make for a striking background.
More than anything, the cover should pique the interest of teenage readers. The current cover reflects the menace of the monolithic Corporation that's the enemy in the story, but because it doesn't show the characters, especially Harriet, some readers won't even be able to tell that the book is fiction. Your cover might not even need to say "a novel" because that will be clear. Do consider where you'd put the title, tagline, and the author's name large enough that they can be placed prominently and read when the cover is shrunk down to the size the image will appear on somebody's Kindle, but don't worry too much about it; submissions will be accepted and judged without the front text or side cover/back covers, so the cover image is the most important part.
All entrants, save the winner, retain ownership of their works but allow Not a Pipe Publishing to publish them for the purposes of public voting and for other marketing. The winner gives sole ownership of the winning image to Not a Pipe Publishing for use on the cover of the second edition.
Here's a printable flyer in .pub format. Just click it to download. Put it up in your art class or share it with a friend!