Romance Publisher Black Velvet Seductions Announces Cover Art of the Year Award

Indianapolis, IN, March 01, 2008 --(PR.com)-- The old adage is, don't judge a book by a cover, yet 64.6 million Americans read at least one romance novel in 2006, and for many of those the cover played a pivotal role in which book or books were chosen.

In spite of the role their work plays artists and cover designers are often silent, unrecognized, behind the scenes players who receive little recognition for their work.

"The romance publishing industry is a huge industry with sales of 1.37 billion and approximately 76,800 new titles released in 2006. I believe that the industry as a whole is strengthened when the work, talent, vision, and skill of all who work to produce the books and ebooks that account for the huge number of annual releases and the billion dollar sales are recognized and awarded,” said Laurie Sanders, Founder and CEO at Black Velvet Seductions. “Though there are many contests for authors (both published and unpublished) there are very few for cover artists, and we hope our award fills the gap a bit.”

The winner of the 2008 Romance Cover of the Year Award will be selected through a process which will continue throughout the year. Each month the company will collect cover art of the year nominations/entries from authors, publishers, and from cover artists themselves.

A panel of volunteers arranged by Black Velvet Seductions will judge all monthly nominations/entries and determine the top four entries by vote. The four nominations that receive the greatest number of votes from the panel will be added to the Black Velvet Seductions website where visitors to the site will be able to vote to select a cover of the month. The cover with the most votes at the end of the month will be added to the group of monthly winners which will be voted on by site visitors in January 2009.

Black Velvet Seductions is a small publisher of romance, erotic romance, and romantic suspense titles. Their titles are available in both ebook and paperback formats from the company website at http://www.blackvelvetseductions.com or through Amazon.com (for paperback and Kindle versions) and Fictionwise for ebook formats.

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