The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) has announced the winners of the Top Shelf Book Cover Award program, honoring the year's best designs in Christian publishing. Crossway came out on top with four of the 10 best designs.

Winners were officially announced and presented with their awards Oct. 22 at ECPA's annual PUBu event.

The following 10 covers were chosen as the top designs of the year:

Called to the Fire by Chet Bush (Abingdon Press)

Faithmapping by Daniel Montgomery and Mike Cosper (Crossway)

The Fruitful Wife by Hayley DiMarco (Crossway)

God on the Rocks by Phil Madeira (Jericho Books)

Grace in the Maybe by Katie Savage (Howard Books)

Gray Matters by Brett McCracken (Baker Books/Baker Publishing Group

Letters & Life by Bret Lott (Crossway)

Sex & Money by Paul David Tripp (Crossway)

Snake Oil by Becca Stevens (Jericho Books)

We Laugh, We Cry, We Cook by Becky Johnson and Rachel Randolph (Zondervan)

Managed by Torrey Sharp of Faceout Studio, one of the new features of the revamped award program was that judges were not limited as to the number of covers to recognize as best of year;  rather they had the freedom to choose as many as they felt were top designs.

“The two main goals for the Top Shelf Award program are to feature highly credible judging and create an opportunity for the best work to be recognized,” Sharp said.

“We are very pleased to work with Torrey in the restructure of the program and excited to be already expanding the program for next year accepting ongoing submissions throughout the year from November 2013 to August 2014, and looking to recognize more covers,” said ECPA President and CEO Mark Kuyper.  “Our aim remains: continue to bring recognition to excellent book design in Christian publishing.”

Judged by three industry design experts, each submitted cover was evaluated for their merits in appropriateness for the market, level of conceptual thinking and quality of execution. This debut year of the program saw a 26% increase in submissions and participating publishers.

Winning covers are featured in an annual printed  by Color House Graphics, designed by Faceout and distributed to the designers and design professionals throughout the industry.

To see all of the winning covers, visit www.BookCoverAwards.com.

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