• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, July 5, 2006

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) today will unveil plans for a contest recognizing the best magazine covers. ASME hopes the contest will encourage creative competition, as well as highlight magazines' ability to engage readers at a time when print is threatened by digital media including online. Members of ASME, or its sister organization, the Magazine Publishers of America, can submit covers from issues published between August 2005 and July 2006. The deadline for submission is Aug. 11.

Editors can submit covers to six different categories:

* Cover of the year
* Best celebrity cover
* Best news cover
* Best fashion cover
* Best concept cover
* Best service cover

Winners will be announced during the American Magazine Conference, which will take place Oct. 22-24 in Phoenix, AZ.

The new cover contest is a follow-up to ASME's successful retrospective on the 40 best magazine covers of the last 40 years, "40/40," and comes on the heels of new research confirming that magazine covers are integral to reader engagement.

According to Media Dynamics' recent Magazine Dimensions 2006 report, magazine readers ages 25-34 ranked "eye-catching covers" ahead of virtually every other measure as an indicator of their likelihood to read.