what does the following mean re: cropping?

Upload Cover Images

You need to make sure that there is no white around the image you are trying to uploade.  You need to crop the white out so that all you see is the cover.

You can find images anywhere.  I usually search google images and find a lot of them there, but you can go to any book site like Amazon or Books-a-Million.  If you use amazon some of their covers are marked with "look here" logo, don't use those.

When you find an image you need to save it to your computer and then upload from there.

ok, it was the cropping that was getting me.

and what does that mean "they need to be approved".

i dont want to take time doing stuff that wont get approved..does anyone know why they wouldnt be approved (other than a watermark on the front or something similar)

Alex; After you upload an image, it has to be approved by the Image Approvers. When that happens, your image will show up on your Bookshelf.  One of the reasons it wouldn't get approved is if the image is not cropped to take away any white border or if it is too large or if it isn't in .jpg format.

Here is some info from The Help Center:

• Find a cover image for the book on another Internet database, or scan one in or take a digital photograph
  • The image must be less than 5 MB
  • The image must be in .jpg format
  • The image must be cropped to show only the book cover
  • The image can't be one that has "See inside!" (some images from Amazon.com have this)
• Scroll down to the bottom of any page on the site
• Click "Upload Book Covers"
• Enter the ISBN for the book
• Browse your hard drive for the cover image
• Click to submit it
• The Image Approvers will usually approve images quickly.
  • If your image is not approved, it might have been too fuzzy or in the wrong format or not properly cropped
  • The Image Approvers will often replace your image with a better one when your submission comes in.

Everything June said, plus an image will not be approved if there is an obvious trademark/copyright symbol on it (this means that PBS can't legally use it many images from ebay will have this type of symbol), or an image from Amazon.com with the big yellow arrow.  Or if the image is so tiny or blurry that the title can't be read. 

Scanned images need to be straight, if they are obviously crooked they don't get approved.  Or if they have a big, shiny glare spot.

If you submit an image and it isn't approved the image approver who denies it should be sending a pm to tell you which image and what the problem was.  If your image doesn't show up after about a week, and you don't get a pm there was probably a system issue and you should try submitting it again.