by Dan on August 12, 2009
Typographic book covers by Ed Cornish for the 2009 D&AD student award brief for typography (via We Made This).
Tools of the Trade — The Montreal Gazette talks to Hugh McGuire about Book Oven and the new self-publishing landscape:
Call it Self-publishing 2.0. And it’s one of the fastest-growing sectors of the book world, which is itself enjoying a nice growth period despite the recession and the glut of competing media choices.
“Like in any other media, when you the make tools of publishing easy, people will take advantage of it,” said Hugh McGuire, founder of Montreal self-publishing start-up Book Oven. “It’s just now coming into public consciousness.”
It is troubling however that the photograph accompanying the article suggests that Hugh only rents the top-half of his office space!
Richard Green’s redesigns for ten of Penguin’s classic romance thrillers seen at Noisy Decent Graphics.
Dirty Stories — Eric Reynolds, Marketing Director for the Seattle-based art comics publisher Fantagraphics, interviewed in PW:
The book industry has been in a state of flux for at least a year or two years. I think that’s going to continue as everyone adapts to the larger challenges that print media is facing, and that’s going to affect anybody that publishes in print. It comes down to electronic delivery and the shrinking book market in general and just how you navigate these sorts of things… Without making it sounds like we’re totally awesome, we face the same problems that any understaffed, under-funded company does, but we’re streamlined, and there’s not a lot of fat to be cut.
Ornament — Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas, authors of The Handy Book of Artistic Printing (published by Princeton Architectural Press), have created a nice website and blog for their book about letterpress type.
(I do love this book, but for the sake of full disclosure I should stress that PAPress are distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books).
On a very wet and miserable day in Toronto, it only seems appropriate to start with a couple of books about the rain and then move on to some steaming hot coffee before all the usual book miscellany…
Stickers and Stuff lauds Helen Borten’s lovely illustrations for Franklyn M. Branley’s book Rain and Hail (pictured above). And Andy Smith shares some of his illustrations for his silkscreen book The Rainy Season on his blog (pictured below).
And, while were on the subject of Andy Smith, he’s posted some of his book jacket work on Flickr (via Beyond the Covers).
The Daily Grind — Benjamin Obler, author of Javascotia, on his 5 Favourite Cups of Coffee in a Day at the Penguin blog:
It’s so obvious, I know, but the morning cup — the first — morning cup — is like the pioneer. The self-sacrificer. Without it, there would be no others… Even on a regular day, it’s a workhorse.
Head On — Indie heartthrob Richard Nash talks to Interview Magazine (via Booksquare):
It is very complicated for an unknown writer to reach an audience of readers given the vast numbers of unknown writers out there. How do people find out about it? So I believe in the role of intermediaries. People always look to trusted friends who might be more expert or knowledgeable in a given area for advice about things… The question is, who are going to be those people. The model is going to shift from kind of a gatekeeper model to an advisor/service model.
Mr. Nash was also interviewed by BookSlut back in March.
I watch you read — Julie Wilson, AKA Seen Reading and publicist for Canadian publisher Anansi, is now blogging for Walrus magazine.
Atomized — Mark Coker, CEO of e-publishing service Smashwords, talks about e-books and iPhones with Maria Schneider at Editor Unleashed.
Bite-Size Edits — The Book Oven launches “a tool that makes proofreading easy and might just be the most fun you’ve ever had spotting typos with your clothes on.” The Book Oven blog has more. (NB Bite-Size Edits is still in private alpha, but I have a couple of invitations so email/DM me or leave a comment below if you would like to be involved).
And finally, Carny Kill as seen at Pop Sensation (words fail):
