The Casual Optimist

Published January 9, 2009

Something for the Weekend Jan. 9th, 2009

Curation, Appeciation, Organization: The Book Cover Archive goes live with “cross-indexed meta data” (and blog)! LOVE this. Nice work fellas. (via SwissMiss)

Skinny tight jeans and mild panic: The Scotsman profiles Canongate’s Jamie Byng.

Almost half of Canadians can’t name a single Canadian author according to the hand-wringing National Post… Or to put it another way, over half of Canadians CAN actually name a Canadian author? It could be worse (really)…

Canadian booksellers manage a “late holiday rally” in December reports PW:

Retailers large and small were unanimous in their opinion that books proved to be an excellent recession gift, with the value proposition of books being improved in part by fact that the actual price of books have fallen relative to U.S. prices.

A .38 shell for independent bookshops: The Guardian‘s Stuart Evers considers consumer apathy and the imminent closure of the Murder One bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London:

These kinds of shops are facing a long, bloody battle – and one which, without significant reinforcements, they are likely to lose. As we hear of the travesty of another brilliant independent going down, we’ll mourn the loss, wring our hands and damn Amazon and the supermarkets and Waterstone’s. Yet perhaps the most important detail we’ll probably keep under wraps: the last time we actually spent any money there.

Hapless Houghton Mifflin Harcourt reinstate editor Drenka Willen after Noble prize-winner Günter Grass intervenes.

Nostalgic book covers a hit for Penguin in Australia— 50 titles released with covers in the original orange-and-cream designs are selling strongly:

“They are instantly recognisable and have an emotional pull… Most people or their parents have got second-hand or old Penguins at home that have the same livery. But it’s not only pulling on that nostalgic lever, it’s also got that retro coolness. We’ve found that younger readers have been really drawn to them.”

“To say his work was inspirational is an understatement”: The New York Times profiles the late Barney Bubbles whose iconic album cover designs (for the likes of Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, and The Damned) are celebrated in Paul Gorman’s new book “Reasons to Be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles” published by Adelita (pictured).

Comments closed

Published January 8, 2009

Double-or-Nothing

Having already called “bullshit” on the Long Tail, Professor Anita Elberse argues that recent acquisitions by Hachette’s Grand Central and Little, Brown & Co. show publishers will continue to make “outrageous” bids for new books despite the recession in (a much linked to) article for the WSJ:

Blockbuster strategies are certainly not free of risk, but, in the long run, they beat the alternative of more balanced investment strategies. That explains why, even when the book industry struggles with the effects of the economic downturn, publishing houses won’t steer away from big bets. Publishers may be even more determined to land such projects in tough times… Are there breakout hits that no one sees coming? Sure. And do media companies sometimes pick the wrong titles to focus their attention on? Absolutely — no one in the industry has a perfect record, and the process of picking winners remains “an informed crapshoot,” as one executive put it. But given their recent performance, it is hard to argue against the approaches taken by publishing houses like Grand Central and Little Brown.

I’m not sure I completely agree with her reasoning–and it’s certainly a lot less warm-and-fuzzy than either the Long Tail or Tipping Point models–but it’s still an interesting argument and I think there’s some truth to her suggestion that consumers prefer blockbusters because, in the end, they “find value in reading the same books and watching the same movies that others do.”

GalleyCat has some thoughtful criticisms of Elberse’s article here and here, but the shriller, teeth-gnashing responses make me think she might be on to something…

Link

1 Comment

Published January 6, 2009

Interview with Coralie Bickford-Smith

Penguin Books award-winning book cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith (mentioned previously here and here) discusses her experiences, influences, book cover designs, and more, in a great interview over at design:related :

When I feel intimidated I just start making stuff so that before I can get frozen, something interesting is already grabbing my attention and keeping my mind occupied. As every designer has a different approach to a title, I try not to think “what would so-and-so do” and instead remind myself that my own approach is what I should be aiming for. Books are rich, wonderful things – there’s always something new you can bring out of them. Some people have to keep finding ways to package soap powder – I’ve got a lot more to go on with Crime and Punishment.

Link

(via The Book Design Review)

Comments closed

Published December 12, 2008

Something for the Weekend, Dec. 12th, 2008

The 10 Commandments of Book Giving by Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and Senior Editor of the Washington Post‘s Book World (via Right-Reading):

Over the years I’ve gone through all kinds of Christmas presents, and nearly all of them quickly broke or have been long forgotten. Not so the gift books, whether Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and the Golden Lion, a paperback copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses or the Pléiade edition of Stendhal’s Oeuvres Intimes. Given to me by relatives, teachers and friends, they helped to make the season bright — and they also helped to make me who I am.

“Book apps for the iPhone keep getting better” according to Maud Newton (via DesignNotes)

Lying Liars: “Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to try to impress friends or potential partners”, the BBC reports.

Nintendo launches ‘great books’ package:

The creator of Donkey Kong and Super Mario is hoping that Austen and Dickens will prove as great a pull to computer game fanatics. It has worked with HarperCollins to select 100 titles – from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Gulliver’s Travels, Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities and Treasure Island – which will be available in a single software package for the Nintendo DS

Mwa ha ha! Chip Kidd discusses Bat-Manga! (via Books Covered)

The Age of Mass Intelligence — Are we actually smarter than we think we are? John Parker thinks so (via kottke):

One of the commonest complaints by cultural doomsayers is that nobody reads good books any more. Yet in the past two years, the Oprah Book Club in America recommended Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and three novels by William Faulkner–good by any standard, and they all made the bestseller lists. This year, Waterstone’s, which owns over 300 bookshops in Britain, asked two celebrated novelists, Sebastian Faulks and Philip Pullman, each to choose 40 titles and write a few words of recommendation. The chain then piled copies of the books on tables next to the entrances of its main shops and waited to see what would happen. Faulks and Pullman hardly dumbed down their choices: they included Fernando Pessoa’s “Book of Disquiet”, Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”, and Raymond Queneau’s “Exercises in Style”. The sales increases for these books over the same period the year before were, respectively, 1,350%, 1,420% and 1,800%–clear evidence of latent demand. If you offer it, they will come.

In this brief interview at inFrame.tv, award-winning Australian artist and author Shaun Tan discusses his work and the adaptation of his book The Lost Thing into an animated movie (via drawn):

And on a similar note, stills of the 25 minute animated adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ book Lost and Found (to be broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on Christmas Eve) can be seen on the STUDIOaka website. Looks lovely.

And this is probably my last regular post for the next couple of weeks. In the extremely unlikely instance you get withdrawal symptoms, you can always check out the links in the sidebar and/or send me an email!

See you in the New Year!

1 Comment

Published December 11, 2008

Midweek Miscellany, Dec. 10th, 2008

NPR’s Best Graphic Novels of 2008 include Josh Cotter’s Skyscrapers of the Midwest, Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Goodbye, and Alan’s War by Emmanuel Guibert (pictured). There’s an excerpt available of each book selected. Nice. (Thanks Ehren!)

A new way to express an old idea – An interesting interview with Canadian designer David Drummond at Books Covered (via Design Observer):

I tend to start with a list of words. For example I am working on a cover now that is about a dog but can’t show the dog on the cover. I like those kind of problems. How do you show this without showing it?

Amazon’s Jeff Bezo is PW‘s Person of the Year.

“Suburban surrender”: James Wood revisits Richard Yates’ blistering novel Revolutionary Road in the latest The New Yorker.

Little to do with books – The New York Times looks at the infighting and the politics of book groups:

Yes, it’s a nice, high-minded idea to join a book group, a way to make friends and read books that might otherwise sit untouched. But what happens when you wind up hating all the literary selections — or the other members? Breaking up isn’t so hard to do when it means freedom from inane critical commentary, political maneuvering, hurt feelings, bad chick lit and even worse chardonnay.

Russell Davies on “analogue natives”:

So much joyful digital stuff is only a pleasure because it’s hugely convenient; quick, free, indoors, no heavy lifting. That’s enabled lovely little thoughts to get out there. But as ‘digital natives’ get more interested in the real world; embedding in it, augmenting it, connecting it, weaponising it, arduinoing it, printing it out, then those thoughts/things need to get better. And we might all need to acquire some analogue native skills.

Comments closed

Published December 10, 2008

Cautious Optimism

Books a better buy in Canada? After all the problems caused by the high Canadian dollar in 2007, Canadian publishers and booksellers are “cautiously optimistic” at the start of this year’s holidays according to Vit Wagner in the Toronto Star:

“The climate is much better this year,” says [Nancy] Frater, proprietor of the Orangeville store BookLore. “My reason for optimism is that in challenging economic times, people do turn to books. As gifts, books have long-lasting value and they’re reasonably priced.”

It’s all relative though:

“I can’t look into the future and say everything’s going to be sanguine,” says Random House of Canada’s [Brad] Martin. “We’re doing a lot of cost cutting, but it’s more discretionary, like cutting the number of sales conferences from two to one. But we believe that the organization that we have now is what we need to successfully publish books in this country at the level that we have been publishing them.

“What I can’t tell you is what is going to happen to the market over the first six months of next year. It’s concerning for all of us. But certainly right now we seem to be performing better in a difficult market than the two other major English-language markets.”

And I’m not sure how this all sits with the recently reported “belt-tightening” in Canadian publishing — including staff changes at KidsCan Press and Thomas Allen postponing most of their spring 2009 list — and all the grim news coming out of the US.

Is there worse to come? Any Thoughts?

1 Comment

Published December 10, 2008

“A hint of optimism”

Publishers Weekly is reporting that following “one of publishing’s bleakest weeks” in living memory, there’s a reason for us to keep on living in the form of two recent digital announcements from Penguin and Random House.

Penguin have launched Penguin 2.0 which includes more online content, e-books and POD, as well as an app imaginatively called ‘Penguin Mobile’ which makes the features from Penguin’s website available on the iPhone.

In the meantime, Random House have announced a partnership with Stanza “the popular iPhone e-book reader from Lexcycle” that will make e-books by several RH authors available for free on the platform. According to the press release, the books available “will be drawn from each author’s backlist and will include excerpts for any new hardcovers coming in 2009.”

I have to say I was really surprised how much I like e-books on the iPhone. But what does this mean for single-purpose devices like Sony’s e-Reader and Amazon’s Kindle?

Comments closed

Published December 10, 2008

FaceOut Books

FaceOut Books, updated every Monday, is a fascinating website about the practice of book cover design:

“This is not a blog to rip apart what we dislike—everyone has a different aesthetic. This is a blog about the challenges and outcomes of a project. We are here to teach and be taught by one another.”

The post from December 8th is by Charlotte Strick who designed the cover for Roberto Bolaño’s much lauded 2666 (pictured):

It’s a designer’s dream to have a mysterious, numerical title to work with. I was a big fan of Rodrigo Corral’s jacket design solution for “The Savage Detectives” (FSG, 2007), so that made it an even greater challenge to take on what is considered by many to be the late author’s “magnum opus”.

Comments closed

Published December 8, 2008

Monday Miscellany

“I have always enjoyed photographing loners” — A lovely BBC audio slideshow of “Writers’ Rooms” narrated by award winning photographer Eamonn McCabe. The project, appearing weekly in The Guardian and currently on show Madison Contemporary Art in London, captures the working environments of novelists, biographers and poets.

Book Industry Enters Shaky Chapter: NPR’s Lynn Neary looks at last week’s horrorshow.

The 10 Best Books of 2008 according to The New York Times Book Review. Interesting that they’ve also created a mini-site which has promotional material for the top 10 books, including shelf talkers, bookmarks, and posters for bookstores to download . There are also web banners and a video with author Toni Morrison. This is has to be a good idea.

“The news is still big. It’s the newspapers that got small”: A spectacular Roger Ebert rant about the death of criticism :

The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.

Spot. On. I actually met Roger Ebert a few years back in Pages bookstore. The Toronto International Film Festival must have been on. I had no idea who he was at the time (a colleague told me later), but he was very nice about it.

“The Most Dangerous Man in Publishing”: A profile of publisher Barney Rosset in Newsweek:

Before Rosset challenged federal and state obscenity laws, censorship (and self-censorship) was an accepted feature of publishing. His victories in high courts helped to change that. Rosset believed that it was impossible to represent life in the streets and in the dark recesses of the heart and mind honestly without using language that in the mid-20th century was considered “obscene”—and therefore illegal to sell or mail. To a significant extent, the books he published convinced others that this was true.

The Well-Tended Bookshelf— Laura Miller on culling one’s book collection:

There are two general schools of thought on which books to keep, as I learned once I began swapping stories with friends and acquaintances. The first views the bookshelf as a self-portrait, a reflection of the owner’s intellect, imagination, taste and accomplishments… The other approach views a book collection less as a testimony to the past than as a repository for the future; it’s where you put the books you intend to read.

Which leads me rather nicely to…

Books At Home: A blog about bookshelves. It is possible that this just too nerdy. Even for me.

Relevance: Brian at daxle.net interviews author Tim Manners , editor and publisher of The Hub and Reveries.com. It’s a fascinating discussion that covers innovation, brands, and the consequences of overabundant advertising (amongst other things).

3 Comments

Published December 7, 2008

Interview with Carin Goldberg

Success Secrets of the Graphic Design Superstars interviews design doyenne Carin Goldberg. Goldberg has designed book covers for just about all the major US publishers, including Simon & Schuster, Random House, Farrar Straus & Giroux, and Harper Collins:

Book jacket design was not as “sexy” or as visible then as it has become. Art directors at that time had more control. There were fewer, if any, marketing meetings or other sorts of group decision making that often dilute the creative process. It was an easier, more rewarding time to be designing covers.

Something for the Weekend Jan. 9th, 2009

Like this:

Double-or-Nothing

Like this:

Interview with Coralie Bickford-Smith

Like this:

Something for the Weekend, Dec. 12th, 2008

Like this:

Midweek Miscellany, Dec. 10th, 2008

Like this:

Cautious Optimism

Like this:

“A hint of optimism”

Like this:

FaceOut Books

Like this:

Monday Miscellany

Like this:

Interview with Carin Goldberg

Like this:

100 Design Book Covers

Like this:

The Casual Optimist Posts

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: