Wednesday Cover Story: Our London Book Fair posters
3 April, 2013
The images on many book cover designs make for fabulous posters. In fact I’ve always thought the covers to our Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R King would brighten up any room quite wonderfully. Now, however, I see that so many more of our cover images look fabulous blown up to poster-size […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Setting the scene…
27 March, 2013
This month’s issue of Booksmonthly features a review of the latest paperback in The Rose McQuinn series by Alanna Knight, Deadly Legacy, set in Edinburgh in 1901. The review says: ‘The atmosphere is superbly created and executed – the cover image sums up the narrow, lonely back streets that Alanna describes, and the story is […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The beautifully packaged book v The e-book
20 March, 2013
Earlier this week, over dinner with friends, I was asked the all-too-common question: will e-books eventually kill the book? Won’t everyone ultimately opt for the cheapest possible bargain? I proceeded to explain that undoubtedly, e-books have made a dent in the sales of physical books, especially mass market paperbacks. Unless you are averse to reading […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Hot stuff
6 March, 2013
There are times when you spot a book cover that just fits so well that you would like to shake the designer by the hand. And then there are times where the realisation of their design idea is so astoundingly apposite that I’m tempted to adopt a ‘We are not worthy’ pose along these lines. […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Judging Covers – UK vs US
27 February, 2013
It’s often interesting to compare the book covers produced by UK and US publishers; no matter how similar, there are always some subtle differences which perhaps say something about the disparity in our culture and attitudes each side of the pond. US literature website The Millions has recently posted its annual Judging Books by Their […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Bitter Greens, by Kate Forsyth
20 February, 2013
On Monday the final copies of Bitter Greens arrived from the printers. And as we removed the hardbacks from the boxes, the office was soon filled with the squeals and guttural sounds that would usually be associated with, say, watching Ryan Gosling remove his shirt in Crazy, Stupid, Love (or is that just me?) or […]
Wednesday Cover Story: A hair-raising tale…
13 February, 2013
There’s been lots of commentary in the past week over the new Faber edition of The Bell Jar. Sara contributed with her post here and Faber posted a very evenhanded response. Another week, and another cover controversy dawned, proving again how fiercely readers hold books and characters dear to them. Do you remember Anne of […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Can book covers be offensive?
6 February, 2013
Often on this blog we showcase some of the book covers we love, whether they’re our own designs or have simply caught our eye in a book store. This week, I’m afraid, the book cover occupying my mind is one I personally dislike – and it seems I’m not alone. The recent reissue of Sylvia Plath’s The […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The new Elizabeth covers
30 January, 2013
Our art editor, Christina, has just put the finishing touches to the cover designs for the upcoming reissues of Margaret Irwin titles. Have a look and swoon… Got a favourite? Chiara Priorelli, Publicity […]
Wednesday Cover Story – Pulp! The Classics
23 January, 2013
There’s a certain amount of preciousness attached to the sacred words ‘literary classics’ which is understandable considering their longevity . And while I appreciate some of the gorgeous editions that are available (take your pick from any published by the Folio Society for instance), it was great to come across some books that are far from genuflecting […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The books in Moonrise Kingdom
16 January, 2013
This past weekend I watched Moonrise Kingdom on DVD. I am not a die-hard Wes Anderson fan, but I enjoyed the mix of odd-ball characters and the quirky charm of the plot which features the innocent romance between misfit Suzy Bishop (pictured above) and boy-scout Sam Shakusky as they attempt to run away together one […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Nicholas Bracewell mystery series
9 January, 2013
What book/s shall get the honour of featuring in the first Wednesday Cover Story for 2013? Well, it’s going to have to be the utterly beautiful designs for the Nicholas Bracewell series by Edward Marston – murder and mystery set around a theatre company in Elizabethan London. The next three books in the series have […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Unforeseen misinterpretations…
12 December, 2012
I was browsing through The Bookseller earlier this week and my eyes happened upon the thumbnail for the cover of Foursome, by Jane Fallon. The American Kindle cover, to be exact – which is pictured below. And, I stopped to look at it because, and this can only be due to my half-Italian blood, but […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Our Budd Schulberg reissues
5 December, 2012
A few weeks ago I blogged about our Budd Schulberg Dilemma and now I am delighted to present to you the new designs for our three Schulberg classics, to be published in April next year. You can see how, in the end, we solved the issue with Brando and On the Waterfront… […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Shopping inspiration from The Firebird
28 November, 2012
Early copies of The Firebird, by Susanna Kearsley (out Jan 2013) came in this week and we have all been fawning over the cover – my favourite now amongst all of Kearsley’s books. (And a nice chunky hardback it is too.) And I must confess there’s probably another reason I’ve been gazing at the cover […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The first ever A&B Catalogue (from 1969)!
21 November, 2012
We’re currently working on our January – June 2013 catalogue which always gets us a bit extra excited about the gems we have in store for you next year. And of course, we have to pick a cover for it. The covers to last year’s catalogues were inspired by the covers to our Monsieur Pamplemousse […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Budd Schulberg Dilemma
14 November, 2012
In our office meeting this morning, we discussed the new covers for three Budd Schulberg titles we are republishing in April next year: boxing novel The Harder They Fall (also made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart); The Disenchanted (the thinly disguised novel about Scott Fitzgerald’s stab at writing a script for Hollywood) and On […]
Wednesday Cover Story: When the cover is better than the book…
7 November, 2012
About a month ago I bought the book The One-Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson purely on the basis that the cover jumped out at me (as did the title). I didn’t even read the back cover blurb (honestly I didn’t) but merely the 1st chapter […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Moving Picture…
31 October, 2012
I am, if I may be frank, not the biggest fan of book trailers – or at least not the most common kind that feature a running stream of static images alternating with text about the book. So unless you make your book trailer look like the preview to Skyfall (ie. not look like a […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Our Maisie Dobbs e-books introduces a new favourite…
24 October, 2012
We’ve just released, exclusively in e-book format, two more titles in Jacqueline Winspear’s hugely acclaimed Maisie Dobbs mystery series: An Incomplete Revenge and Among the Mad. Now we’ve mentioned the Maisie Dobbs covers in our blog before (most recently here) in light of the images […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Danish take on Mercenaries…
17 October, 2012
Whilst some cover designs get replicated across editions worldwide (as in the case of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which was sold in over 30 countries, most of which published their edition using the same cover image) every country tends to have its own style. So it’s always interesting to see how […]
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