New Faulkners

We've freshened up our William Faulkner backlist. First six about to go to printer. There will be 20 in all. Lots of southern photography, William Eggleston and the like. Lettering by Jon Contino. The ebooks appear to have the new covers—whatever that is worth.

Blog Fodder Friday

LP inserts

Another great Gary Shteyngart book trailer.

Put a bird on it.

Steve Albini has a food blog. Steve Albini!?

While we're at it, the Vegan Black Metal Chef

This website must have been seriously hard to program.

Somebody already owns this domain name.

Also. I'm looking for anything interesting being done in ebook/epub for ipad. More experimental the better. Post below or email me: jgall@randomhouse.com. Not looking for inspiration or to steal ideas or anything like that.

Finally, what it's all come down to: moustaches.

From the Killed Covers Show

Some of the work was reproduced in the Book Review this past Sunday.

I will repost the Charles Yu post when I get a chance to REWRITE IT. Thanks Blogger!

The New Yu

This is the hard cover jacket I designed about a year ago for Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. I really liked this cover. Art by Benbo George.

It made it so far as to be included on the bound galley. At the last minute it was killed and replaced with the UK jacket (seen below). Note to cover design novices: if you are ever in a meeting and someone says "Have you seen the UK jacket?" you know you are in trouble.

As baffling as it was at the time, I can see the point. The toy raygun approach may not have been the best solution, and is a cliche wrapped inside of a cliche, more accessible approach was needed. The novel is about a guy who fixes time travel machines and ends up getting caught in a time loop. He is in love with his computer's sexy voiced operating system and he has a pet dog. It's also a great book.

For paperback here is my bid for a wider pop audience. Die cut/step back cover, silver ink, a ton of wonderful quotes and a dog in a space suit. What more could one want? Cover illustration by our own Peter Quach.

Paperback available June 28.