One of our printers came in today with a book sample. It’s a hugely popular children’s title with a rather scary snake’s head looking directly at you with beady red eyes. A few weeks' back another printer showed me a sample with a huge toothy jaw on the front cover which – wait for it – glowed in the dark. Now, I don’t know about you but I do not like the idea of waking up in the middle of the night to see a terrifying jaw glowing at me from across the room. And these are children’s books!
I do understand that books with a special design feature are more likely to grab readers’ attention. I loved the finished package of the Bret Easton Ellis’s book Lunar Park for example and our cut-out special effect on Christopher Buckley’s Boomsday makes for an eye-catching design too. And clever packaging aside, Boomsday has got to be one of the funniest and most though-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. As a former vice-president’s chief speechwriter, Buckley has his finger on the pulse of social and political issues and his heroine’s wacky and perhaps not completely farfetched notion of how to combat the mounting social security crisis (if you must know, she suggests 75-year-olds commit voluntary suicide) is totally inspired. It was the perfect accompaniment to the pina coladas on the beach on honeymoon. Even my new husband (that sounds strange, I don’t have any old ones by the way) got hooked on it and he's very picky about what he reads - especially if he's on honeymoon and it's not a cocktail menu.
I do understand that books with a special design feature are more likely to grab readers’ attention. I loved the finished package of the Bret Easton Ellis’s book Lunar Park for example and our cut-out special effect on Christopher Buckley’s Boomsday makes for an eye-catching design too. And clever packaging aside, Boomsday has got to be one of the funniest and most though-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. As a former vice-president’s chief speechwriter, Buckley has his finger on the pulse of social and political issues and his heroine’s wacky and perhaps not completely farfetched notion of how to combat the mounting social security crisis (if you must know, she suggests 75-year-olds commit voluntary suicide) is totally inspired. It was the perfect accompaniment to the pina coladas on the beach on honeymoon. Even my new husband (that sounds strange, I don’t have any old ones by the way) got hooked on it and he's very picky about what he reads - especially if he's on honeymoon and it's not a cocktail menu.
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