COURTESY OF VISUAL EDITIONS
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objets d’art on the shelf or coffee
table, are rising in prevalence.
Publishers are investing in more
luscious, expensive print editions.
Taschen makes stunning art books
that are artworks in themselves,
often costing hundreds of dollars.
McSweeneys continues to experiment with formats and materials. The attributes that ebooks
don’t do well or at all—heavy
paper stocks, bookmark ribbons,
book plates, artful typography,
metallic foils, and stunning, colorful covers—are being implemented in what many see a new
flourishing of the mass-produced
book arts. Penguin in particular
is repackaging classics texts that
are available for free online in luscious, collective packages such as
Penguin Threads (stitched covers)
and Penguin Drop Caps, covers
with one oversized letter in typography (A for Jane Austen’s Pride
and Prejudice, and so on).
In some instances, the narratives of stories are being augmented by physical, sensory content, such as with Tree of Codes
by Jonathan Safran Foer (Visual
Editions), which used remarkable die-cuts on every single page;
Chris Ware’s Building Stories
(Pantheon), a box of 14 differ-
BOOKS
ent graphic novel publications
in a wide variety of shapes and
sizes; or Anne Carson’s Nox (New
Directions), a poetic collage to
her deceased brother that opens
into a 192-page accordion-style
fold-out. To make Violentology, a
book about violence in Colombia,
American publisher Umbrage had
the pages printed on the press of
a legendary newspaper bombed
by drug baron Pablo Escobar, and
hand-sewn by a local bindery.
What makes them different
HUFFINGTON
11.11.12
Pages from
Safran Foer’s
Tree of Codes.