AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Take the greatest food writing from the past 400 years and apply some modern design magic. Penguin’s Great Food Series is simply sumptuous and a true feast for the eyes. True to form, Penguin has taken already-wonderful books and upped their appeal enormously with a series of fantastic covers that would make any shelf proud. [...]

Move over Fifty Shades of Grey, there just might be a new sexy book in town, going viral and breaking the usual publishing rules. On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves was rejected by 14 traditional publishers and 40 different book agents. But Garvis-Graves, who lives in Des Moines, Iowa, persevered, published it as an e-book, [...]

Anne McCaffrey, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin – these prominent authors and many more owe a debt of gratitude to Ace Books. Founded in 1952, this pioneering publisher championed science fiction and helped bring talented young writers out of obscurity and into the spotlight. Many of their striking paperbacks have become favorite finds for [...]

The Galleycat publishing blog reports that a self-published author called Genevieve Jones has won a book deal from Princeton Architectural Press. Hardly earth shattering news, except that Jones’ book, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio, was self-published more than 125 years ago. Amateur naturalist Jones died of typhoid at just 32 and [...]

How will the changing landscape and increasing presence of e-books affect traditional book designers and book covers as we know them?

A small part of my childhood just died. Encyclopaedia Britannica is to cease publishing its print edition after more than 200 years, reports the Daily Telegraph. I used to spend hours browsing through our set. I learnt so much. The publisher is ditching its weighty tomes to concentrate on an internet version, after recognising that [...]

At the 2012 California Antiquarian Book Fair we met up with the International Printing Museum and they demonstrated how an old style printing press works. This miniature colonial-style printing press was actually made in 1976 but is a replica of what Benjamin Franklin would have used.

Barney Rosset, the American publisher who fought countless legal actions against banned books and ran Grove Press, has died at 89, reports the NY Times. Newer generations of readers may not be familiar with him but readers of the 1960s and 1970s should know him. He defied censors in the 1960s by publishing D. H. [...]

Books come in different shapes and sizes. They can be small or very big indeed. Quarto, duodecimo, octavo and elephant folio are just some of the terms you will hear used, and this video from my colleague Christi helps to demystify the jargon. You can learn more about book sizes at the AbeBooks’ Book Collecting [...]

From penguins and dolphins to borzois and beyond, this article explores how some of the best-known publishing houses in the industry chose their animal-themed logos. I love how some of them, like Penguin’s penguin have become so iconic that I hardly even recognize them as a picture of an animal anymore – I think “books” [...]