In his recent Booker acceptance speech, Julian Barnes did the usual polite thing of thanking his editors and his agent. But then, just when everyone thought he was done, he veered off in an entirely unexpected direction to pay animated tribute to Suzanne Dean, "the best book designer in town", who had turned his prize-winning novel into "a beautiful object". The Sense of an Ending does indeed come clad in a lovely cover, an elegiac visual riff on dandelion clocks, which darkens at the edge to black, an idea of mourning that then runs over the edges of the pages themselves. At least it does in the early editions. Such little touches are both fiddly and expensive (which comes to the same thing) so subsequent reprintings have left off the darkened page ends. It's a decision, Dean herself admits, that is going to make the first editions of the novel just that little bit more desirable in years to come.
This is a fascinating article in the Guardian about the way publishers are responding to the rise in the sale of e-books. And what do they do? Make 'real' books more beautiful and to be coveted. Persephone gets a mention!
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