Thursday 22 May 2008

Faber Finds

One of the more interesting initiatives in publishing this year is the launch in June of Faber Finds. This is basically a print-on-demand offshoot from Faber & Faber whereby old books that might not support normal print runs, but which Faber folk want to see in print, are made available again in POD editions. They're also taking requests for potential titles, and I was thrilled to know that the brilliant Patrick Hamilton's first novel, Monday Morning, is scheduled for later in the year.

So what will the books look like? Nothing special, unfortunately. They have "automatically generated" covers, whatever that means, and they all basically look like this.






I'm not sure if they different colours indicate different genres, the way the original Penguin paperbacks did. I don't really like the typeface (it's very 1983) or the decorative doodads, either. They're inoffensive, I suppose, but nothing great.

Still, if it gets Patrick Hamilton and other writers like Roger Longrigg, Rex Warner and Lionel Davidson back into print, it's not all bad.

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