Flipping amazing

Remember when you were a kid - or maybe a bit more than a kid :) - and you used to make flip books. You used to draw each movement as say a man walked up the stairs, then flip the pages and watch him move.

Well these little flip books published by Mou Hitotsu no Kenkyujo take it several steps further, all the way to way cool art. They make use of hidden spaces and they're amazing. Go Look!

So, you may have noticed I've been a bit slack posting lately, as a result I'm going to take a break over Christmas and new year and try to get my blogging mojo back. So have a great Christmas and New Year & I'll see you in February :) 

Drinkable book

Official world wide release for EMBRACED BY FIRE.
This means it'll be available print & eBook from retailers other than Amazon, so non-Amazonians now's your chance :)


Now on with our scheduled program...

Over the years I've linked to some very fancy books:
Books as fashion
Crazy designs - like a recipe book printed on sheets of fresh pasta
Edible books
A 16th century book that opened 6 ways

But this next book though is something special. It provides safe drinking water. The book itself is a guid to safe drinking water - the kicker - the pages can be removed and used as filters, thus creating safe drinking water. Water is Life is a charity organisation that focuses on safe drinking water in the developing world. This book is a project that seeks to combine an educational resource with a practical tool.

How does it work: "Each page is impregnated with silver nanoparticles (which gives the paper its distinctive orange colouring). The nanoparticles don't quite work like a traditional filter. Rather than providing a barrier, they actually kill the bacteria as they pass through the paper. As the water runs through, the bacteria absorb the silver ions, which kill the bacteria." 

The book has enough pages to last about 4 years (depending on usage). So, next time you take a nice cool drink of water, think about the people who aren't so lucky. Then, raise your glass to the people who are trying to make a difference (or become one of them.)

(Full article here)

Vatican library & a 6-way book

Just a note before I start, EMBRACED BY FIRE, my latest novel is on special at Amazon for a short time so if you're interested .....

Click here:

Embraced by Fire



This week 2 fun bits of books trivia:

First a very cool book from the 16th Century that opens 6 ways. It gives different devotional texts on each unique opening. See a video here. This multi-book was printed in Germany during hte 1550's to 1570s.

Second bit of trivia: The Vatican library is going to digitise its archive with the help of the Japanese. These ancient manuscripts are a vital piece, not just of church history, but of history in general. They include copies of classical Greek and Latin literature as well as mediaeval and Renaissance illumiated works. Eventually the library plans to make it's 82,000 manuscripts available to the public as a result of this work.

How covers are made

I've talked about elements of book design before, like here where an artists talked about creating cover art, but what about the process from the publishers point of view. Below is a great little video on the process of making a book cover.

What I thought was interesting was that when the publisher is talking about the collaborative process behind cover design, the author is listed last, almost as an afterthought  This, unfortunately for the author, is very much the way things work.

I fill out a cover sheet at the beginning of the process (basic info like descriptions of hero/heroine, and a make a note of a few important elements of the story), that's basically it until the cover is complete. Only very famous authors get more say on their covers. The feeling within publishing is that authors know how to write, but publishers are the experts at marketing that book (sometime this is true and sometimes it's not).

I think a quote from Ilona Andrew is apt (unfortunately I can't find it, so I'll paraphrase). Basically someone was complaining that they didn't think the girl on the cover looked like they thought she should. Ms Andrews said that when readers see certain things on covers it gives them cues as to what sort of book it's going to be (romance/ fantasy/ thriller). The publishers understand those cue consciously  authors may not. Of course that's not to say publishers always get it right.

The other thing to bare in mind is that authors can moan like drains about their covers, but they are going to have to have a very, very good reason, because changing covers costs money.

Click the image & enjoy the video:

Creating cover art

This is a fascinating pictographic story of the creation of cover art from the artist's point of view. She also talks a little about each step.

Here are a couple of highlights, but I recommend looking at each step if you're interested in how some artists go about creating the image they want for the cover.

 Selecting costumes

 Posing models

 Getting the right shot

 Choosing the right shot

 Plan

 Colour

  Final

I'm sure not all artists work the same way, but this is still an interesting window into something most of us only ever see once it's complete.

Are paper books sacrosanct?

I was reading Dear Author the other day and they had an item with the title above. Apparently there was a Youtube item where Lauren Conrad showed how to hollow out a book to make a small storage space. The video was removed after the outcry over defacing books.

I have a confession to make - I'm one of those terrible defacers. Several years ago I thought they would make a fun gift.

A place to hide billet-doux from boyfriends, or perhaps a back-up weapon should any of the recipients decide to become a spy.


My first attempt was a complete failure. I got hold of a tatty book that looked ready for the trash - a good practice book I thought. It was on a topic in which I had no interest. Yes, you've guessed it, I ended up getting distracted and reading the darn thing and now it lives on my shelves.

My second attempt was more successful. I felt far less guilt destroying a Readers Digest Condensed book. My gifts were made, I even lined the hollow with velvet (prettier that way).

So are print books sacrosanct? Well, I guess it's quite clear that to me they're not. However, I certainly felt guilt destroying them. Not only that, but I'll have to add a caveat and say, it very much depends on the book. If a caviler attitude to book was taken, where wold all the wonderful old books we have now be?

As for future generations, with the rising prevalence of the eBook, I've no idea how they will view hte paper book at all....

Playing with words

I came across this when I was looking for book making of material last week and I loved it.
Sometimes we forget how much the writers that came before us played with words and conventions, how much they broke the ground that we now tread. This poem from the 17th century is a wonderful example. Rather than write all about it, I'm going to let this video do my job for me :)

I saw a peacock with a fiery tail.

You don't need to be able to read the book, the poem is read aloud.

Making crazy books

I had a lot of questions about last week's post so here's a little fun with crazy and unusual books. That's right, it's time to go behind the scenes and look at the making of.

The making of Design Criminals. Made of sugar, with wafer sheets printed with vegetable ink for the pages. The consumable book was an exhibition catalogue. Book designer: Andreas Pohancenik.

And Snoop Dog's smokable book. Not so much a making of and more of a look inside. Hemp cover, rolling paper pages (with his song lyrics), and the spine can be used to strike a match.

crazy books

Cook books you can eat, mirror books you can see yourself in, sports books you can play ball with... okay I made the last one up, but the others...

Some books have some very unusual designs:
(more can be found at the link) 

 A recipe book with the recipes printed on sheets of fresh pasta - lasagne a go-go

 The Mirror Book published in 1985 is exactly that, pages of mirrors. It comes complete with a pair of white gloves for smudge-free handling, and it’s meant to be a book about self-discovery: “as one turns the pages, hands are reflected, and on looking closely, our own faces. In the act of turning, the self-image becomes distorted. Here the book is the entrance key to a world of self-contemplation, and, potentially, self-knowledge.”

 This one is made of sugar and printed with vegetable ink. mmmm sugar.

 This is pretty cool, you can only see the text at night. That's right it's glow-in-the-dark, in the light it just looks like a while notebook.

 A direct marketing gimmick to to promote Jungle Book 2, nonetheless they are pretty cool.

 This edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Imp of the Perverse,” designed by Helen Friel, must be destroyed to be properly read. Friel explains, “‘The Imp of the Perverse’ discusses the voice inside all of us that makes us to do things we know we shouldn’t do. Each page is perforated in a grid system with sections of the text missing. Readers must follow the simple instructions to tear and fold specific sections to reveal the missing text. Books are usually precious objects and the destruction is engineered to give the reader conflicting feelings, do they keep the book in it’s perfect untorn form? Or give into the imp and enjoy tearing it apart?”

 Each edition of Richard Long’s Nile (Papers of River Muds) is made from the mud of the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Rhine, the Guatiquia, the Huang He, the Hudson, the Nairobi, and other rivers, each page a little different depending on where it was collected.

Snoop Dog, not usually someone I think of when I think of books, has this gem to add. Each page is made from rolling paper. You can tear out a page and roll a cigarette, the pine can be used to strike a match.