“Barnes and Noble’s E-Reader Like a Kindle/iPhone Chimera:
First Photos and Details” via Gizmodo

Frankfurt Book Fair and China’s Tolerance for Free Speech
(via WSJ.com, image from article from AP)

“All the Books You’ll Never Catch on a Kindle”

New York Art Book Fair Bustles at P.S. 1 Arts Center in Queens (via NYTimes.com)

likeable:

“…Built on marshland, former flood plains and paddyfields 30km north-west of Seoul, Paju Book City is an attempt to create an ambitious new town based exclusively around publishing. We may be reading obituaries of the book and the printed word almost daily, but the news has not reached Paju. Plans for the Book City were first proposed in 1989…”

—excerpt from article A City Dedicated to Books and Print in FT.com

Subscribers-only Newsweek cover design by Chip Kidd

faber and faber + guest blog fun on Design*Sponge

Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World, illustration by Michael Bierut/Pentagram (via wired)

“Extraordinary early 20th century book covers from Japan,” above c. 1928 
(discovered via A Journey Round My Skull)

redesignrelated:

Designer Alex Camlin gives the Harvard Review literary journal a fresh redesign.

designgallery:

Harvard Review REDUX 
By Alex Camlin 

“Over the past decade, the publishing industry has undergone wave after wave of consolidation. But within the giant media conglomerates there is still a fair amount of biodiversity—at least judging from the logos that bird-and beast-watchers can spot on the spines of their books.”

Natural Selections designed by Nicholas Felton
(via The New York Times)

hydeordie:

Taschen is coming out with a coffee table version of Sumo by Helmut Newton and I can now be filed under the happiest girl in all the world.

Only made 10,000 copies of the original one were printed(that was so large it needed it’s own Phillipe Starck designed stand). With poster size pages and weighing probably close to what it costs it became an instant collectors items for book lovers and art lovers alike.  Previous to it’s conception, the only books ever printed in this size were bibles and atlases.  I have only seen one in my life and it was at an antique photography shop in New Orleans and it couldn’t have been in poorer shape.  I can’t imagine these things are easy to transport but I mean come on.  1 in 10,000!?! Take care of it!

I guess that means there’s really only (at most) 9,999 copies in good condition.

UPDATE: Make that 9,998.

“…And so it was with a fabulously rare first edition of the James Joyce novel which today sold for £275,000, the highest price recorded for a 20th-century first edition…”

First edition of Ulysses sells for record £275,000 (via guardian) 

Possibly the coolest website placeholder I’ve seen

Spines for cover + jacket designs by Peter Mendelsund
(via jacket mechanical, courtesty of Ben Pieratt)

Illustrator Matte Stephens’ first book cover is for a French edition of
Lori Lansen’s The Girls, titled Les Filles (French-Canadian edition published by alto) (discovered via Matte Stephens on flickr)