When Mark got in touch with us back in January 2012, we were over the moon. In 2010 he set up his own design studio after having been Art Director for Canongate. Mark’s designed covers for authors like Alexander McCall Smith, Marina Lewycka, Yann Martel, Sara Sheridan and David Nicholls to name but a few, but he was excited by Unbound’s philosophy and wondered if we might like to work together (of course we did!), so we began with the rather unorthodox cover of Jennifer Pickup’s teen novel Unbelievable (pictured above) and haven’t looked back. Our own Caitlin Harvey interviewed Mark this week to find out more about the arcane practice of book cover design…

What’s your favourite part of the design process?

Ideas - the thrill of coming up with the perfect concept to fit a brief still floats my boat. A close second is the feeling you get when you open a box of books you’ve designed.

What’s your least favourite part?

When momentum is lost. Sometimes ego, money or just bad luck can take the wind out of a cover’s sails and then it just becomes work, rather than work you really enjoy. I try to be open and flexible and balanced with a strong vision for a design, which seems to work well. I’ve had to learn to be very patient…

How long does the process usually take?

How long is a piece of string? Sometimes it can be done in hours or days and sometimes months or longer. It depends on a lot of factors, but generally a cover is done in about a month, from briefing to finished artwork.

What’s the usual number of proofs (drafts) for one book?

Three rounds of visuals is a good rule of thumb, but some go into the tens or the hundreds!

What’s the maximum number of proofs that you’ve had to do for one book?

I once worked on a cover that took over three years to get done, and even then the finished cover was dodgy. It will haunt me forever…

Have you ever designed a ‘hole in one’ book cover?

Yep, the most recent was The Man in the Rubber Mask for you guys.

What do you usually look for in a cover?

The right face for the story; it needs to hint at the themes and atmosphere just enough to get you to pick it up. If the design’s interesting or different as well as commercially savvy, then so much the better…

Do you have a preferred type of cover to design?

I’m a jack of all trades (hopefully master of some) so I enjoy lots of things. Most recently I’ve been creating unusual photographic scenes for Iain Banks, alongside illustrative children’s work - I’m getting paid to draw robots at the moment which is cool.

What do you need to start the design process?

Ideally something to read, but most importantly the freedom to do my job from a supportive client and author.

How is working with Unbound different to working with other publishers?

It’s very different. I feel more connected with the author and the book, and we’re developing a cover process that’s the most focused I’ve ever worked in, and that involves the authors like nowhere else.

Tell us about your perfect working environment.

My dream studio would have plenty of natural light, space to store my masses of books and a place to read (hopefully involving a classic Eames lounge chair), not to mention the photographic studio annex, personal cinema…

Seriously, you’d be surprised where and how you can produce successful work, so the answer is an appropriate environment for the project. If I need to read, sometimes a busy cafe is perfect, but generally it’s somewhere you can focus on what you’re doing without too much distraction.

Do you have a dream commission? 

Recently I got the chance to work on Roald Dahl - he is my all-time favourite author, and I would LOVE to fully illustrate a children’s book someday.

Do you prefer to design fiction/non-fiction titles? Does this make a difference?

I genuinely don’t mind, I get so many interesting projects that there’s always a good mix.

What’s your favourite font?

Too much choice to say really, but at the moment I love a bit of

What’s your least favourite font?

I’m not that fussy, if an ugly font is right for a brief then I’ll use it!

Do you have a favourite colour scheme to work with?

Again, anything that works to meet a brief but my favourite colour is blue.

Which of the covers you’ve designed for Unbound has been your favourite?

Unbelievable was pretty cool, it did something quite new in the genre, closely followed by the Robert Llewellyn. But I’m working with one of my favourite illustrators on Constable Colgan’s Connectoscope right now which might beat them both.

What’s your favourite cover ever?

Anything by Roald Dahl when I was a kid. Quentin Blake still rocks.

What’s the hardest part of the process?

Remaining positive when you know a client’s choice is wrong.

What advice would you give to an aspiring book cover designer?

Start experimenting; design whenever you can, get any experience you can by working with designers you admire. Get yourself out there on and offline and don’t be shy, it’s not about knowing everything as soon as you start out - just showing you’ve got potential in and out of the design.

To see more of Mark’s amazing cover work, visit his website.

Photo by State Library of Victoria Collections

Charles Dickens. AA Milne. Jane Austen. Jamie Oliver… 

With so many authors it’s difficult to name one absolute favourite – often our most beloved books aren’t written by our must-read author. But if you had to pick one, who would you choose?

Here are some of the Unbound authors’ favourite writers with a little reason why:

Lisa Gee – HAYLEYWORLD

“Marilynne Robinson. Because of the depth of silence, reflection and compassion that permeates her work, prose that’s fresh, sharp and quiet as the air on a bright January morning (or, in 2013, an April morning). I’d start with Home, but also read her essays. They’re not easy, but more than repay the effort.”

Francis Pryor – THE LIFER’S CLUB

“Blimey, that’s difficult! I think it would have to be Eric Blair, or George Orwell, to use his pen name, but as we’re talking about the man, let’s stick to his real name. I started to read his books in my early twenties and I think I began with The Road to Wigan Pier. Orwell showed me the importance of being honest to myself. You can deceive as many people as you want (or can get away with), but as soon as you dupe yourself, you’re in big trouble. Ultimately I think that’s what 1984 is all about. Yes, it is a political satire, but it’s also about self-deception, surely the biggest crime you can commit, as everything else follows-on from it.”

I Smith – PAVEMENT

“I would always recommend Kafka; everybody should read Kafka. Twice…”

Vitali Vitaliev – VICTOR VODKIN’S NEW ANTI-GUIDE TO THE WORLD

“Bulgakov. His life and his writing were inseparable. His life is a lesson of dignity, integrity and perseverance, which every writer, and every human being, must learn. The Master and Margarita and Dog’s Heart would be my first recommendations.”

Adrian Teal – THE GIN LANE GAZETTE

“Douglas Adams. I love the way he made the ordinary extraordinary. Either of his Dirk Gently books would be my pick, as they bubble with ideas and inventiveness.”

Martin Baker – VERSION THIRTEEN

“Charles Dickens. I love the dedication of a life lived in words, the passion, the profusion of character, the complexity of narrative, the radical use of language – outrageous at the time (see the opening passage of Bleak House, which caused great controversy). Dickens was not the most consistent of writers – hardly surprising, given his prolific output – but the sublime narrative peaks far surpass the occasional troughs.”

Nick Valentine – CLUBS, DRUGS & CANAPÉS

“A young Mediterranean-based Hemingway for his languid, escapist take on an era I should have been born in and the creation of quirky, engaging characters I wish I had broken bread with.”

Robert Ross – FORGOTTEN HEROES OF COMEDY

“That’s an almost impossible question, but I suppose the author I genuinely cherish more than any other is Charles Dickens. My Dad was a devotee and I inherited his treasured, leather-bound collection of Dickens. With respect to M.R. James, Dickens wrote the very best ghost story of all time – The Signalman – and it almost goes without saying that Great Expectations should be consumed by absolutely everyone.”

Richard Bray – SALT & OLD VINES

“William Faulkner. He’s hard work. Some of his books defeat me. But his sense of mission as a writer is inspiring. His Nobel Prize acceptance speech should be close to every aspiring author’s heart. The last few paragraphs of his short story The Fire and the Hearth from Go Down Moses are as moving as anything I’ve ever read or seen.”

E O Higgins – CONVERSATIONS WITH SPIRITS

“There’s just nothing bad to say about P G Wodehouse - his books are beautifully crafted, his use of language is exceptional, and his characters – though perhaps not always very likely – are always brilliantly funny. The fictional world that Wodehouse creates with his 96 novels is, putting it simply, just much better than real life.  Evelyn Waugh once described PG Wodehouse as ‘the head of my profession’ - and he was right. After all, when did Shakespeare ever ponder the eternal question of why dachshunds wear their ears inside out?”

As you already know, we’re not like traditional publishers. But one of the lesser-known ways in which Unbound differs from other publishing houses is that we think it’s really important to have our authors more deeply involved in the cover design process. We always encourage them to meet with the designer; the book is their baby, after all.

The process starts with an initial meeting with the designer (the fantastic Mark Ecob in this instance), the author (it’s E. O. Higgins today), our Production Manager Cathy and Isobel, the editor of the book. Each comes to the meeting with an open mind, but also with a few ideas to begin the discussion. All Unbound books normally have two covers to be considered: one for the jacket which wraps around the beautiful cloth-bound special edition hardback books, and another similar jacket, usually for a paperback, for the version that can be bought in the shops.

This morning, as everyone begins to discuss the book – the excellent Conversations With Spirits – talk focuses on alcoholic protagonist Trelawney Hart and how the title of the novel is a spectacular pun around alcoholism and the supernatural. The image of a bottle is played around with for a while as Mark starts to get creative with pen and paper. This segues into ideas of early twentieth century alcohol labels, old cigarette packets and even Ouija boards, prompting some raucous laughter as they recall Higgins’ hilarious (and rather sweaty) stint as the host of a séance which took place last Halloween. As the giggles die down, thoughts turn to mist, smoke, steam and all things mystical and opaque. ‘Yes, there is a lot of mist in the book’, agrees Edward.

After considering some of the symbolic motifs that could be used for the cover, someone mentions old magician and Houdini posters and Mark, of course, has an example up his iPad sleeve.  To reproduce a poster like this we’d need to have permission from the original illustrator or their estate, and once granted Mark could start to make it work for the cover of the book.

With so many ideas being thrown around, Mark now has a lot to work with. He asks Higgins to send him any examples of old magician and movie posters that he likes and to have a look out for any turn of the century labels that have interesting typefaces. Higgins leaves to meet a fellow author at a nearby pub, and the Unbound staff watch him go longingly – it’s back to work for everyone else. 

You can still support Conversations With Spirits and get your name in the back here. 

There are more than a few self-confessed Game of Thrones addicts collecting around the water cooler here at Unbound HQ, and this week we’ve been thinking about what Jojen says in George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons. We might have Jojen in common in the office, but there are plenty of other books dear to our hearts for special – and very personal – reasons.

Out of every book springs a whole host of characters for a reader to meet, and these are the people who stay with us long after the last page has been turned and the book’s put back on the shelf. Are there any characters from your favourite books you wish you could be friends with in real life?  

Here’s what the Unbounders said:

Isobel (Editor) – “I’d definitely have a pint with George Emerson from E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. I bet he could teach me a thing or two about life…” 

Dan (CEO and co-founder) – “Snufkin from The Moomins by Tove Jansson. Surely the most philosophically astute of all fictional characters. I’d like to wander aimlessly through fields and forests listening to him.”

Adam (Outreach) – “George! Out of George’s Marvelous Medicine. He’s amazing; he makes giant animals. GIANT ANIMALS. Admittedly, his grandma is now like ten feet tall, but that would be so cool! Imagine his cooking!” 

Xander (Head of Digital) – “The Giant Alexander. Because he is the Giant Alexander. He’s from The Giant Alexander by Frank Herrmann.”

Deirdra (Events) – “Mine would be Cathy Earnshaw from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I have a love/hate relationship with Cathy but she’s my ultimate gothic heroine. She’s exasperating and irritating, but so loveable at the same time. Melodramatic, selfish, passionate and generally a bit bananas, there would never be a dull moment with Miss Cathy around.”

Jenna (PR) – “I’d like to be John Self’s friend in Martin Amis’ Money. I just think he would be completely inappropriate and hilarious to share a whiskey with.”

Justin (Creative Director and co-founder) – “I’d like to be friends with Titus Groan from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. Titus inherits the title of 77th Earl of Gormeghast whilst still a child but is torn between his pride in his ancient family and their traditions and his desire to escape the endless cycle of meaningless rituals in the vast and crumbling castle of Gormenghast. In the end he escapes, just like I told him to.”

Christoph (Chairman of the Board) – “Snoopy. I always liked Snoopy.”  

Cathy (Production Manager) – “My favourite series of books as a child was Malory Towers by Enid Blyton and I would have given anything to have been friends with the protagonist Darrell Rivers. I loved how smart, strong-willed and determined she was, but that she wasn’t portrayed as perfect. Her adventures made me want to go to boarding school and have midnight feasts more than anything in the world.”

Caitlin (Community and Editorial) – “I would like to be friends with Sally Lockhart from Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart Mysteries quartet. Sally is brave, clever and independent, preferring to do things the hard way rather than give up. I think she would be a fierce and loyal friend; we could solve mysteries together and she could show me the sights and scenes of Victorian London.”

Ilana (Head of Strategic Engagement) – “I would be friends with Roald Dahl’s BFG because we could have lots of lovely adventures. I’d ride on his shoulders and cause a scene in London, and when I went to bed I know he’d give me lovely dreams.” 

John (Publisher and co-founder) – “I always thought I’d get on really well with Sir John Falstaff, Shakespeare’s great jolly hero. We share a love of food, big nights out, have beards, and I think are fundamentally kind in our dealings with the world and other people. A session with Falstaff would be epic.” 

Are these characters as special to you as they are to us? And which fictional character would you most like to be friends with?

Join us for Unbound Live at the Birmingham Library Theatre from 7pm on 10th July.

Pitching/performing will be George Chopping, Stevyn Colgan, Robert Llewellyn and Adrian Teal.

“The authors will be going head-to-head pitching to raise funding for their book ideas, in a cross between an election hustings and a literary Dragons’ Den. Listen to the pitches, the extracts, the carefully framed arguments, the wit , the passion, the pleading and then you - the potential reader - can decide which books you’d like to see published and pledge for them on the night.”

More details about each of the 4 authors, the event and how to get tickets: here.

John Simmons, of “26 Treasures” (a book that has now been fully funded and is on its way to publication by Unbound - click here to find out more about how that worked) has written a guest blog over at the bookstore Foyles’ website on how the book came to be:

The 26 Treasures project began with an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2010 and then spread to Aberystwyth, Belfast and Edinburgh. In each case, an exhibition of 26 artefacts reflecting national culture was accompanied by a booklet in which 26 writers each had 62 words to write about one of the objects. This autumn the concept is taken up by the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, with writers picking one object for each year of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. New crowd-sourcing publisher Unbound publish a limited edition anthology of all the contributions shortly, with a regular edition following in September.

Here the co-founder of the project, John Simmons, reveals its origins, coins a new literary term and asks for the treasures from your childhood.

What’s your treasure? It might sound like an idle thought, a question from a conversation over a cup of coffee. Actually that was exactly how it started. I was sitting in the National Gallery café talking to Rob Self-Pierson. We’re both members of 26 www.26.org.uk a writers’ group - and we were wondering, just between ourselves, how we might write about the Gallery’s collection in a different way. We wanted to find a way that would be more personal, taking us (and others) away from that desultory state of mind when you trail around a gallery or museum, not really connecting with the objects you’re supposed to be looking at in a reverent way.

So the idea grew in and out of the conversation. We decided we would write about individual ‘treasures’ in a way that was not scholarly or academic. Just asking: what does this object say to me? We took the idea to Ben Evans at the London Design Festival and he put us in touch with the Victoria & Albert Museum. We refined the idea: we would ask each of 26 writers to write exactly 62 words (26 in reflection). And we would randomly pair writers and objects.

The V&A loved the idea and their curators chose 26 treasures from the British Galleries. ‘Treasures’ came in all shapes and sizes: the Great Bed of Ware (enormous), a locket (tiny). When we paired writers with objects sometimes it was love at first sight, sometimes it wasn’t. I didn’t warm to my 18th century Rococo candle stand that was almost hidden away in a badly-lit display case. But as I got to know it better, and think about its situation, I came to feel sorry for this curiosity fallen on hard times. I wrote 62 words in its rather petulant voice.

We had 26 pieces, each 62 words. I thought we needed a name for this form so I called it a ‘sestude’. The next thought was: can this go national? So we approached the National Library of Wales, the Ulster Museum and the National Museum of Scotland. The museums chose the treasures, we provided 26 writers to write a sestude each, and the museums then put our words alongside the objects.

That would have been it if I hadn’t had lunch with John Mitchinson. John’s an old friend, ex-Waterstone’s, ex-Harvill Press, founder of QI and now founder of Unbound, a new crowd-sourcing approach to publishing. www.unbound.co.uk I explained 26 Treasures to John, said that writers like Andrew Motion, Paul Muldoon, Alexander McCall Smith, Gillian Clarke and Michael Longley had taken part. Actually there were more - more than 100 writers in all. “Sounds like a great book.” It was a good lunch too. We agreed to publish 26 Treasures through Unbound.

Click here to read the rest.

The Cherry Tree in my Sister’s Room

Sophie cried when they chopped the tree down. She hadn’t realised what it meant.

She looked out the window at the tarmac where petals used to make confetti. The Neruda she was reading was face down on the window ledge, the spine split. Men in yellow jackets were chopping down the tree in the school grounds at the back of our house. Their saws buzzed through branches like wasps. My sister shook.

She stayed in her room, staring at the stump, then, she sat on the edge of my bed.

‘Touch,’ she said, ‘Smell.’

She was quivering, excited and nervous looking at the same time. I sniffed the upturned petal of her palm. It had the feint smell of flowers in the rain.

I looked at my sister closely, her smooth cheek and hands. Sophie’s skin was cherry blossom, flawlessly soft. It looked as if a wrong move would through it. If I squeezed her hand too hard it would weep and bruise.

All April my sister blushed. She was a shock of pink, swept up, out she rushed to touch the boy next door.  Mid May, bits of her started to dry up. Sophie rested by the open window in her room.

‘Why?’ I cried.

‘I wanted someone to be to me what wind is to the trees, just once,’ she said.

Sophie smiled, then, her lips, courted by a breeze, blew out into the almost summer day.

Just Aphasia I’m Going Through

The Doctor points out the bubble-like alien parasiting my brain. Looked like an embryo was growing there. A second me. Swiping a second-hand consciousness. Paying me neither rent nor mind. Yet taxing me a tithe of my cells. The bare faced cheek of it. Tithe not shaved in a month now. To my delugeded pain receptors, the razor felt like it was scooping out the inside of my skull. He indicated that the tumours were now squatting against the language centres of my brain. Journeying to the centre of me. I say squatting, squat-trusting may be more opposite, I mean apple sit. I doughnut what I mean. Less than hole.

These days find I can’t finish my sentences. Used to finish those of others in my eagle anticipation. I was agnawing like that. The shoe on the other boot now. The ironing being others have to guest my words, to figure out what I’m trying to slay. This thing willow the death of me. Though there will no me to speak of, since I would have longing surrended any bill utility to espresso myself. The memories will be longing lost, since I will lactate the romps reculling them. I will an empty, wordless shell. Like cancel the crab, chew more up of me (that one I did on purpossum, I’m not quiet shotput yet, not when I shotput what’s left of my mind to it).

They slay I’m slearning my words. Languish is defecting me. Splaying possum. I wish langwish…

By Marc Nash

Sit with me a little

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

We can hear the screaming.

Can you hear the screaming?

How does it sound to you?

Is it loud or is it drowned out?

There is a little clump of dandelions out there

in my garden.  Their flowers are yellow.

The cherry tree has a blight of blossom

on some of its branches.  They wave in the wind.

I want to get closer to the dandelions but

there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un spoken.

I can hear the gulls now.

They were here before

And they will be here after.

A striped towel is flapping on the washing line

and the bucket of pegs is full of water.

I want to count the dandelions,

I want to wait and tell the time with their clocks.

But there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un speakable.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me,

this April afternoon.

That Tearing

By Bernise Marie D. Carolino

Let’s read a story you say with the book open on your lap as you sit me down next to you and we turn the pages and as we are reading we are also writing the story as we go along and as the papers rustle they echo strangely in this empty room and it is all a lie because the book is on the table and my hands are on the pages and they are all mixed up because at some point the book got so worn it lost its spine and its order and you say let’s read a story but you were lying and I am lying to myself and you aren’t here anymore and I crumple the pages and I fold what I can’t bear to discard and I know I will hide them all over the house so that I can forget them and keep finding them for years to come and so maybe I still can’t forget you completely but the point is a paper that’s open and unfolded is so much more easily torn.

Li Shin thought about how she wanted them to find her.  She would rest her head to the side.  Her grey hair, which she twisted into a bun every morning, and held together with six small black pins and no more, would face them as they entered the kitchen.

At the doorway they would see her bun and the strawberries laid out on the table. Skin washed and leaves cut off, ready for them to eat.  That morning she was the only customer at the fruit stall.  The Japanese seller and she did not say a word as she pointed to the strawberries and he signalled the cost.  

In Tokyo she did not interact with the Japanese outside of their stores, though she had once been in a ballroom filled with Americans, British and a few other Chinese.  Her son, in his uniform, had taken her hand and told her how beautiful she looked as she followed his lead, in a bright green dress, around the room.

Since her daughter in law arrived from Shanghai, Li Shin spent almost all her time inside.  She cleaned and prepared meals and listened to their talk.

When the war ended, Li Shin ran out onto the streets with her neighbours and cried and laughed and screamed.  It had been years since she stepped outside without rubbing her face with dirt or excrement.  When she died, she left her face clean, untouched, in Japan.  She thought of her son’s life here.

Karla Ch’ien

Him & Her.

‘I’m falling apart’, he joked, rubbing his throbbing left wrist.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t even look up from the television that blared out like a wall between them.

He sloped off to bed and slept, despite the noise from the room below and the jolts of pain shooting down his left arm.

She went to the pantry and returned with the gingerbread man and bit down.

He awoke screaming. His left hand was missing, like it had never existed in the first place. The skin had perfectly sealed the stub of his arm.

Her tongue licked at the gingerbread crotch.

He produced an exuberant erection.

She continued.

He cried for his missing left hand, but couldn’t resist reaching down to touch himself with his right.

She bit the gingerbread man’s right hand clean off.

He thrashed and shrieked and shouted as his right hand disappeared before his very eyes.

She yanked up the volume on the television.

He wept like a deserted baby.

Her teeth chipped off the icing mouth.

He couldn’t scream or shout any more.

She ate it all up until it was just a head with confectionary eyes.

He took up significantly less space in the bed.

She picked the eyes off, one by one.

He was left in the dark.

She finished him off with a crunch.

Silence.

She walked upstairs.

He wasn’t there.

She brushed the gingerbread crumbs off the sheets.

He had fallen apart.

She finally laughed.

If you’re at the Hay festival today, don’t forget to catch Unbound Live (with our authors Katy Brand, Jessica Jones, George Chopping and Hardeep Singh Kohli) today at 2:30 in the Sky Arts Studio.