BOOKS: Bare-Naked Books

I've been using this space to talk about books and illustrations and cover art a fair bit lately, so I think it's awesome that all this talk has culminated in this concept:

According to consumer research, when we decide whether or not to buy a book, cover design is always the most important thing. Despite this, we'd like to introduce you to a new series of books called My Penguin.

We're throwing open six of our favourite Classics by publishing them with naked front covers and we'd really love for you to be involved - and to have as good a time coming up with covers as we've had in putting the series together.

These unadorned classics are available for sale starting this Thursday, November 30th,* and they include Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Emma by Jane Austen, Magic Tales by the Brothers Grimm, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and The Waves by Virginia Woolf.

If you get your hands on one of these books and design your own cover, send a copy of it via email to gallery@penguin.co.uk and it could be featured in their online gallery.

And speaking of the gallery, it already has a few images in it. I have some favourites:

*The bad news is that I think they're only for sale in the UK, unless one of you can confirm otherwise. No one's more bummed about this than I am.

[Thanks for the tip, Hannah and Meghan!]