Czech Mates

Just arrived in the mail today from the Czech Republic — comp copies of the Czech editions of A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, as well as a Dan Simmons short story collection, both sporting cover illustrations by yours truly. Laser-Books is the publisher, and both printings look great. (Thanks, Martin!) The design for the Simmons collection is especially interesting….they did a little inset of my full illustration and combined it with a detail from the same illustration, along with another detail used as a muted background. Wow — I’ve never seen a cover design like that, but it works well. The printing is cool because the big detail of the face and the full inset illustration are both printed gloss, while the background is printed matte. I like it! I’ll now proudly shelve these along with my Hungarian edition of CANTICLE. πŸ™‚

One last note — sharp-eyed folks might notice that the cover illustration for the Simmons collection originally appeared on the cover of the US edition of George Zebrowski’s MACROLIFE, published by Pyr. Laser really wanted to use this illustration, and even though I have the legal copyright to resell the illustration for other foreign usages, I’m really careful about reselling images for books that are in-print elsewhere. I was reluctant to sell the Czech rights for the illustration, but when I ran the notion by Pyr’s editorial director Lou Anders, he gave his blessing. So thanks, Lou….if you wouldn’t have given the green light, this wouldn’t have happened.

5 thoughts on “Czech Mates

  1. Good question, Christine. And thanks for the kind words. πŸ™‚ It took a long time before I was sent my comp copies, so I doubt that there are warehouses full of these books here in the continental USA. They came straight from the Czech Republic. So I would think you’ve gotta order via Laser Books.

    Website: http://www.laser-books.cz/

    Email: laserbooks(at)seznam.cz

    If you email them, send it to Martin Sust. Good luck. πŸ™‚

  2. Thanks for all the kindness! I resend it directly to the graphic designer Lukas Tuma. He is really great without any doubt πŸ™‚

    But I must say (not only to Christine), that Laser don´t send the copies abroad, sorry for that.

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