News!

Tomorrow I being the adventure of representing a new company for book and print production - Imago. Alas I will have to leave my Italian colleagues behind. Like my friend Luciano, who wrote back to me: "What a bad news! Like a storm in a sunny day!" I will miss you, Luciano, and my other Mondadori pals, too.

But the future looks bright, and I can't wait to start blogging and showing pix of all the fabulous and creative products Imago has produced. Stay tuned ....

That's www.imago.co.uk

Going With The Flow

I just returned from a quick trip to Washington, DC and a meeting with one of my favorite clients, The National Geographic Society.

Mondadori has just finished printing a massive, multi-language production of one of the lead titles for National Geographic, The Image Collection, and I had a chance to look over the first samples with Production Manager Nicole. The book looks beautiful, and I especially love the old photos from the Geo archives, of the early explorers.

Alas, times are getting tougher for traditional printers like Mondadori, and I am not sure what projects Mondadori may work on with Nat Geo in the future. Still, I had a great meeting with Phil, the Manufacturing Director, catching up on industry news, the shenanigans of various print sales people we know in common (who shall remain nameless, Charles, ...) and life in general. So many of us in the publishing and printing businesses have wonderful friendships built upon years of working together through the ups and downs of various projects. It is a little melancholy for everyone involved when that work starts to dwindle.

But as my object was to not get too distressed with the turn of events, and to "go with the flow", I took a night off from working on the computer and sending email reports to everyone, and went kayaking on the Potomac, with another Nat Geo buddy, Rachel. It was a lovely evening. So wonderful to be out in the middle of nature, in the middle of a big city like DC!

From The Lands of Fantasy

"In the harsh cold northlands, The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague threatening to sweep across the land, only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King's will and end his reign of terror for all time ...."

Yikes!

Another World of Warcraft project, The Wrath of the Lich King, has just wrapped up at Mondadori Verona. This latest oversized volume is a full color atlas of Azeroth and Northrend, vast regions in which World of Warcraft players do battle. Much of the lingo is baffling to the uninitiated. For example I wonder what "if there's no mage around to offer a port and your hearthstone's still got some cooldown ...." might mean??? However, these volumes are clearly aimed at WoW enthusiasts, eager to decipher the locations of dungeons and rare spawning mobs ....

I like to think that these Atlases are an example of how the web and on-line media are adding new opportunities to create projects in the print world. And like every other WoW fan, I look forward to the next World of Warcraft blockbuster!

Every Girl's Dream

I love this book.

When Mondadori first presented the Italian edition in London two years ago it was love at first sight. Not for everyone, of course, none of my male colleagues gave this book of fantastic weddings in some of the most breathtaking locations in Italy even a passing glance! Men!

But publisher Leslie Stoker of Stewart, Tabori, and Chang was as charmed as I was and eventually acquired World English rights. Now I am holding in my hands one of the first American copies of this sumptuous volume, WEDDINGS IN ITALY.

I wish I could meet the authors Angelo Garini and Enzo Miccio, Italian wedding planners to the stars. These guys are location scouts, set designers, producers, stylists, fashion consultants and therapists. (The suave Enzo was recently spotted by The Sartorialist) Here's just a sample of what they deal with every day:

" A young couple, but demanding. They want to amaze their many guests. During the search for the ideal location various possibilities are put forward, and in the end the desire for a place that can truly surprise takes us in the direction of a setting that is already part of a dream: an island!"

But of course! Every couple needs their own island!

The locations are incredible: Venice, the Alps, Tuscany, the Riviera and more. The dresses romantic and wonderful. And the cakes!!! My favorite part might just be the cakes ....

Stephen Hannock - The Luminescent Diary of a Unique American Artist

Images of the Connecticut River conjure up memories of childhood for me. In the summertime, my family would drive from New York to New Hampshire crossing the Connecticut River in the early part of our journey. Then later, we would meet up with its wilder relatives, the tributary rivers Ompompanoosuc in Vermont and finally the Ammanoosuc in New Hampshire. In addition, my parents were great fans of the Hudson River School painters and Thomas Coles' Oxbow (the distinctive view of the Connecticut River near Mt. Holyoke Massachusetts) was a favorite. I liked this picture too, it turned a familiar river landscape into a kind of end-of-day, nostalgic revery.

I was fortunate to be in Verona when Hudson Hill's beautiful new monograph of Stephen Hannock's work was on press. Hannock is particularly known for his luminous paintings of views of the Oxbow, which refer back to the same scene by Frederick Church and Thomas Cole. I was on press with publisher Leslie van Breen and designer/art director David Skolkin as they painstakingly saw sheet after sheet of the book's jacket which depicts this famous landscape. There is this particular blue-green-yellow-gold glow in the sky that had to be just right ....

I love Hannock's drawings, too, of his travels around the world, of his friends. And I like the way, in some paintings, he includes long passages of handwriting that - from a distance - meld into the landscapes and add this subtle entryway into the artists thoughts, dreams, unconscious.


The Oxbow, After Church, After Cole, Flooded, Green Light. By Stephen Hannock. Currently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Forest

In April my beloved four-footed buddy, Forest, was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Despite the best efforts of our vet, cancer specialists, and a wonderful canine surgeon, we lost Forest last week.


You hope until the end that somehow you will beat the odds, even thought it was clear from the first diagnosis that we would not. It is very hard to come to grips with this loss and hard to accept. And it has tinged these past weeks with sadness.


But I want to keep writing about books that I love and what's going on out there in the big wide world of publishing and printing, at least from my vantage point.

So, do stay tuned. There's more "Art Book Talk" to come ....

Book Expo - One Week Later

I guess the fact that I am posting this entry a week later says something about my rather low enthusiasm level for Book Expo.

I can't help it, I just like the London and Frankfurt Fairs so much better. When you are in London or Frankfurt, you feel as if you are in the middle of the whole big wide world, you soak up the glamour of being in an international city. And of course the huge array of publishers from everywhere makes you feel that publishing IS somehow still alive and well and relevant.

These days, when you come to New York - particularly if you fly in, Heaven Forbid, to Kennedy or LaGuardia - you feel like you are arriving into some crumbling backwater. Yes! I said it! Crumbling backwater! You disagree? Well just compare getting into the city from Kennedy or LaGuarda - to riding the Heathrow Express!!

Complaints aside, I did have the chance to see some of my favorite clients, including Phil at National Geographic, Judith from Stackpole Books, and Kristen at Hudson Hills Press. And I got a distant glimpse of John Irving, who still looks really good.  But otherwise the fair seemed quite unremarkable to me and rather small this year. According to the New York Times attendance was down 15% from the last time the fair was in New York. 

Well, looking forward to Frankfurt in October!