The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Classic 'luxury' for Penguin

21.08.08 Benedicte Page

Penguin is turning to soft leather bindings for a new luxury Classics series, this time with the collaboration of designer Bill Amberg.

Six titles have been chosen for the gift series, which will be bound in soft brown calf leather said to improve with handling and age. The books, which include E M Forster's A Room With a View and F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, will come individually boxed in tissue paper and will be published in December, priced at £50 apiece.

Penguin Classics editor Andrew Freudenheim said Amberg was keen to put a "modern and pliable" spin on the traditional 19th-century, leather-bound hardback. The titles were chosen to reflect the modern design, he added. "We thought, 'Let's not put Pride and Prejudice in'. We chose more modern titles which were stylish or chic in some way, and also quite well known," he said.

The Penguin production team used an Indian tannery to produce the covers for the series, as well as the leather cords which tie a small leather bookmark tag to each book, which carries its title and the author's name. The print run for the series is 5,000 for each book for the global market, and Freudenheim said the series would be sold in the UK through Amberg's London shop and such venues as Selfridges and museum bookshops, while there was also "wide interest" across individual bookshops including Hatchards.

He added that he did not expect the credit crunch to affect luxury sales. "That end of the market is not as affected as the rest of us. Also £50, relative to what people spend on gifts, is not that much, and it will be discounted."

Other gift editions forthcoming from Penguin Classics include a three-volume, cloth-bound, boxed set of Arabian Nights, to be published in November and priced at £125.

Benedicte Page Penguin News

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