Shorts

The alleged unsaleability of short story collections is much remarked upon (I don't know what they mean: I buy enough of these books to keep a small national economy afloat), so I assume that the logic behind this attractive series of books from Harper Perennial US is to lure people towards new writers via a known quantity.

Each of these six 250-odd-page collections features a bunch of short stories from the author on the cover, along with a bonus story from a contemporary writer with a collection in-print with Perennial. I have mixed feelings about the idea, but the execution of the cover designs is both simple and elegant.








Anything which gets the short fiction of Crane and Cather into wider hands is OK by me (the others too, but I suspect they need less of a push).

I'm not sure who to credit for these covers, but they're really nice. I think (and hope) that they're photos of little cardboard stand-ups, rather than being computer-generated, but either way they're nifty.

UPDATE: Helpful commenter BKLYNmle tells me that these covers are the work of Adam Johnson. And they are photographs of real paper cutouts. Huzzah! The spines also fit together to make a single image...