Lyra’s Press Title Announcement

Today I’m just going to make a very quick announcement about the next Lyra’s Press book. I am still in the process of creating prototypes and finalising my binding designs so there isn’t a huge amount of information I can give you right now other than what the title is, how many there will be and who will be illustrating it. But I know people are keen to know what it is, so I’m very happy to announce that the next book published by the Lyra’s Press imprint will be…

CORALINE by Neil Gaiman.

This will be presented in three states – 500 x Standard, 200 x Numbered and 26 x Lettered. Today is only the title reveal, so prices and more detailed info will be shared in the coming weeks. We are hoping to do the pre-order for this title around mid to late July 2022.

When I first began working on Stardust I had absolutely no intention of creating any more of my own publishing jobs. I was just a bookbinder dabbling in publishing. Just this one time! It hadn’t even occurred to me that doing more might be a possibility and so I had nothing else lined up as a Next Project. As I’m sure many of you are aware, getting stuff like this off the ground takes a great deal of time and patience. It has been a bit of a slog to get to this point, but here we are finally!

Neil has (as always) been extremely generous and helpful to me. As customers started receiving Stardust, we spoke about the possibility of publishing another limited edition. This was a very exciting prospect but which of his amazing titles should we choose? An agonising decision! Between us, we mulled over a few options, as well as what artists might be suitable. This went on for a period of months before eventually we settled on Coraline. I had already made a rebind of Coraline for Neil and it is a book that I absolutely love. Equal parts children’s book and horror story. Quintessentially Gaiman. I also knew we could have great fun with the illustrations.

Which brings me on to the illustrator – I have been a fan of Rovina Cai’s art for some time and her name was also in Neil’s (very) shortlist of artists he wanted to see illustrate this title. Our mutual love of Rovina’s work meant that a decision was made very quickly and that this was the artist we wanted for this edition. Rovina obliged and we have been working together, along with Marcelo of Arete Editions, for the last year creating this book. Rovina Cai is a young Australian artist who, in 2021, won both the World Fantasy Award AND the Hugo award for Best Artist. This book will be lavishly illustrated by her with over 20 full and half-page letterpress silhouettes, 15 colour plates and many small silhouette spots. It really is going to be quite wonderful. The illustration below will be our frontispiece.

One final but very important note – we will be making a minor alteration to the text, with Neil’s permission. We have the concept of a red thread running throughout this book, connecting the beginning to the end which means the book will be letterpress printed in two colours throughout. The thread is described in the book as black but a black thread running through black silhouettes wouldn’t work. We asked Neil if we might be allowed to change the wording to fit our design and he agreed wholeheartedly and said we could do so… and also that we should call this edition ‘The Red Thread Edition’.

So, here we are at the beginning of ‘Coraline: The Red Thread Edition’. Very cool.

Rich