Being a publisher is a bit like being a treasure hunter. Except you want to share the treasures you find with everyone. To share the joy of a first reading (for example, the eerie ending of Triumph over the Grave from this last collection): that is what a publisher lives for.
And to top it all, as a book designer, I get to invent the cover! As The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is all about entropy, and as Elvis is at the centre of the last story, I decided to combine these tropes on my cover. The King is still alive here, but you can see that the end is near.
Year: 2020 (Jesus' Son), 2022 (Largesse of the Sea Maiden)
Page size: 110×180 mm (4.3×7.1 in.)
Pages: 132, 208
Paper: Stella HB 2.0 70 g
Binding: paperback with dust jacket
Cover material: Amber Graphic 300 g, Arctic Volume White 170 g (dust jacket)
Typefaces: Magda (Jesus' Son), Balboa (Largesse), Guyot (body)
Page size: 110×180 mm (4.3×7.1 in.)
Pages: 132, 208
Paper: Stella HB 2.0 70 g
Binding: paperback with dust jacket
Cover material: Amber Graphic 300 g, Arctic Volume White 170 g (dust jacket)
Typefaces: Magda (Jesus' Son), Balboa (Largesse), Guyot (body)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/e646b2ab-bb61-47f9-9652-a9368a949f77/bdea01aa-dbd2-4963-b28b-f983e3e99781_rw_1920.jpg?h=83ebf19abd8aab5d13b28840e6c9cbc8)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/e646b2ab-bb61-47f9-9652-a9368a949f77/f672a4e4-68c5-4cea-99df-f3e8048559b3_rw_1920.jpg?h=279183a72e85011302557e95b456b1c5)
Jesus' Son (on the right) – this book has more life in a single sentence than the others in their hefty tomes! Some people are unnecessarily alarmed by the modest size of this volume. That's the way I planned it: I feel that smaller books force a more intimate contact.
On the cover you can see an American side street, an American car and an American night. The crumbling USA is a very aesthetically pleasing subject, and you could spend days flipping through images of downright apocalyptic entropy. What struck me about Patrick Joust's photo was the contrast of light and dark, a Manichean juxtaposition in a trashy setting, which I think fits well with Johnson's book.
The excerpt embossed in gold on the dust jacket is looped (as is the spine): we enter the book in the middle of the action and the order of the events is mixed up. Eleven stories make up this micro-novel, but their chronology is whimsical at best.