The Upcoming Smashing Book

• By Smashing Editorial
• June 22nd, 2009
• Books, Smashing Magazine
• 104 Comments

Our biggest and most important project of the year, the Smashing Book, has come in swinging. Eleven extensive articles have been written, as decided by our readers. They are at various stages of completion. Creating a book ultimately requires more effort and dedication than online articles because, in the end, nothing can be changed, and readers have to pay for a physical product.

We have tried to keep errors to a minimum; several correction cycles were required: hard times for our proofreader Andrew Lobo. The writing was done (in alphabetical order) by Adelle Charles, Alessandro Cattaneo, Andrew Maier, Chris Spooner, Darius A. Monsef (Colourlovers), David Leggett, Dmitry Fadeyev, Jacob Gube, Jon Tangerine (partial editing), Rene Schmidt, Steven Snell, Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman.

The book will have 313 pages and 11 chapters, printed completely in color.

Also completed are almost a dozen color illustrations created by the Russian designers from the SoftFacade Icon Design Agency, one for each chapter, and the book cover by Brian Nelson that many of us have seen, also chosen by our readers. The back cover of the book will have a little surprise.

The book cover, designed by Brian Nelson. Larger version.

What Is The Date Of Publication?

The book will be published in September this year. Whether at the beginning or end of the month, we cannot yet say. There will be an advance sale lasting several weeks, when everyone will have an opportunity to buy the book at a discounted price. Also, we have some ideas on how to deal with the shipping, so that no one is at too big a disadvantage.

One of the illustrations from the Smashing Book. The book will be printed completely in color.

Any Free Copies?

Of course, we will send some free copies to friends, colleagues and well-known publications, as any author or publisher would. We hope the appearance of the book will be talked about and written about on blogs widely.

To this end, we have reserved another 100 copies for review purposes. These are for magazines, blogs and other editorial publications in our industry. All publications, both small and new or old and large, are eligible to receive a free copy for review. But copies are limited. Simply head over to our email form, select “Book Review Copy” as your subject (this is important), type in your name, your postal address and the title and the URL of your blog / magazine / publication (this is important, too) – and that’s it!

Unfortunately, we have received way too many requests already – no requests are accepted any longer.

And we hope you’re looking forward to the Smashing Book’s release as much as we are!