Bloomsbury launches ‘bendyback’
Benedicte Page in The Bookseller

Bloomsbury is launching Jon McGregor’s third novel Even the Dogs in a new format for UK literary fiction, which it is calling the “bendyback”.
The bendyback is mid-way between hardcover and paperback, with a very thin board binding (0.42mm) and a cover design printed onto 150gsm linen. This firm but flexible style of binding is popular in Europe, and in Ger-many is called a “smartcover”.

Even the Dogs, which is out on 1st February, will be priced at £12.99. Bloomsbury publicity director Katie Bond said: “Usually we would have done the hardback at £14.99 so it is slightly cheaper.”
However, she added that the format was not especially cheap to print “so the print run has to be big enough to justify it”.
Format and how to make first publication work was the “eternal dilemma for publisher and retailer”, Bond said. “Increasingly how we see first publication is that if you are going to ask someone to buy at a higher price point than the paperback you have to make it the most desirable format, new, intriguing and tactile. The bendyback is lighter than a hardback but more interesting than a paperback.”

Even the Dogs is the story of a man whose body is found lying in his ruined flat on a frozen day between Christmas and New Year, and is described as “an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society.” Both his previous novels, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin, were shortlisted for the Man Booker.
Bloomsbury’s German wing Berlin Verlag published Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner in a smartcover format last year.