Blad Tidings

Last Monday, at a book launch, I learned a new publishing term: blad. Short for Book Layout and Design, a blad is sort of like a chapbook (hopefully you know what that is, or you’ll only be further confused) designed for marketing types, who can show it to bookstores and the like. A blad usually features a book jacket and some sample text from the upcoming book.

Not only did I learn the term last Monday, but I now own a blad, courtesy of a certain Mr. Andy Brown of Montreal’s Conundrum Press. Andy (who is a friend of mine) is about to have a collection of short stories (I Can See You Being Invisible) published by DC Books. He was hoping his new tome would be ready for his jaunt through Toronto (he was ostensibly in town to promote a story he has in Career Suicide, a collection of contemporary literary humour, also from DC), but the blad was the best he could offer me.

I like his three-story blad (I love that word, despite its sonic proximity to blah, which these stories are not) quite a bit. It’s sharp and funny and urban and blad, blad, blad, blad blad…