I’ve been looking forward to Dave Eggers’ follow-up to his best-selling tech novel The Circle and now its been released with an added surprise. His new book , The Every , is a sequel to his previous novel which skewered Facebook, Google and Amazon and with it comes 32 new artworks to adorn the cover. The publisher he founded, McSweeney’s, is releasing the book, and it states on their website that the hardcover version of the novel will boast a “dizzying, ever-expanding, and entirely randomized array of cover variations” for years to come.
Eggers commissioned art director Sunra Thompson for the project, who found that the dust jacket printer they were using could run different cover designs on one sheet of paper at once, offering the opportunity to print dozens of different versions at the same time. Thompson decided to take full advantage this printing feature and hired a wide array of artists to design a completely new version of The Every cover. Each cover artist received an advance copy of the book along with a short description. Some designers created entirely new works and others used existing pieces that they felt connected to the story.
The story of The Every follows similar themes to The Circle – human nature, power dynamics, how we interact as a society under surveillance, and the technology of late-stage capitalism.
Eggers’ new book in hardcover is only available at McSweeney’s (the author’s own publishing company) and select indie bookstores. The novels are randomly distributed, meaning that bookshops won’t know which covers they’ll get. The author has refused to allow the hardcover copies to be sold on Amazon, but seems OK with Bezos selling the paperback version for some reason.