I’d fully intended to send this out to you a couple of weeks ago, but as soon as my own inbox started getting flooded with early Black Friday emails (is it me, or were they even earlier this year?), I decided it’d be sensible to wait and (hopefully) prevent this announcement from getting lost in all the BF/CM sales chaos.

And for a good month or so prior to that, I’d been debating whether or not to work the Fine Specimens cover reveal into a ‘regular’ issue of the newsletter, or to make it its own thing. As you might’ve guessed from the subject line, I landed on this issue being dedicated entirely to the revealing of the cover artwork and details on how to pre-order the book. (I hope you’ll forgive the indulgence. If you’re not interested in Fine Specimens, please feel free to delete this issue and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks for all the normal stuff.)

Of course, “cover reveal” isn’t entirely accurate — if you’ve been looking, you may well have noticed that Amazon, Bookshop.org, and various other online booksellers have had pre-orders live for Fine Specimens for a while, and therefore the cover’s been out there for a while, too. But pretty much all of those shops have had an older, WIP version of the cover on their sites, so here you go: the real Fine Specimens cover, with all those last-minute corrections, in full:

Front covers are all well and good, but I’m rather fond of the back cover, too. Would you like to see it? Go on, then:

If that looks like a book you’d like to have on your shelf, please feel free to pre-order the book from wherever you like to buy books. This big ol’ button will take you to the ‘main’ retailers:

Pre-order Fine Specimens
 

I don’t think I need to say that it’d be better (for me, the publisher, the world) if you pre-ordered it from somewhere other than Amazon, but also 100% no worries if that’s the only doable choice for you. Any and every pre-order helps!

Do you want a signed copy? If you do choose to pre-order the book (thank you!), you can get early access to the first essay, written by ILT’s John Boardley, and — if you’re among the first 250 — a bookplate signed by me, which the publisher will send out to your postal address. All you have to do is complete this form on the publisher’s website and ensure you include the receipt details from wherever you’ve pre-ordered it.

Okay, that’s it for now. See you in a couple of weeks for... drum roll, please... the last issue of the year!