Speaking of wrong things...

I’m a member of a few bookbinding guilds, not because I’m a keen binder, but because I do enough bookbinding to be eligible and it’s generally a small community down this end of the world so why not support it. I'm also a book designer, mostly for academics, nothing too sexy. 

I was recommended this excellent Substack article called ‘Books Going Wrong’ by one of the various newsletters and it made me want to jump into the comments with what I’m about to show you, but you can’t actually – as far as I can tell – include images in Substack comments. For that reason I’ll throw them in here before I go any further.

Can you see why I want to share? Bastardising the immortal words of Sesame Street,  NONE OF THESE THINGS IS JUST LIKE THE OTHER.

Where do I start? These are meant to be the hardback first editions of the diaries of a serious and well-respected Australian writer. They are trying to hit all the markers of quality: hardback, dustjacket, nice paper, reasonably-sized and well-laid out pages. But for some reason, they gave the spine layout to the work-experience kid.

Maybe it’s the overarching editor’s fault, for changing the decision to format it as a series. And admittedly, once they’d decided not to call it ‘Diaries Volume Whatever’ on the spine, it did gain a bit of consistency. The biggest crime is centring the text on the spine. Especially with a finite space framed out for the title. It just does my head in.

And yes, every mistake on these dustjackets are on the actual covers underneath.
I bought the first one when it came out, keen for the series. When I bought the second one, I thought ‘that’s unfortunate’, and then the third one...

I won’t go on, I think the images speak for themselves. I’ve done some stupid layout things in my time but thank goodness none of them are as bad as this. No wonder they published the second edition as one volume. Still, can’t wait for the fourth volume.

[This was originally published on Substack on 18 November 2025]