Curious King Books

12/05/2026

Evening to those on this side of the Atlantic, and afternoon to most of those on the other side.

The next release of our Cover Print sale is now live, featuring art from our Hyperion special edition! These aren't technically covers, actually, and there are two prints for sale rather than one...

Why, you ask? Our fine press release of Hyperion did not have a Standard Edition and, as such, we didn't produce a dustjacket for it. We did, however, have two beautiful landscape pieces by Jaime Jones painted for the front and back endpapers, so you can buy both!

These pieces are not only stunning, but they also depict the first and last scenes from the book. First, we have the Consul at his Steinway grand piano aboard his personal ship and of course The Shrike watching the pilgrims reach the Time Tombs.

These are printed on museum-quality 310gsm Hahnemühle “German Etching” cotton rag and signed and numbered by Jaime Jones himself. There are only 30 prints available for each artwork (60 total), so if you'd like one, please make sure to act fast!

Also, a small reminder from us — you can buy one or both if you prefer (but please remember: only one of each per customer, or we will be refunding duplicate orders!).

For those collectors who are partial to signed prints of pieces like this, you can still buy our signed print from The Fifth Season and Legend on our website!

24/04/2026

Happy Friday Everyone! With the weekend fast approaching we thought it would be a great time to show a cheeky preview from our A Wizard of Earthsea edition!

This is one of the amazing paintings being created for this edition by the masterful Tom Kidd. One of the many pieces he’s putting together for us.

This truly is just the tip of the iceberg and we're rather pleased with artist selection on this one. Tom Kidd on dragons is akin to butter on toast - the man released a book called "Fantastic Dragons and how to draw them" for darn sake!

We’re currently having the prototypes of each tier for Earthsea, so it won’t be long before we can give you a preview of what our books will look like and we are super excited to show you when we’re ready.

As excited as we are? Let us know down in the comments.

15/04/2026

The British Book Design and Production Awards for 2025 are now over! Sadly we didn't win anything, but the night was made for me when Rich from Lyra's Books finally took home an award for his brilliant Lettered Edition of The Alchemist. Truly deserved indeed!

It was a brilliant night talking books with some incredible people in the industry, what more could you ask for?

This year also felt like letterpress printed books finally got more of a look in which was great to see. Art of the Imagination also picked up Book of the Year for their release of Beowulf!

Not only that, the talented Areté Editions won an award for their Roman Frozen Hell, which is simply beautiful. Hats off!

Ludlow Bookbinders had 4 winners across the night too, which goes to show the quality of the work they produce.

Until next year!

09/04/2026

The End is Nigh! There is just ONE day left to purchase the Artist Edition of our joint publication of Pierce Brown's incredible Red Rising, illustrated by the legendary Marc Simonetti! Our partners in crime of course are the brilliant Lit Escalates!

Hard to believe we're at the end of the order period now, it's been a crazy few months (and the rest).

This is the first time we've released a tier that had a timed pre-order window rather than setting the limitation beforehand. And that time is nearly up.

Reminder: our pre-sale window closes 11:59PM Central Time Friday 10th April.

These last three weeks have flown by! We're so very proud of this edition, and it's been wonderful watching people's excitement about getting their own copy!

If you've been planning to snag the Artist Edition but haven't gotten around to it, well now is your last chance! It's currently still up on Lit Escalates website below:

https://www.lit-escalates.com/collections/red-rising-special-editions/products/artist-edition

08/04/2026

I bet you didn’t see this coming, much like our friend Arthur Dent didn’t expect the Vogons!

There have been numerous enquiries since pre-order from new and regular collectors, as to whether we'll have any leftover/extra copies of this going up for sale when shipping starts?! And this time, yes there are!

We sometimes have a leftover copy sale around shipping as there is always a handful we can put back up. Whilst we're sorry we don't have any Deluxe or Lettered available, we're glad to be able to share some more of our beautiful Standard Editions!

Pan Galactic Gargle-Blaster's at the ready! It's coming, and next week! The official date and time will be Wednesday 15th of April at 20:00 BST

Ludlow Bookbinders are in the final stages of binding these beautiful editions of what is an iconic British Sci-Fi novel and are nearly ready to ship out. This means that these copies should ship very quickly after the sale and will be picked up with the main batch.

Excited? We certainly are! Looking forward to getting yourself copy?

Newsletter link for those not subscribed here:

https://mailchi.mp/curiousking/hitchhikers-guide-standard-leftover-sale

27/03/2026

It's that time of the month folks! Yes, that wonderful time when I update you all on the production of our books.

We're very sorry to take a break from promoting Red Rising, but there are many more of our cherished titles in different stages of the process and we know you like know what's going on.

It's also Friday, which is usually pretty good too!

Nearly forgot about this one! This month has been what one can only describe as a “BLUR”. It has flown by at a rate comparable to the (pre-decommissioned) Concorde. For those living under a rock, we released the pre-order for Red Rising and it was an insane release to say the least… Myself and...

20/03/2026

Peak moment for Curious King today, I am ecstactic to announce that we are now LIVE for our joint published special edition of Red Rising by the master-that-is Pierce Brown!

This was produced in conjunction with Lit Escalates who have been a dream partner in publishing this iconic title. Not only that, we were lucky enough to work with one of my artistic heroes Marc Simonetti on this and he has produced a press record 21 colour paintings for the release.

More than 2.5 years in the making, it is an absolute honour to produce a fine press Red Rising. Even better than that, for the first time I have been able to produce a much more affordable non-limited tier called the Artist Edition.

The Artist Edition has to be one of the best value special edition releases I can think of! You guys deserve it.

- Smith-sewyn binding by the best machine-binders in the UK
- Buckram covered slipcase
- 21 pieces of Simonetti art
- Reversible dustjacket with extra piece by fine artist Joel Daniel Phillips
- Head and tailbands and ribbon
- Four-colour offset litho printing THROUGHOUT
- Bas-relief painting printed on buckram for the spine (which will tell a story across all 7 books)
- Oh and we bought a 3m wide piece of African marble which was hand carved and photographed for the slipcase.

I almost forgot... Pierce is signing every single edition. Let's make him regret that decision, eh?!

Get yourselves to Lit Escalates website howler, you have been summoned.

https://www.lit-escalates.com/collections/red-rising-special-editions

16/03/2026

G'day all.

The Publishers Rights email has gone out for PR holders to take up their copies! This will close at 20:00GMT on Thursday 19th of March.

If you think you should've had an email and haven't, then please check your spam and then get in contact.

Also PR and Red Rising SR transfers are now on hold until March 30th following the dust settling on Deluxe/Lettered/RN RR sale. This only relates to Red Rising, copies of RR will be allowed to be bought/sold on March 30th.

Thanks

13/03/2026

We have just sent out our "How to Pre-Order" newsletter for our INSANE release of Pierce Brown's masterful Sci-Fi blockbuster, Red Rising in partnership with US heroes Lit Escalates.

As it's rather late in the UK at the moment I thought it sensible to let people know it's gone out so they can check their emails in the morning. There may well be a few badasses (without kids) who are still up and living life to the MAX right now, but reckon you aren't checking your emails now anyway.

This newsletter gives all of the direct links/url's you will need on the 20th of March at 17:00 for each tier you want to buy. As mentioned a few times before, this is the best way we've found for our releases that doesn't crash our website.

Not only that! Yes, there is more... We're doing a run of 5 mini-art prints of some of our favourite Marc Simonetti pieces from the incredible 21 pieces he produced for this release. It goes without saying that picking just 5 was a nightmare. Worry not for fans of the other pieces, we're almost certain to do more prints in different shapes and sizes (maybe some signed eh?!).

We're only 1 week away now from the actual pre-order of Red Rising!! Crazy stuff indeed.

March 20th at 17:00 GMT - make sure you've got your links ready gang!

We will also put up the links on a blog post next week just in case you can't find the email!