Dear Readers,

It's been a while since we last sent out a newsletter, but now that it's summer reading time, it seems like the perfect moment to say hi and tell you about a few of the exciting things that are going on at Open Letter.

* $4.99 ebooks

* Read This Next

* Three Percent Podcast

* Guadalajara by Quim Monzó

$4.99 ebooks
Probably the most exciting—and most newsworthy—thing is that we've officially launched our Open Letter ebook series. As of now, nine of our titles are available for the Kindle, Nook, iPad, and other e-reading devices.

In and of itself that's awesome, but even cooler is the fact that through the end of June, these nine books are all available for just $4.99/piece. Come July, the prices will go up to $9.99, so you should get them soon . . .

The list of all the available titles—which includes Mercè Rodoreda's Death in Spring, the award-winning A Thousand Peaceful Cities by Jerzy Pilch, and the Russian Classic The Golden Calf by Ilf & Petrov—and links to all the places where you can buy these great books can be found here.

(And, if you're interested in ebooks and how they're affecting the publishing landscape, check out Publishing Perspectives on Monday for my essay on ebook pricing and why we're to offering these for $4.99.)

Read This Next
I also want to take this chance to point out Read This Next, our latest project, which is designed to bring attention to the best forthcoming works of international literature from a number of different publishers. Every Monday, an extended preview of a soon-to-be-published book will go up on readthisnext.org, and, over the course of the week, we'll post interviews with the author and/or translator, a review of the title in question, and other interesting materials.

This week's featured book is Horacio Castellanos Moya's Tyrant Memory, which is translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver and forthcoming from New Directions.

Next up is Jean Echenoz's Lightning, which is translated from the French by Linda Coverdale and coming out later this month from New Press. It's a brilliant (and short!) book based on the life of Nikola Tesla . . .

Three Percent Podcast
Last month we also launched the new Three Percent podcast, a weekly discussion about books, the publishing industry, and other odds and ends. In the past we've talked about BookExpo America, the author Enrique Vila-Matas, and the Best Translated Book Award, and more. Episode #6—a discussion about what would change in the publishing world if money was irrelevant—just came out. You can listen to it here.

You can subscribe to this podcast through iTunes, where you can also help us out immensely by rating it and letting us know what you think . . .

Guadalajara
Finally, one of the summer Open Letter books I'm most excited about is Quim Monzó's Guadalajara, the second Monzó book we're publishing. When we sent this out to reviewers earlier this year, I got a number of emails that generally went something like this: "I usually don't read short stories, but wow! these are amazing!"—which is why three of these are appearing in the summer issue of BOMB, and another is going to run on Guernica magazine.

Monzó is sort of like a contemporary, slightly less cerebral but slightly more funny, Jorge Luis Borges. All of the stories in this book are hysterical and engaging. My personal favorites are "Books," which is about a guy who buys four books and can't come up with a way of deciding which to start with, and "Outside the Gates of Troy," which really brings home the whole Trojan Horse thing by detailing all the very physical problems of being stuck in a wooden horse for days, waiting for their surprise plan to play itself out.

This is available on our website, as a book or ebook or as part of an Open Letter subscription.

Also, if you're a member of Goodreads, you can enter to win a free copy right here.

That's all for now. Enjoy the start of summer, pick up some of our $5 ebooks, and I'll be back in July with more book recommendations . . .

Sincerely,
Chad W. Post
Publisher & Director