The finalists for the 33rd L.A. Times Book Prizes were announced Thursday morning and we have to say that we’re pretty proud of the Authors who made the list who are published by Random House, Knopf, and Pantheon. Actually, we’re happy for everybody on the list but we also want to send a shout-out to the Authors we are associated with, ha! So, Please check out the complete list down below.

The 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes will be presented on Friday, April 19, 2013, 7:30 pm, in a public ceremony in the Bovard Auditorium on the campus of USC. The 2012 Book Prizes Innovator's Award Winner, Robert Kirsch Award Winner, and category finalists as listed below were announced publicly on February 21st, 2013, in advance of the April 19th ceremony. For more details, CLICK HERE!

Los Angeles Times Book Prizes 2012 Honorees
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Biography
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H.W. Brands / The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace (Doubleday)
Robert Caro / The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)
Alice Kessler-Harris / A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press)
David Nasaw / The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (Penguin Press)
R.J. Smith / The One: The Life and Music of James Brown (Gotham Books)

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Current Interest
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Katherine Boo / Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Steve Coll / Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (Penguin Press)
Karen Elliott House / On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future (Knopf)
Jim Sterba / Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds (Crown)
Jake Tapper / The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (Little, Brown and Company)

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Fiction
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Jami Attenberg / The Middlesteins: A Novel (Grand Central Publishing)
Michael Chabon / Telegraph Avenue (HarperCollins Publishers / Harper)
Ben Fountain / Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco)
Lauren Groff / Arcadia (Voice/Hyperion)
Lydia Millet / Magnificence (W.W. Norton & Company)

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Graphic Novel/Comics
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Alison Bechdel / Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Leela Corman / Unterzakhn (Schocken)
Sammy Harkham / Everything Together: Collected Stories (PictureBox)
Spain Rodriguez / Cruisin' With the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote (Fantagraphics)
Chris Ware / Building Stories (Pantheon)

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History
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John Barry / Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Viking)
George Black / Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone (St. Martin's Press)
Fergus M. Bordewich / America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster)
Amy S. Greenberg / A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (Knopf)
Geoffrey Kabaservice / Rule & Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Oxford University Press)

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Mystery / Thriller
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Tana French / Broken Harbor (Viking)
Nick Harkaway / Angelmaker (Knopf)
Fuminori Nakamura / The Thief (Soho Crime)
Chris Pavone / The Expats (Crown)
Ariel S. Winter / The Twenty-Year Death (Hard Case Crime)

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Poetry
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Louise Gl ck / Poems 1962-2012 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Rowan Ricardo Phillips / The Ground: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
D. A. Powell / Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys: Poems (Graywolf Press)
Bin Ramke / Aerial (Omnidawn)
Cole Swensen / Gravesend (New California Poetry) (University of California Press)

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Science & Technology
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Susan Cain / Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Crown)
George Dyson / Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe (Pantheon)
Jonathan Gottschall / The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Nate Silver / The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't (Penguin Press)
Florence Williams / Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (W.W. Norton & Company)

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The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
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David Abrams / Fobbit (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, Inc.)
Kevin P. Keating / The Natural Order of Things (Aqueous Books)
Lydia Netzer / Shine Shine Shine (St. Martin's Press)
Maggie Shipstead / Seating Arrangements (Knopf)
Robin Sloan / Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Book Store: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

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Young Adult Literature
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Paolo Bacigalupi / The Drowned Cities (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
A.S. King / Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
Martine Leavitt / My Book of Life by Angel (Margaret Ferguson Books/Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers)
Matthew Quick / Boy 21 (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
Elizabeth Wein / Code Name Verity (Disney-Hyperion)

It’s official!! The United States Justice Department has closed an investigation of a proposed merger between Penguin and Random House and will take no action to stop the deal that would create the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.

Media company Pearson seeks to merge its Penguin Books division with Random House, which is owned by German media company Bertelsmann. The proposed publishing house would have around a quarter of the consumer book market.

In a recent article at the HUFFINGTON POST they shared this news, for more details please CLICK HERE!

Over at the FLAVORWIRE website they recently did a very excellent article about David Shields’ brand-new book, “How Literature Saved My Life”. The reason we’re sharing this is because of two reasons: One, The book was published by Knopf and Chip Kidd designed the cover jacket. Two, because it’s honestly a really great book!

“How Literature Saved My Life” is basically a memoir about the Author’s life and his battle with depression. In the story he talks about many of the real-life actual books he has read that have transformed his life. Now, the cool thing, is that this Flavorwire’s reporter tracked down a few of these books to share ( you can see their pics down below as an example ). Oh yeah, what you need to do now is just read the article. Why? Well, they do a really great job explaining all of these books and it’s pretty interesting… Hey! Just CLICK HERE!

OK, I’ll admit this is kind of a dumb thing to share but I thought it was pretty funny. The other day I was on YouTube, enjoying some music, and all of a sudden I randomly get THIS advertising banner for Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 Book ( This cover was designed by Chip Kidd ). Random House created this ad to announce that the book is coming out in both the Paperback and eBook format. The cool thing is that it links directly to Random House’s special “Haruki Murakami” website. To check it out, just CLICK HERE!

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Dr. Seuss’s Classic Children Book, “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins”. Random House has released a special anniversary edition ( holographic foil cover ) and, also in honor of the book, the Seuss Estate has decided to start the “Hats off to Dr. Seuss!” campaign.

Yes, Dr. Seuss was an extremely serious Hat Collector. He had hundreds of them and, in one way or another, many of them made their way into his artwork. So, Dr. Seuss’s widow, Audrey S. Geisel, decided to open up his collection of hats to the public for a never-before-seen glimpse at the amazing array of head wear. This is the first time any of these hats have traveled outside the Seuss Estate.

The Dr. Seuss hat exhibit launched at the Children's Center of the New York Public Library (42nd Street branch). It will be in New York until February 12th, 2013, and then will go on to 15 additional locations throughout 2013. Here’s the list:

All photos are courtesy of TM & 2013 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. All Rights Reserved.

Random House recently hired a company to discover the statistics on ebook readers and their habits. Then, they created this series of infographics. The data is pretty interesting and might hold a few surprises, check it out.

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins turns 75 in 2013. So, to celebrate, Random House created a special foil-covered Anniversary Edition with a newly color-enhanced interior that would please even King Derwin himself! When the royal carriage approaches, young Bartholomew Cubbins removes his hat as is required by the haughty king. But as soon as Bartholomew does so, another hat appears on his head! This goes on and on, angering the king and frustrating his royal assistants until Bartholomew (quite literally) sheds 500 hats and almost loses his head! A delightfully strange story about an event that “just happened to happen and was not very likely to happen again,” the 75th anniversary of “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” is likewise an event that won’t happen again, and their 75th Anniversary Edition will be available for a limited time only at the regular edition price of $14.95. Dr. Seuss fans won’t want to miss it!

This post is just for fun and it’s where we post some recent pictures we have found that are all pretty funny! The 1st pic is the very recent cover to George Orwell’s classic book, Nineteen Eighty Four 1984 ( not designed by Chip Kidd ). This is a Penguin Group printing and it’s hard to believe that they blacked-out the title of the book AND the Author’s name. Oh man, that really takes some balls, ha ha! But the design concept here is really cool. Actually, the black bars are dull black and the lettering is high-gloss. So, you can see the title if the light hits it right.

Next up is a photo that is Chip Kidd related. It shows two people using the Book jacket for Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (Knopf 2011) to cover their faces. It matches up pretty good with their own heads and it’s totally hilarious!!

Here’s a really great humor video that has been on the Internet for awhile but it’s worth posting because it’s both hilarious… and true! It’s all about being a Writer. So, if you want to be an Author please give it a view.

Just a quick post to share the good news that the GALLERY PAGE of ChipKidd.Com has just been heavily updated and there is a ton of brand-new eye candy to enjoy! Most of the newly added graphics are Book Jacket designs that will be appearing in 2013. You can get there by clicking the GALLERY TAB up above or just CLICK HERE. Please check ‘em out, they’re fun! Oh yeah, while there, please be sure to view “Page Two” by clicking the NEXT Button. Also, if you can, please share this website with all your friends. We have SHARE Buttons all over the place. Yes, we’re total whores, ha!!