Penguin Classics did something really cool and unique to celebrate their 80th anniversary a few years back. They released 80 of these little pocket-sized excerpts from some of their best works. And they sold them in the UK for 80p a volume.
Before I got the Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set, I picked up a couple of these slim volumes: ‘Gooseberries’ by Anton Chekhov and ‘Femme Fatale’ by Guy de Maupassant. I picked them up when I was doing the Bradbury Trio, which is a reading program that Ray Bradbury assigned and it basically says that for the next 1,000 nights you’re going to read 1 short story, 1 poem, and 1 essay. And I thought these little volumes were perfect for helping me fulfil some of that reading program.
But buying them individually is a bit laborious, so when I saw the complete collection was available for around 80 bucks (here) I snapped it right up and now I’m diving full-force back into the Bradbury Trio.
Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set Review
You’ve got 80 volumes here, spanning the vast expanse of world literature.
Some absolute classics, and some little known gems.
Poetry, short stories, non-fiction. And stuff you probably wouldn’t have picked up on your own. But because it’s been very carefully curated by the people at Penguin, you’re going to pick up something classic, something that’s high-calorie food for the brain, something that’s going to make you think, and something that’s going to be entertaining.
What I really love about the Penguin Little Black Classics is how small and compact they are. So I can slip one into my pocket and I can finish one on my commute to work or the gym.
It’s also great to read one of these first thing in the morning.
You can finish one in 15 minutes. There’s only 30/40/50 pages to each volume. And they really get your brain going, setting you up for a good day.
How to Sell the Public Domain
Almost all of these works in the Penguin Little Black Classics series are available in the public domain.
That means you can read them for free.
But if you’ve been following publishing trends, you’ll know that a lot of people do publish public domain works and try to turn a profit on them.
There are good ways and bad ways to do this.
Bad ways include just nicking The Great Gatsby off Gutenberg and sticking it up on Amazon with your own cover.
That sucks.
And because there are so many thousands of copies, you’re not going to make any money anyway.
Good ways include adding something to the table.
Bringing some value proposition to the reader.
This could be:
- introductions (which Penguin often does)
- historical asides
- annotations
- footnotes
- analysis
- etc
Another value proposition you could bring to the reader is just hardcore curation.
Just get the stuff that most people won’t find on their own.
Because, I assure you, if you go through some of the classics looking for the little known gems on Gutenberg, it’s going to take you a long time to find something that’s actually pretty good.
But the people at Penguin have already done it, and they’ve done it with good translations – because a lot of the Little Black Classics are from different languages like Ancient Greek and Italian.
So you’re getting a good product.
I’ll stop kissing Penguin’s ass for a minute and let’s talk about what you actually get in the Little Black Classics Box Set.
What you get in the Little Black Classics Box Set
The collection starts off with ‘Mrs Rosie and the Priest’ by Giovanni Boccaccio.
This is a little selection of bawdy tales of pimps, cuckolds, and lovers from The Decameron.
Here’s another great thing about the Penguin Little Black Classics collection.
I wouldn’t have picked up The Decameron. It’s too involved, I’m too put off, it looks too complex, I don’t think I’m going to have fun with it.
But because I had this very slim curated reading experience, I was able to dip in and it was so fun.
The stories in this volume are so funny and so compulsively readable that I actually thought to myself, ‘Hey, I’m probably going to pick up The Decameron.’
And guess who sells that?
Penguin.
So if you’re a publisher, that’s very cool. You’re giving two sets of value that end up benefitting you. You give someone the chance to sample the work and if they like it you can offer them the full thing.
It’s kinda like being a drug dealer.
Other volumes I’ve been enjoying include:
- Montaigne’s ‘How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing’
- Aesop’s ‘The Dolphins, the Whales, and the Gudgeon’
- Kenkō’s ‘A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees’
- Brontë’s ‘The Night is Darkening Round Me’
- H. G. Wells’ ‘A Slip Under the Microscope’
- Darwin’s ‘It was snowing butterflies’
- Chopin’s ‘A Pair of Silk Stockings’
- Homer’s ‘Circe and the Cyclops’
- Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’
- Bashō’s ‘Lips too chilled’
- Virgil’s ‘O Cruel Alexis’
- Mansfield’s ‘Miss Brill’
- Conrad’s ‘To-morrow’
If you read one of these a day for 80 days, I can guarantee you’d be one smart dude or dudette.
And if you have any interest in selling the public domain in a way that brings value to the reader, you could do a lot worse than study how the people at Penguin do it.
You can check out the Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set here.