Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

by Robin Sloan

Back at NewBagel, when I designed menus and posters and (may I remind you) an award-winning logo, I learned all about the digital font marketplace. Nowhere else is the bucks-to-bytes ratio so severe. Here’s what I mean: An e-book costs about ten dollars, right? And it’s usually about a megabyte’s worth of text. (For the record, you download more data than that every time you look at Facebook.) With an e-book, you can see what you paid for: the words, the paragraphs, the possibly boring expositions of digital marketplaces. Well, it turns out a digital font is also about a megabyte, but a digital font costs not tens of dollars but hundreds, sometimes thousands, and it’s abstract, basically invisible—a thin envelope of math describing tiny letterforms. The whole arrangement offends most people’s consumer instincts. So of course people try to pirate fonts. I am not one of those people. I took a typography course in school and for our final project, everyone had to design their own typeface. I had grand aspirations for mine—it was called Telemach—but there were just too many letters to draw. I couldn’t finish it in time. It ended up capitals-only, suitable for shouty posters and stone tablets. So trust me, I know how much sweat goes into those shapes. Typographers are designers; designers are my people; I am committed to supporting them. But now FontShop.com tells me that Gerritszoon Display, distributed by FLC Type Foundry of New York City, costs $3,989. So of course I will tr...