Dan, Brighton England - text from Neuromancer by William Gibson

Some of you may remember that back in July, I posted a call for submissions to a book of photographs of literary tattoos. The book, The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide (edited by Eva Talmadge & Justin Taylor) has since become a reality, and will be published by Harper Perennial, probably next fall. Why am I telling you this? Because even though we have received hundreds of delightful and sometimes insane submissions, we are still collecting through the end of 2009, and we want you to be in our book. The process is very simple: (1) have a literary tattoo; (2) take a clear, focused, high-res photograph of that tattoo; (3) email that photograph as a jpeg attachment to tattoolit[at]gmail[dot]com, along with a paragraph or so talking about the tattoo and/or the literary work that inspired it, plus as much or as little personal data (name, location, etc.) as you feel like sharing (but even if you stay anon., please please give credit to your tattooist & their shop!). That’s all there is to it. Unless of course you don’t have a literary tattoo yet, in which case simply insert “get a literary tattoo” as (1), re-number the rest of the list accordingly, and proceed. And if you do get a literary tattoo just for the purpose of being in this book, make sure you mention that in your note. It will light us right up. Also, process pics! We’ve seen a few of these and they are great.

For more details about image resolution and tech stuff (if the file isn’t usable, it doesn’t matter how rad your ink is) have a look at our original call for subs, or just email us with your questions. (A lot of people wonder if their tattoo “counts” as literary–the answer is usually yes, so just ask.) And please feel free (encouraged!) to link to, re-blog, and fwd along this post to any person or online community you think might be interested. We want to make the best, fattest, wildest book that we possibly can. Thanks, and cheers.