Elliot Jay Stocks

Oh, nice one! I think Luke will be there, too.

A flyer for the Fine Specimens release party, hosted at Bookhaus Bristol on 10th March 2026, starting at 6pm.

Bristol friends! Come and celebrate the release of Fine Specimens with me!

On Tuesday 10th March, @bookhaus.bsky.social are very kindly hosting the launch event in collaboration with Letter Luvvers. This is also stop #1 on the Fine Specimens *book tour*!

www.bookhausbristol.com/events/#e149...

AI Confidential with Hannah Fry - Series 1: 1. The Boy Who Tried to Kill the Queen Revealing the story of the British teenager whose AI girlfriend encouraged him to try to kill Queen Elizabeth II. What happens when humans start having relationships with AI chatbots?

One episode into Hannah Fry’s new series on AI. Recommended!

The @beyondtellerrand.com podcast is live! It was so nice to chat with my very dear friend @marcthiele.com about my new book, Fine Specimens, and the motivation behind it. The episode is available anywhere you get your podcasts!

A photo of the book Fine Specimens, by Elliot Jay Stocks, showing its cover, sitting on top of some wood type.

A photo of the book Fine Specimens, by Elliot Jay Stocks, showing an interior page where a montage of type specimen graphics are visible, sitting on top of some wood type.

A photo of the book Fine Specimens, by Elliot Jay Stocks, showing an interior page where a montage of type specimen graphics are visible, sitting on top of some wood type.

A photo of the book Fine Specimens, by Elliot Jay Stocks, showing an interior page where a montage of type specimen graphics are visible, sitting on top of some wood type.

The always generous @hoosiertypeco.bsky.social wrote some very kind words about Fine Specimens in his newsletter — and took some lovely photos, too. (Thank you, Daniel!)

hoosiertypeco.substack.com/p/book-revie...

Had a lovely chat with @marcthiele.com (one of my oldest and dearest web friends) this morning for the @beyondtellerrand.com podcast. Talked lots about the motivation behind Fine Specimens. The episode will be out very soon, apparently (and the book in just over two weeks)!

Very nice!

I did a quick flick-through of Fine Specimens, which comes out very soon: 10th March in the US and 12th March everywhere else. You can pre-order yours now from anywhere that sells books. geni.us/FineSpecimens

The news is out! @beyondtellerrand.com Düsseldorf in April — a conference I love and am very excited to be attending — is also an official stop on the Fine Specimens book tour!

Come and say hi if you’re at the event (or nearby)!

(Thanks for making this happen, @marcthiele.com!)

Archive: Free Up Space on Your Device | Jottacloud Help Center How to save space on your device by using our Archive.

But Jottacloud has a notion of the Archive, which — as a mental model — just makes a lot more sense. Upload those lesser-used folders there, then delete them from your local machine. It’s far more future-proof than hidden/visible folders right in your main file structure.

I don’t want to jinx it before I’ve fully migrated, but so far I’m loving Jottacloud.

The biggest hurdle in migrating from Dropbox has been having to download “Selective Sync” Dropbox folders before re-uploading them. Selective Sync is something your future self will *not* thank your past self for.

Thank you!

Notes from a different (type)setting A pop-up newsletter from Elliot Jay Stocks. Unlike Elliot’s main newsletter, Typographic & Sporadic, this one is focussed on short bursts of type-related travel. The next trip is the Fine Specimens Eu...

I’m a huge fan of the pop-up newsletter format popularised by @craigmod.com and I loved running my previous pop-ups.

Now I’m going to be doing it again, this time with a dedicated pop-up for the Fine Specimens book tour, commencing next month.

The signup form’s active if you want to get in early:

As a father of two, too, I completely understand! But hopefully see you there — and / or tell your friends! It’ll be held at the Waterstones.

TypeParis people: Elliot Jay Stocks Elliot Jay Stocks is one of TypeParis Speakers, Instructors, Type critics, Facilitators!

Very excited to announce that I’ll be a) speaking on a panel about publishing at this year’s @typeparis.com Now26 conference, and b) selling copies of Fine Specimens from the bookshop in the breaks! See you in Paris on 30th May?

(Photo by Norman Posselt)

🇧🇪 Type friends in (or near) Brussels, please put Wednesday 1st April (not a joke) in your diaries — we have our first venue confirmed for the Fine Specimens book tour!!!

More details to follow, but for now, please shout if you’re interested in coming.

Webspace Invaders · Matthias Ott There’s something happening on the Web at the moment that almost feels like watching that old arcade game Space Invaders play out across our servers. Bots and scrapers marching in formation, attacking...

This is a fascinating (and terrifying) read by @matthiasott.com, who identifies the sheer scale of LLM scraper bots hitting personal sites — to the point where web hosts are having to limit traffic, preventing actual humans from accessing them.

Haha, not since the Brexit vote, sadly! I was mainly thinking of the continent. But if there’s any interest in doing some sort of launch thing in Birmingham, I’d be well up for it!

EU friends! I’m trying (with varying degrees of success) to plan some small European launch events for the release of Fine Specimens in late March / early April.

If you know a bookshop owner (actually know them, not just know *of* them) in a major EU city, I’m gratefully accepting recommendations.

Oh yeah! Now you’re talking!

Same! Takes me right back to infant school.

Oh yeah! I had one!

Oh blimey, yeah, I remember that. My granny had a collection of those dolls... 😬

Is anyone here a happy Jottacloud customer and could recommend the service? More specifically, has anyone here migrated to Jottacloud from Dropbox? Anything you’d wish you’d known before starting the process?

Over breakfast this morning, I was telling my kids how, when we were kids, you used to get literal toys stuffed inside cereal packets, or collectible holographic cards built into the box, or at the very least some tokens (“post us 5 tokens and we’ll post you a toy” etc.).

Totally blew their minds.

I wish I knew! I believe it’s available to order from any store, even if they wouldn’t be stocking it by default. Sorry to not be of more help! No hard feelings if you end up having to use Amazon. 😅

You are not alone, my friend.

Very nice! [Checks out Granola...]

It might’ve been more. 😅

My new book, Fine Specimens, comes out next month!

My publisher said I should make a video for the book’s Amazon page, so I figured I might as well post it here, too, esp. as it took about 17 takes.

Please feel free to pre-order it from wherever you buy books! Some links: geni.us/FineSpecimens