A tattoo on executive creative director Paul Buckley's right forearm helped inspire a new series, Penguin Ink, launched in conjunction with the anniversary and featuring works repackaged with covers designed by tattoo artists. During an extensive search for an artist to ink his tattoo, "I was amazed at how talented they are and 
what a different vision they have from a lot of people I work with," said Buckley. He suggested using tattoo artists to Penguin publisher Kathryn Court, believing the proposal "would fall on its face and meet a horrible end." But it turns out that wasn't the case. "I thought it was a really wonderful and fresh idea," Court said.
The six titles in the Penguin Ink series are Money by Martin Amis, Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee, Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming, The Bone People by Keri Hulme and The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace.
"We wanted to take some of the modern classics on our list and refresh them and bring them to a new audience," said associate publisher Stephen Morrison. "A fantastically well-designed cover is always an excuse for all of us booksellers and book buyers to take another look at a book." One example of this: after being put on display at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, Wis., Wallace's The Broom of the System sold out in a day.
Four more Penguin Ink titles are planned for early 2011: Moon Palace by Paul Auster, The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter and On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin.
By the way, the tattoo on Buckley's arm that launched the Penguin Ink series? It's a rendition of an 18th-century natural history print of a common grass snake taking a swipe at a songbird called a red-headed tyrant.