A snap of the train station poster from twilightanonymous.com. Why so anonymous?

For the uber-geeky who would actually go out and pick up the special editions of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight vampire romance saga, you’re set for a treat. Hachette Australia has produced copies with red page-edging, hinting at the blood-engorged flesh probed within.

I spotted a billboard advertising the special editions and within half an hour I spied a gal reading a musical-branded copy of the Wicked sequel Son Of A Witch, also with red page-edging.

Coloured page-edging looks to be the latest gimmick for publishers desperate to catch our eye. In March this year English blogger Iain Tait took note of new editions of Scarlett Thomas’s 2004 novel PopCo and her 2006 novel The End Of Mr Y with blue and black page-edging respectively, as well as a black-edged edition of John Burrow’s A History Of Histories from Penguin. Talk about classy.

Of course, this is nothing new. Older books – particularly bibles – were routinely gilt-edged in an effort to ward off dust damage (here’s a step-by-step PDF guide on how to do it). Coloured “publisher stain” purports to do the same thing, sometimes only as “top stain” along the top edge where most dust would accumulate. And red looks to be a common choice, even on books not concerned with tween girls desperately seeking bloodsuckers.

Most impressive is a fascinating process to which Mel alerted me, called “fore-edge painting“. Craftsmen would produce intricate paintings on the edges of the pages. Sometimes these would be visible from the other side of your bookcase (blow your mind with these pics), but they could also be produced by slightly fanning out gilt-edged pages (blow the rest of your mind with this video). Of course, that means you can conceivably have six pictures on every book: forward and backward on top, side and bottom edges.

The designs went from patterns and heraldry at its beginnings (supposedly in the 10th century) to full colour paintings that included landscapes, portraits, sports scenes and even erotica. The practice flourished in the 16th century, fizzling out in the 1900s, with the “disappearing” fore-edge technique first seen in 1645.

We doubt fore-edging painting will experience a renaissance — it’s probably illegal to enslave book artisans nowadays. It’s surely easier to come up with striking cover art than shell out for complicated cover constructions (like the tactile and beautiful hardcover edition of Michael Chabon’s Maps And Legends). But I love the themed colour-edging, although the Wicked people should’ve shelled out for green. Hopefully we’ll see more of them — tasteful and targeted, of course. I can’t see myself buying Twilight just for the cool page-edges.