I’m changing my name.
In the publishing world, most people know me as Shed. But those of you who know me personally know that is not the name my parents gave me.
I grew up with the name João, which is the Portuguese version of John. A fine name, if a little boring. I have no special attachment to it, though it does still feel my own. More importantly, it’s very difficult for a native English speaker to pronounce, and so when I moved to Canada, I grew increasingly annoyed at having to explain to people how to say it. Eventually, I adopted the name Shed, which I had used for a few years in online forums.
That name worked for me for many years, but it is a name I chose in high school, and over the past year or so, it started to grate on me. Shed just doesn’t feel like me anymore. I looked for an alternative, and eventually landed on Libris, which comes from the Latin phrase ex libris, commonly seen on bookplates. I have been slowly adopting Libris in all kinds of contexts over the past several months, and I think it’s finally time to make the change professionally as well.
This won’t be a smooth transition, but I hope it won’t be too bad. My email addresses will have to change, but you don’t have to worry about that—I’ll make sure everything gets rerouted accordingly. “Shed” will still appear as my design credit on a few books, but I hope “Libris” will start showing up before too long.
So I guess this is just a heads up. I hope that I can count on your understanding and cooperation.
I’ll be sharing a few new books I worked on over the next few days, so I hope you’ll keep an eye out for those updates.
