Baby's first art book fair
We left the world of zines for exactly 1 weekend. Did we like it there?
Earlier in May, Late Night Copies Press took a trip west to table at our first art book fair: SABF!!!! Some other wonderful newsletters have already written up SABF … catch this great recap of the Climate Emergency Reading Room by Amelia of Anemone, and After the Fair Was Over by Robert Baxter (subscribe to Robert’s newsletter to help launch his travels as an itinerant riso mechanic!).
If you’re a papereater who doesn’t always dwell in the world of artist publishing, you might be wondering …
What’s the difference?
Zine fest - celebrates DIY publishing as an information practice & art form. Zines are affordable to collect, and most zine fests require that 50-75% of your table is zines (not books, stickers, or prints). Zinesters are still using photocopiers, plus digital printing (and occasionally riso printing). Zines are about interesting/radical content. Art training or a high production value is not a requirement to share your work. Zine community doesn’t always get a physical place to gather outside of fests, so they are very special.
Small press fest - mostly local & regional vendors, draws both indie publishers and printmakers. Zines are often welcome, but not necessarily the focus of the event. Expect more books and ephemera (stickers, postcards) than at a zine fest, and a lot of posters and art. A big range of printmaking methods will be featured (letterpress, screen printing, riso, woodcuts, alt photo, etc). Most small press fests I’ve been to feel halfway between a print sale and a zine fest. In-between small press fests, the local exhibitors might gather at print co-ops, or sell at other regional art fairs.
Art book fair - draws national and maybe even international exhibitors. Platforms publishing as an art form. Expect longer and/or experimental publications by artists, including photobooks, zines, indie comics, literature, and serials. Publications typically have a higher price point and production value than a zine fest, and there are fewer prints than at a small press fest. Lots of riso, and almost no photocopied zines.
Fine press book fair - similar to an art book fair in terms of exhibitor pool. Showcases editioned handmade artist books that have a high production value. Expect the best contemporary letterpress printing to be on display. Design binding, calligraphy, and hand papermaking might also be exhibited. Codex is a great example.
Comics expo - I’m less familiar with these, but have heard the exhibitor lineup usually features publishing houses that specialize in comics/graphic narrative, as well as individual comics artists (especially the most well-known ones). May or may not be especially friendly to zines or minicomics.
Another way to think about the range of publishing events today might be in terms of how much art training and resources are required to exhibit:
Currently, Late Night Copies Press tables at about a dozen zine or small press fests each year. We love that zine fests are financially sustainable for our press (probably more so than art book fairs, if our first one is anything to go by!). We love that even a small city can support a zine fest with 50-200 local & regional vendors. We love that among both the exhibitors and the attendees there will be racial and ethic diversity, lots of queer and trans folks, a big age range, and representation of small-town/rural artists. Most zine fests are actively trying to do better when it comes to all kinds of inclusion, and … they’re probably still leaps and bounds ahead of any other kind of publishing fair. We’ve seen such a vibrant and diverse DIY publishing scene in cities like Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Kansas City. There isn’t a funnel from those scenes into the national art book or fine press fairs. When it comes to art book fairs, “national” pretty much means … bicoastal. Compared to tablers at a zine fest, art book fair exhibitors seem to have more educational, class, and racial privilege, and they mostly live in large, coastal cities.
As a collector, I’m most drawn to publications that are interesting to read, regardless of their production value. As an artist, I believe in imagining (and enacting) an art world that is more artist-friendly. Despite years of formal training in how to make books by hand, zine fests still check more boxes for me than just about anything else on the book arts or publishing landscape.
If I have one criticism of zine fests, it’s that sometimes they underestimate the benefits of curation. Not all zine fests select their vendors through an application process, instead they use a lottery (and some fests blend the application process with a lottery). It’s understandable that zine fests sometimes fear curation, since it’s so likely to result in events that are less inclusive. However, lottery-only zine fests are my least favorite to attend, and where I’m least likely to spend my whole budget. The best part of attending our first art book fair was seeing and collecting so many great publications—it was a joy to see so much contemporary publishing work hit that sweet spot of being affordable, substantive, and visually appealing. Since our press has plans for a couple book-length publications about queer archives in the future, we will keep dipping our toes into art book fairs. We expect to be delighted by aspects of the art book circuit (the rad people! their rad books!), while also missing what we love about the grassroots & community-oriented nature of zine fests (the zines! the inclusiveness! the radical and occasionally unhinged reading material! the total and utter lack of prestige!).
As Late Night Copies Press plans the next Midwest Queer & Trans Zine Fest, and the organizing team envisions our ideal fest, our conversations often circle around to something along these lines:
You’ve heard this here before (and you’ll probably here it again), but on the event organizing side, I think all these practices make a lot of sense:
capping applications (high rejection rates don’t serve either organizers or artists)
ending or lowering table fees
when they can’t be reduced or ended, offering table fee transparency (it’s simple! artists deserve it!)
travel stipends (or helping artists find free lodging instead)
paying artists to table — or having a pool of money set aside for artist pay on a self-reported, as-needed basis
building audiences for artist publishing inland (where venue rental and travel is more affordable).
These are all practices I am trying to do my best to work toward as an event organizer, bit by bit. It’s not a matter of being perfect, just being willing to break the mold a bit and gradually evolve. Zine fests are reporting much higher numbers of applications compared to past years. DIY publishing is definitely having a moment. It’s a great time to start a new event, or retool an existing one to grow general awareness of publishing as a community and art form. There’s immense potential to welcome all kinds of artists and audiences into what is exciting about publishing now.