Not a zine, not an artist's book

A secret third thing

BUT FIRST

Nightmares & Dreams on Progesterone: Action Art Scores for Trans Becoming is published (!)

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Intro to hand bookbinding at MCBA in May (daytime & evening)

A SECRET THIRD THING

The last issue of Papereaters mapped an organic shift in what is being tabled at zine fests. At zine fests these days you’ll spot plenty of exciting publishing projects that are not exactly “classic” zines, but they aren’t exactly artist’s books either. Amelia Greenhall of Anemone has proposed the term “artist publishing” to describe this not-quite-a-zine but not-quite-a-book territory. (“Artist publishing is another way to think of it, rather than self-publishing. I’ve been feeling like it’s a more accurate description for a lot of what I’m interested in, and seeing my peers and collaborators do.”)

For me, “artist publishing” is a capacious term that would include a wide spectrum of publishing activity by artists, and that’s how Amelia is using it too (“There are no rules about what can be an artist publication: a zine, a magazine, a book, an art-book, a pamphlet, a poster, a postcard, a set of letters. A website, a newsletter, an app, an e-book.”) But it seems useful to have a specific term for the category of print publications that our press (and so many other presses) are focused on. For now, I’ll refer to it as third thing publishing. There are a handful of preoccupations that characterize this type of artist publishing: materiality, equipment access and maintenance, scope, audience building, and sustainability.

Materiality

Third thing publishing has a higher production value than zines have had historically, but isn’t as long or as formal as a book. Usually a booklet. Riso printed multiples are common. You’ll see a lot of experimentation with formats, balanced with a certain practicality: like zine formats, third thing publications generally start their lives as a standard size piece of office paper, and often make use of consumer-grade binding equipment intended for office settings (comb binding, spiral binding, and a lot of staples). You might spot the occasional pamphlet stitch, too. While classic zines might be printed on the cheapest possible copy paper and artist’s books might be printed on mouldmade or handmade paper, third thing publishing embraces machine-made paper chosen in a nice color or weight for a project (or it might make use of paper from the art supply reuse store, free/donated paper, etc). Again, third thing publishing tends to seek a balance between what’s practical/affordable for the publisher and what looks/feels fun or unusual for the reader. The corresponding price point for third thing publishing is usually higher than a classic zine, striking a balance between quality and affordability—enabling personal collecting without private wealth.

Even when it’s not riso, third thing publishing involves a little extra time and effort. For instance, Late Night Copies Press has been jamming manila folders through our copiers for several years now. Generally, they have to be hand fed, and then the tabs are hand-stamped. Our friend Zach Frazier at Astr Press is also doing the most with a photocopier, making things that look and feel like professionally printed magazines. While some artist’s books have all the bells and whistles, third thing publishing usually can’t afford to be overdone, but might strategically deploy a cutout or a belly band or a round corner or an insert of poptone paper; material qualities that make you think “what a nice touch.” There are even some letterpress-printed projects that have a lot in common with the approach of third thing publishing.

Equipment access and maintenance

The heyday of zines as we know them coincided with widespread adoption of photocopiers in schools and workplaces, making it feasible to self-publish by stealing copies after hours. The rise of hand-printed artist’s books (and academic book arts programs) coincided with the ability to salvage letterpress equipment in the 1970s and 80s. Third thing publishing is often riso focused, and that usually involves a salvage operation too. When artists repurpose office equipment, we’re usually asking it to do things it wasn’t designed to do, so the riso discord server is a wealth of peer-to-peer tips and advice, a lifeline for artists all over the globe who are fixing up duplicators for artmaking. Sharing riso equipment is incredibly common even when it’s in a private or domestic space; a riso printer I know collaborates with friends on a machine that’s located in her bedroom. Anemone’s equipment in Seattle is being used by a community pottery studio while they travel the globe; BearBear in Milwaukee just relocated their riso to a local nonprofit music venue, etc. Whenever you’re not using your riso, someone else probably wants to! Even riso shops that are exclusively print for hire operations, like Back of Beyond in Minneapolis, take on small jobs and tiny runs in an effort to serve artists (Back of Beyond also does a quarterly artist collab zine printed free to the artist). Few riso printers exclusively print for themselves. Equipment ownership and equipment maintenance, alongside equipment sharing and collaboration, are the default in third thing publishing.

It’s worth noting that the equipment side of third thing publishing isn’t restricted to print. To be as useful as possible, any copier or riso probably needs some light bindery equipment—stitchers, collators, and tabletop stack cutters are all common. The entire setup can still fit in an apartment, allowing artists the benefit of lower overhead in the form of live/work space, a desirable situation that is otherwise in short supply.

Scope

Historically, zines have had defined genres (perzines, fanzines, cookzines); sometimes zines have a very specific and explicit audience. Zinesters might use a zine/artist name or produce an ongoing/serialized project, only sometimes describing themselves as a press (working theory: larger zine projects are more likely to describe themselves as a distro). Meanwhile, the audience for many artist’s books, especially handmade letterpress-printed books, is wealthy private collectors and special collections. In third thing publishing, you’ll see lots of projects with press names and a defined publishing scope, paired with the intent to connect with a larger (and less elite) audience. For instance, Common Threads Press publishes about the history of handicrafts, often “centering marginalized voices.” Anemone focuses on DIY culture and the climate. Taxonomy Press publishes about human interaction with the natural world. Midtones Photo Magazine spotlights photographers of color across mid-America. Diskette Press publishes comics from first-time queer & trans authors. Snatch Magazine is about women’s sports. Combos Press publishes about queer food culture. Our press, Late Night Copies, publishes informal research-based writing on a handful of subjects.

Audiences

Scope can go hand-in-hand with building an audience. Third thing publishing is curious about specific topics. It tends to draw in audiences because they’re either invested in independent publishing, or interested in the topic—and the ideal reader for most third thing presses is someone who is interested in both DIY publishing and women’s sports (or the environment or craft history or contemporary photography). Crucially, there’s an entry point to these third thing projects even if you’re not an artist/zinester/publisher yourself. Third thing publishing is deliberate about seeking and cultivating a readership. It offers publishers a direct connection to readers via tabling at zine fests /art book fairs/small press fests, webshops, subscriptions, workshops, launch parties, social media, newsletters, fundraisers, and participatory projects. Readers often write in or become contributors to future publications (in the words of Taxonomy Press: “the world is your collaborator.”) Some third thing publications, like Moody the Zine, exist in part to platform new or noteworthy work by other artists, and being featured in the zine generates opportunities for the contributors, which overlap with the readership. Third thing publishers consign and wholesale. Third thing publishers speak about their work, teach, participate in exhibitions, contribute publications to reading rooms, etc. Often, third thing presses push up against the limits of what an individual can easily circulate without a distributor, printing in runs of 100-1000.

Sustainability

Third thing presses are interested in sustainable creative labor. They want to cover their costs, maybe pay their contributors, maybe pay themselves, and have money for the next project (in our case, we are funding a community print shop with sales of our publications). Even though third thing publications cost more than the classic photocopied zine, publishers tend to break even, with some notable examples that actually generate income for the main creator(s). Third thing presses work to resourcefully make their publications happen, and want their publications to work for them (or at least not drain them financially). There’s an interest in sharing business strategies and a general understanding that we’re not competing with each other—rather, as individual publishers familiarize their readers with this kind of print media, the audience for all of us grows. Third thing publishing is about ecosystems, not capitalist exploitation, but at the point of sale, that’s not always legible. Owning your own equipment or compensating contributors leads to riso-printed booklets that sell for $12 or $15 or $20 (and can result in takes like ZiNeS ArE So eXpEnSiVe ThEsE DaYs or WhY iS EvErYbOdY sUcH A SelLoUt??????!!!! which are exhausting when your project is, in fact, just breaking even). Generally, third thing publishers are balancing labor, equipment, and materials costs with the reality that readers who buy indie publications have limited disposable income. Much like with zines, there’s a culture of trading with other publishers. Late Night Copies’ print runs factor in a percentage we plan to gift or swap.

In Conclusion

I would appreciate having a word to describe a publishing practice that results in something that is not quite a book, but not quite a zine. If you do too, take a shot in the comments. :) Sometimes third thing publishing is described as a recent phenomenon, but I suspect it has always existed. Some of the projects that inspire us at Late Night Copies Press, like the Iowa City Women’s Press, published everything from feminist poetry to home & auto repair manuals to serials like Common Lives, Lesbian Lives. None of it was exactly a zine or an artist’s book, and it wasn’t exactly small press literary publishing either. Contemporary publishers we admire like Marc Fisher have been doing the third thing for decades. But right now we’re seeing, I think, many and varied instances of this third thing, perhaps in large enough numbers to be worth thinking about, writing about, publishing about.

Thanks to Melissa Murch-Rodriguez and Rachel Hays for their thoughts, which are integrated into this essay, and Aiden Bettine, who helped me write it on a long roadtrip to (what else?) a zine fest.