Research

Names mentioned:

Venus Selenite, Dane Figueroa Edidi, b.binaohan, or Luna Merbruja

Quotes from this article:

But they're still a business, and as such its priority is sustaining itself and not the marginalized people that it claims, who may not claim it back. Which is how I feel after getting to know the radical bookstore.

What I want is to take note of the failure of the radical bookstore to meet oppressed people where they are, and to suggest that abolition calls for a deeper transformation that would turn places like Bluestockings from mouthpieces for institutional publishing into the accomplices that oppressed people require for the creation of revolutionary culture.

Who gives a shit if these zines aren't what their readers are contacting them about and looking for when they show up to the bookstore? No one knows that they want and need our work because it has hardly had a chance to exist -- but if it's put in front of them, they will value our work if they truly believe in any of the same things we do.

The Brooklyn Book Festival that's sponsoring this event with Bluestockings, by the way, is a massive recipient of funding from the Amazon Literary Partnership: that's hundreds of thousands of dollars across years of patronage. So that's Bluestockings putting itself in tension with Amazon workers for what? A bloodless corporate-sponsored trans literature?

It's also that the involvement of the former group in publishing will make them into collaborators with institutional violence. There's an interview where Torrey Peters talks about what a cool guy her editor boss Chris Jackson is over at One World, the publisher of Detransition, Baby -- he also happens to be the editor of a memoir by Eric Holder, the former Attorney General aka the architect for the legal justification of Obama's use of torture and drone strikes.

What does it mean for her editor to be a propagandist for the American imperial machine? And for a book that this very propagandist (or should we just call him a war criminal like Holder?) signed off on to be sitting on the shelves of a radical bookstore?

Let us step back and consider that this pattern where propagandists, rich monsters, and other friends of war criminals at corporate publishing houses are the same people who are now beginning to give book deals to (mostly white, mostly hyper educated) trans writers. In fact, those editors are the same people who usher forth many of the books that become the must-reads stocked by bookstores, radical or not. The same publishing infrastructure that creates legitimacy for war criminals also extracts profits from the marginalized writers (and their culture) it targets periodically as a trend.

It feels like every year I've been trying to figure out, "What is the relationship of the bookstore to the poor person?" Every year the answer comes back in a different form, dragging along different evidence, but the same result: it's an antagonistic relationship. With the radical bookstore, it's no different. It's still property and its allies against the propertyless.

Quotes from this piece:

Use every exhibition invitation with a budget to print something. Use the whole budget to print something. Make something in a large enough print run so that you have something to give away and surplus that you can sell. Your publication can be a folded sheet of paper, a booklet, a newspaper, a poster, a book, or anything in between.

Don’t aim to just break even. Aim to make a profit so you can keep making more publications and pay for your life. Publishing will probably never be your sole income but don’t lose money on purpose. Make things that are priced fairly and look like they justify what they cost to buy. The fact that you didn’t find a more affordable way to print something is not an excuse to sell something that feels cheap and shitty for a ridiculous sum of money. Good cheap printing is easier to find than ever before. Do your homework.

Free printing is good printing. If you have access to free printing, use it. Free printing is like free food at art openings and conference receptions. It is one of those pleasures in life that never gets old. Come up with an idea that is based around the aesthetics of whatever free printing you have access to and make the publication that way. Eat the cheese and bread. Drink the wine. Make the copies at work.

I’m against competition. Try to avoid competing with other artists for resources. If you don’t truly need the money, don’t ask for it. Artists should have a section on their CV where they list grants they could have easily gotten but didn’t apply for because they are privileged enough that they don’t need the money as much as someone else.

Collaborate with people and pay them with publications (if they are
cool with that) that they can sell on their own. Sometimes this ends
up being better pay and more useful than an honorarium, and it helps
justify a larger print run. But see what they need—don’t assume.
Barter with other publishers and sell each other’s work and let each
other keep the money. This helps with distribution. Sometimes it’s
easier to sell their work than it is to sell your own. Help others
expand the audience for their publications.

Above all, know that publishing is a life journey and not a get rich quick scheme, or even a make very much money scheme. Enjoy the experience of meeting and working with others, trade your publications with other publishers and build up an amazing library of small press, hard to find artist books. Get vaccinated and travel and sleep on each other’s couches. Be generous with your time, knowledge, resources, and work. Tell Jeff Bezos to fuck off by never selling anything you make through Amazon. Find the bookstores that you love and work with them forever. It’s nicer to have deeper relationships with fewer bookstores than surface level interactions with dozens of shops run by people you don’t know.