From zine to artist book
Discovering new ways of marketing and packaging bound works on paper
Last night I went to a presentation called “Artists’ Books for Zine-Makers” hosted by Booklyn, a Brooklyn nonprofit that promotes artists' books and zines within the academic market. As a relative newbie to the zine world, I was excited to learn more about artists’ books and the potential for expanding beyond a zine-making practice.
I had first learned about artist books through Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair, a huge annual book fair that’s been around since 2006. Walking around the booths as a young twenty something I saw tons of carefully crafted hand bound books with impressive paper engineering, usually addressing a myriad of social justice topics. If one caught my eye, I glanced at the price—all upwards of $200, some over $1000. The books were beautiful but I certainly couldn’t afford them. It didn’t seem like many private collectors would be buying these bound objects that they couldn’t easily show off. So who was buying these art books?
The answer: *ding ding* educational institutions and libraries are big buyers of these books! I never even considered there being an “academic art market” but after the Booklyn curators spoke about the high value of these books for both educational and archival purposes, it all clicked. Works on paper are accessible to acquire and consume, and librarians are always looking to expand the subject matter and politics of available works in their collections.
During the presentation we got to see and touch many art books in Booklyn’s catalog. One of my favorites was Sofia Szamosi’s The Everything Box Set, a collection of 18 zines made during the artist’s career that comes in a hand-painted box with a custom hand-sewn cushion.
Often times what elevates a zine to an artist book is the framing and packaging. Individually, Sofia’s zines would cost between $5 and $10. Multiply that by 18 zines and you’ve got max earnings of $180. But once you introduce the archival box, which is itself an art object, along with the scarcity of being able to acquire each of these zines in one go, the valuation can go up to $780. Plus art books and box sets come in much smaller editions than zines—there are only five of these Sofia Szamozi box sets in the world, whereas zines are usually printed at a minimum of 50 copies.
The curators continued to show lots of fascinating art books. Some were tiny foldout books that neatly arranged itself into a compact box. Others were huge screenprinted books with gold foil covers. One was a unique book (only one in the world!) of acrylic paintings painted over a thrifted children’s book.
Much like zines, artist books resist clear-cut categories or rules. “If you call it an artist’s book, then it’s an artist’s book,” says Booklyn directing curator Marshall Weber. In broad strokes, artist books are usually more formal than zines and focus on craft, such as bookbinding. Zines are more cheaply made (e.g. using a home printer and stapler) for mass production.
I left the evening presentation feeling inspired by possibility and a desire to make more books. Booklyn advocates for book-making skills and instruction to be accessible to all through their education manual which you can download and use in classrooms for free!
I’ll wrap up with my final takeaways from the evening:
Document and keep your work. Marshall referred to an artist’s archives being their social security. You never know which library or museum may want your archives one day. Save at least one copy of all of your work!
Frame multiples together. Many of the artist’s books we saw were simple zines that were wrapped in beautifully crafted encasings. It made me think of the value of a series of paintings vs. a one-off—a series can comprise a show, whereas a one-off is hard to make a lasting impression on its own.
The commercial market values art for investment; the academic market values art for research and education. Reflect on which context your art could fit in (maybe it’s both!)
You don’t have to make your entire edition at once. Say you have an edition of 30 copies for a book, but each costs a lot of money and labor to make. You can just make a few, see how they sell, and continue the rest! The edition is simply the max number of copies of a given book—it doesn’t mean they all have to exist yet.
I really like the idea of building up a body of work over time (with closely connected themes or not) and then presenting that work as a series. As an object. Thanks for sharing!
Ah, I wish there was a bigger Zine culture where I live.