Every time I finish a book I think it will be my last. The expense—be it financial, emotional, durational—never seems worth the result. But then I remind myself the result’s not what I’m in it for. I mean, I want everybody to read and look at my books, of course, but I make them because I need to make them. After they’re done, they have to lead their own lives.
That’s easy to forget when you have a house filled with boxes of books. My problem is mostly one of logistics. It’s how to get them out of here and into the world. The economics of it are such that in order to manufacture these things at the quality I require, I have to order hundreds at a time. Then it takes years to unload because my distribution system consists of a bunch of cardboard, a scale, and an app to buy postage. I keep thinking there must be a better way.
The last couple months have largely been spent pulling people’s coatsleeves about the art book. It’s difficult to concentrate on making something new while promoting something old but the idea for the next thing has been germinating at least a year.
So much of my last couple years have revolved around the bookstore that it’s a no-brainer that the new thing is about that. I’ve written often here about my experiences at Tangible. Those posts serve as note-taking just as tweets once did for the cabbie book. The internet is a great sketchbook that way. But until I’m drawing, typing, cutting paper, etc the thing isn’t real to me.
Last week it became real. The way I’m looking at it for now is that I’ll make a bunch of artist books and short-run zines and see what it adds up to.
I hope that going back to an incremental approach will keep the thing at a scale and pace that I can handle and that will be worthwhile creatively and financially as it goes.
Eventually, there may be enough of these small parts to add up to something like a traditional book, but I’m not looking that far ahead. For now, I have to decide what kind of paper and cardstock to use for the zine, what the next story will be, and to check that the typewriter has enough ribbon and the printer enough ink.
Those seem like manageable goals but you never know.
I read Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” into a microphone.