User:Simon/Trim4/fieldwork/Yin Yin Wong at Publication Studio Rotterdam
20.11.19 - Yin Yin Wong, at Publication Studio Rotterdam
I met with Yin Yin at PS Rotterdam to talk about book production, and the particular publishing model that Publication Studio works with. Publication Studio is a federated publishing initiative, with branches all over the world. It began in Portland, founded by Matthew Stadler (who talks about the difference between publishing and publication in "What is Publication?") and Patricia No, motivated by the simple desire to self-publish at low cost. Yin Yin told me that the rudimentary equipment used at each Publication Studio is a hot glue hand-binder machine, a laser printer, and a guillotine. The main idea is to provide perfect bound (softcover) books cheaply, and locally.
The hot glue binder at PS Rotterdam
The stack cutter at PS Rotterdam
All of the Publication Studios worldwide print books from a shared catalogue. The idea is to provide an inexpensive POD service for their own books, and for others. Economic considerations mean that the books are usually printed on the same inner text stock, with coloured paper covers printed usually with a stamp, or in simple black ink. Differences in availability of machinery, paper stock and technique mean that all the books produced are slightly different from each other. In this sense, it's kind of like they are all following a recipe, with slightly different ingredients. This made me think of the singular, and multiple text - producing many books at the one time locks it into an edition, which are quite controlled in traditional publishing. At Publication Studio everything seems to run in open editions, with little concern for maintaining a tight consistency in the materiality of the book. What is most important is producing a book in reasonable quality, cost and time.
Alongside running PS Rotterdam, Yin Yin also runs a service called "Moonshine Editions". It was interesting to see that she had been thinking along the same lines as myself in terms of the bootlegging aspect (moonshine is hard liquor that was originally made and sold during the prohibition years). We talked about the gesture of homage in bootlegging, and how this is aligned with how we look at this process (rather than the cheap knockoff definition floating around contemporary notions of what bootlegging is). She showed me some books she made during her time studying at the Werkplaats Typografie, in a series called "Mary Shelley Frankenstein Facsimiles". The books were made by photocopying an entire book, annotating relevant sections, printing it from one paper stock (quite low gsm, around 80/90) with a self cover, and perfect binding the book. The materiality interested me - was this some kind of spectre of a book? The whiteness, the economy of just wanting the text and not introducing new typographic considerations, the self-cover with handwritten title.
Yin Yin, along with the editor Isabelle, staff Paula, and an intern (whose name escapes me) were busy producing a set of ten books. We talked about the production process - they were working towards a deadline, so they were hot glue hand-binding them, rather than using the cold glue automated machine. Cold glue is much more flexible, and allows the book to be opened wider than hot glue, however the lack of rigidity in the spine means that if it is glued to the cover, the cover is likely to bend as well.
Yin Yin generously offered for me to come and bind some books sometime - I talked about problems I was having with the machinery here at WdKA. We also talked about paper grain direction - at PS Rotterdam they get their paper custom cut and delivered, A5 sheets which they print one-up on (Yin Yin said 2-up was problematic with the paper grain direction).