Digital publications are amazing. They are a method for sharing ideas at such low costs as to make traditional print publishers choke. They allow anyone with enough bandwidth to upload a PDF or a Blog post tell anyone about what they care about.
Without the chains of a publisher, you can write whatever you want, for as niche a community as you like. Hell, I write this blog for myself and 3 people and love every minute of it. With the beauty of the internet, you can actually reach those communities too.
People publish so many amazing things:
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Cookbooks for bike packing
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Old and out-of-print wood working manuals
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RPG rulesets and content
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Manifestos
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Guides on anything you could imagine
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Indie miniature wargames
And these are just the weird sh*t I’m interested in!
My journey into this magical space truly started with this tool:
A Stapler
Yes, its a stapler. Well, a long stapler to be precise. Wait no, come back. I swear this is interesting. With only 2-3 stamps of my palm and one fold, I can turn 15 sheets of A4 into a 60-page A5 booklet. This is simply not possible with a normal stapler (without some real mucking around).
From the first folded booklet I was hooked. Printing and binding your own media feels the real good kind of naughty. I am pretty sure The Man doesn't want me to do this, but fuck him and his publishers. This tool from the Gods let me print all of this:
This is only a portion of what I've printed and even less of what I own digitally
Its such an quick and economical way to bind media, its what I chose to produce copies of my Bike Zine for only 70c each.
But if you wanted to do something that feels even naughtier, then staples simply won't cut it.
Through my journey into hand-tool woodworking, I'd quickly been recommended The Anarchist's Tool Chest by Chris Schwartz. After exploring his website, I quickly discovered he self publishes beautifully bound copies (with prices to match) with one caveat.
Yes, thats a link to a free PDF of the book he is trying to sell you. That man really wants you to read his book. So I took his advice and downloaded it.
Now I don't need another excuse to spend hours staring at a screen so I decided I wanted to print this book out myself. Plus, its a reference book, so really valuable to keep on hand.
After much research through serious book binding nerd-dom, I found a method that was exactly as simple and practical as I was looking for. This video goes through how to bind by simply trimming the A4 in half, hole punching, using a file fastener and then masking tape. Compared to any other method, this takes so little time and only gets easier with a guillotine.
For practicality, I split the book into two parts but man, I know Chris would be proud.
I recently went on a binge, printing many books, several from Chris's publishing house (Lost Art Press), John Gay / Work for Boys, a set of old archived children's books from 1920s calling and The Joy Equation a self published personal development book.
With one evening's work, I had myself 7 new books ready to read. At the time of writing I've already read 3 of them with another one in the oven. In fact, while in the process of writing this blog post I actually have printed and bound another book, the first revision of The Anarchists Tool Chest, ready for reference!
For a comically low amount of money in tools and an even smaller amount of my time, I have expanded my capability to read weird, self, indie and out-of-print publications. These spaces are where people write honestly and with such purpose as to be truly inspiring. In fact, they have inspired me to write my own publication.
I am excited for the future of this space and I can’t wait to find out what gem I’m going to read next.