COLLABORATIVE PUBLISHING (0)
Starting a new book in public
I’ve mentioned a few times on this newsletter-blog that I am teaching an online workshop through MCBA called “Collaborative Publishing Deep-Dive.” Tomorrow is the last session. It’s been really fun to teach and put together the material, and I realized as I was working on it that it should be a book.
So now I’m starting a new book project, tentatively titled Collaborative Publishing as Artistic Practice: A Manual & Manifesto, and my plan is to develop that book, here, in public, as part of the IDE(A/O)(B)LOG(Y/UE). At this point it is, ironically, a solo project, but that could change.
I’m teaching the workshop through a nonprofit that is located in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, where for the past month our current federal regime is waging a campaign of terror, murder, and retribution under the guise of “enforcing the law.” For me, what separates collaborative publishing from “regular publishing” (which is always collaborative to some degree) is that collaborative publishing as a practice is an acceptance of its politics, that it is politics, that it is in relation to others. Collaborative publishing is a politics & practice of equity and care, a practice precisely oriented against the politics of cruelty and domination that are being advanced by our great leaders.
So I’ll start with this snippet below. I don’t know if it’s final and I don’t know where it fits in the book, but it will help structure the whole thing:
Principles of Collaborative Publishing:
Minimize extraction
(this includes self-extraction)
Maximize equity and balance
Maximize transparency & communication
Maximize collaboration
(This is aspirational, and you will figure out how to do this as you go)
Make something that the individual collaborators could not make on their own
Bring each collaborator’s work to new audiences
Good collaborations can become a generative ground for future projects
This is a free newsletter, and the plan is to keep it that way. If you would like to support the NewLights Press (your support is needed & greatly appreciated!) the best way to do that is to subscribe or just buy some books or prints. Thank you!