honestly? i was looking at recent academic theology books, and i thought i deserved to know what "angelomorphic pneumatology" was without paying $200. i have a particular fondness for physical books. i thought "hey, could i print this at some print on demand service", then did a bunch of art all over it because i like making art. then the whole thing looked better than i expected.

at some point: the (simple, obvious) realization that once a book ended up on my shelf, nobody could remove it or prevent me from reading it. allowing me to find in physical books a stability i couldn't see in my relationships, friendships, communities, environment, neighborhood, city, identity, body, self... or, in particular, deteriorating / rentseeking / gatekeeping streaming services, imperiled archival operations, the grind of obselence operating on anything digitally encoded. it certainly seems to me that the miraculous archival properties of the internet only serves as a snowballing background radiation of absolute neurosis. anything that could actually aid us, rather than instrumentalize us, has been dismantled through intellectual property law. or just negligence. such is the state of our medean media ecology.

well: i have a couple decades of experience being an absolute termite. and i find myself now compulsively cleaning up mediocre scans of unknown/unobtainable/unpublished books, redesigning them; generally pretending that i'm some sort of publishing operation. i also can't think of a more agreeable way to archive/preserve the things i love then printing them into a physical book and then handing that book to someone.

i am doing my best to make sure i'm only an asshole in very specific ways. i would like to respect authors that want minimal circulation of their works, while also having a copy to read myself -- because i can. because i'm putting the work in. certain books don't feel appropriate to sell, for this reason or others.

put generally, i would only like to sell books where:

• the author clearly wanted wide circulation
• whoever published it originally is gone or, for whatever reason, not putting out a new edition
• it doesn't seem like someone else is about to put it out (eg, leave antonin artaud to infinity land)

or maybe it doesn't feel right. the subscription is for works that don't want to be sold.

the effort of redesigning serves an esoteric function. too many print-on-demand operations with mad-lib hideous covers. when you save something from a cultural landfill, you don't want it to bear the dressings of one. i do the opposite to create something that is, in some sense, more rare and special than the original. to, hopefully, reinforce some sense of individuality about the thing that it is.

i am also a perfectionist and care very much that the work is complete, looks good, is actually legible, isn't something else mislabelled or whatever. or that it is, at least, clearly labelled.

i am trying my best. thank you!!