Interview with Christophe Boutin by Louise Forrester for MA research paper ‘Independent Art Publishing’, Goldsmith College

Louise Forrester: Publishing through onestar press offers the artist freedom and flexibility within an established publishing format. What other factors do you consider attract artists to OSP rather than self-publishing or approaching a traditional publisher?

Christophe Boutin: The main reasons artists come to us are the network we have been developing, and our skills in preparing and producing books. We provide a network of people and ideas – when an artist produces a book within this collection, he immediately makes connections, meets other artists and talks to his peers about the collection, and about ways of developing the project formally or intellectually – even if they don’t meet physically they meet through ideas. Also, because the book is presented as part of a collection, we offer a new form of visibility whether the artist is well-known or less-known.
The book holds a fascination for the artist. I’m always fighting against the idea that a book is an instrument of power – it should be considered a specific space to develop the project, an idea that hasn’t changed since we started.

Louise Forrester: onestar press is notable for its prolific output – over 120 books in five years. Has giving the artist total control over the layout facilitated this rapid production?

Christophe Boutin: In fact now it’s more like 150 (without counting the Hors Collection projects- see the “more” section of our website). The artist has to have control over the layout. This is very important to us, as it’s an artist’s project in the form of a book. Let’s compare this to an installation: when an artist makes an installation, he wants to control the process and we give him the tools to make it. I insist that the artist takes charge of every stage of the prepress.

Louise Forrester: Have you ever had a situation where the work of an artist compromised onestar press?

Christophe Boutin: Personally I have no problem with all this. The books are strictly un-edited by the publisher, the artist is absolutely free to do what he wants. However, if it’s a hate book, we won’t publish it. That is the only limitation we impose. We have never had a problem of that type though.

Louise Forrester: The motto “strictly un-edited by the publisher” inverts the traditional relationship between publisher and artist, could you say something about this?

Christophe Boutin: Some artists don’t understand the process and submit proposals, which we will not look at. When invited, the artist is free to develop his/her project, which we will send to print without interference or judgment. Some artists are very much afraid of the process, some are very happy with it – most can’t believe it. We try to minimise dialogue between ourselves and the artist concerning the development of his/her book project, to avoid our taste interfering. My only objective is to develop this collection of books, to make it as large and eclectic as possible. Artists fight not only through forms but through ideology, ideas and philosophy – we try to open different ideas within the collection.

Louise Forrester: Each artist becomes an editor by suggesting future artists for onestar press to publish – does this introduce a risk of the series becoming elitist, a closed group of artists connected by social networks?

Christophe Boutin: Yes, it’s a very slippery slope. One example I could give you is of Miltos Manetas, who recommended quite a few artists to us – maybe 10 or 15 artists in our collection. Eventually we had to say “Ok, stop, we can’t only play with your friends”.
It’s also very difficult to answer uninvited proposals. I don’t want to act as a censor, but I have to protect the economy of the project. I could accept everything that came in, but that would be a different project. We try to encourage the artist to get a recommendation, this way they enter a conversation about their work and the collection. We’ve established enough networks now that it’s easy enough for an artist to get a recommendation and then come back to us. Of course, then we will go ahead with the project.

Louise Forrester: The fixed parameters (80 gram bulky paper, a glossy colour cover, black & white interior, perfect bound, 140 x 225 mm format) for each publication were developed from your self-published book, do you feel they have translated successfully for other artists? Have artists ever challenged these parameters?

Christophe Boutin: The parameters for that first book were imposed by the machine it was printed on, they’re simply the cheapest way of producing a book on this specific machine. Later this format became our ‘trademark’. Yoko Ono, for example, was about to send her project, when suddenly she decided she wanted it printed in colour. We told her she had to work within the same parameters as everyone else, to play the same game. In the end, she self-published the book, and thanked onestar press on the colophon page. onestar press is still waiting for Yoko Ono to send a project in black and white that we will happy to publish.

Louise Forrester: Could you outline the distribution model employed by onestar press?

Christophe Boutin: The distribution is very simple. The books are produced as PDFs and FTP’ed to the printers. We print on demand, keeping a very limited stock of books in the studio. This allows us to keep producing as many titles as we have been. Of course, if we know a book will sell well, we print more copies of that book initially. The number of editions we will print is limited to 250, treating the edition as a multiple rather than a book. We have to be careful not to overspend in order to sustain the company. When the book is almost sold out we raise the price – this generates some income to pay the printers’ bill or pay for other projects that didn’t sell as well. We also keep some copies for collections, as quite a large number of people buy the whole collection – it is interesting for us when the book is contextualised within the collection, rather than remaining an isolated book.
Distribution is very important to us in terms of sales, as OSP has no other source of income. We work intensively with the website which is our main source of distribution – we give away PDFs of the books on the website for people to download and print at home. Soon, when the internet is faster, we will offer high resolution versions of the PDFs.
We don’t do any kind of consignments, it’s much too complicated for a very small company like ours (2.5 people). We sell books directly to bookbuyers or distributors. We are happy to work with DAP (Distributed Art Publishers) in America, a very large distributing company, who of course can’t take all our books but they select a few titles from the collection. Koenig bookstores in Germany and England are great supporters, and as publishers themselves they understand our economy well: they buy our books.

Louise Forrester: Are there any disadvantages to this model?

Christophe Boutin: One disadvantage for the artist is that we can’t do book launches, as we would have to have a minimum of 50 copies on the table and that would be too much for us to produce in case they didn’t sell. Another disadvantage would be if the artist wanted to print a larger edition, as we limit all the books to 250 copies. When a book does sell out, we offer the artist the opportunity to produce another project.

Louise Forrester: Referring to cheap hotels, the name onestar press acknowledges the cheap printing quality of the publications – have you experienced any particular issues with using digital presses?

Christophe Boutin: No, what kind of problems are you imagining? It’s fine! The print quality is absolutely similar on digital presses as if they were printed offset. Printing on demand is very well suited to artist books, because the market is specialized and sales are very limited. Unfortunately, art is a matter of specialists.

Louise Forrester: How have you established readership for your publications? Do you show at book fairs, for example, or rely on the catalogue and PDF adverts on the website?

Christophe Boutin: We give the PDFs away on the internet, and we give presentations – we had a presence at the first New York Artbook Fair in November, organised by Printed Matter. We try to attend a few very specific fairs that are well suited to our manner.

Louise Forrester: Which do you consider are the key factors that encourage or discourage sales of particular books by onestar press?

Christophe Boutin: Most of the people who buy our books are already informed about art – no one buys one of our books without knowing the artist’s work. This is because the books aren’t informative, they are projects in their own right. These books aren’t gadgets, they’re difficult – I believe good art discourages people, is ahead of people’s understanding, and can’t be immediately understood. I’d be happy to sell more books, but it’s a specific market.

Louise Forrester: onestar press hosts exhibitions, instigates installations in major museums and gallery spaces, international conferences, university workshops, and a newspaper. How important is it to the success of the publishing house that it is involved in a wide variety of projects, and which other factors do you believe play a role in determining whether an independent press survives?

Christophe Boutin: I am not interested in success, but we have established an audience, a platform that allows alternative ways of distribution. I am interested in allowing artists to develop, in the freedom of speech, ideas and forms. Unfortunately, we have to organise this company in the capitalist way, as we rely on sales in order to produce more titles. Artists have also been very generous to us when creating the multiple that accompany every title of our collection (see www.multiplesbyartists.com).

Louise Forrester: How do you think traditional publishing will be affected as digital technology develops?

Christophe Boutin: The internet has replaced everything in the information world, the book is no longer the best way for communicating information. In that sense, the book is over. The book has to become something else, it has to become an object. If a book is designed with specific features, such as particular binding, then it has a reason to be printed. The rest should be provided on the internet, published online.

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