No subject

Fri Nov 22 10:42:51 EST 2013

my partners, and they agreed to set up a publishing initiative grounded in =
print-on-demand and free download. I published my book, In Your Computer, i=
n May 2011. By September 2011, three other books were released: Random, by =
Valentina Tanni; In My Computer # 1, by Miltos Manetas; and the catalogue o=
f the first exhibition produced by the Link Art Center, Collect the WWWorld=
. The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age. Feel free to download all of=
 them.

With these books, our three main book collections were born. &quot;Clouds&q=
uot; is both an attempt to allow other writers the kind of freedom I experi=
enced working outside of traditional publishing, and to bring to shelves so=
me good theoretical writing that meets our interests as an institution. &qu=
ot;In My Computer&quot; is a kind of concept magazine, inviting artists to =
share meaningful content stored in their hard drive (or in the cloud) that =
for some reason never got released, and that can be meaningful in book form=
. &quot;Catalogues&quot; collects our monographs and exhibition catalogues.=
 Recently Link Editions started being an interesting platform also for othe=
r organizations, and we are exploring different modes of co-publishing. The=
se books are filed under &quot;Open&quot;.

Simply put, Link Editions is an attempt to conceal the advantages of self p=
ublishing with the ones of working with a publishing house. One of the faul=
ts of POD platforms is the lack of a context around the book you publish. O=
f course, you can use categories and tags in order to index your book and m=
ake it easy to retrieve. But how many people look for books this way? Landi=
ng on Lulu.com is like entering a giant bookstore, with thousands of bad bo=
oks welcoming you at the entrance, and with an unreliable indexing system. =
You head to the art shelf and you see calendars; you look for the contempor=
ary art shelf and you see self produced portfolios; you look closer for &qu=
ot;new media art&quot; books and you find ten bad ones - the best one is ac=
tually indexed under Essays &gt; Photography, and, if you spend a whole day=
 there, you may be able to find a great artist book under &quot;Software an=
d code&quot;.

Another problem, when you self-publish a book, is your lack of professional=
ism. You may be a good writer, but still need an editor and a proof reader =
for your contents, and a good designer for your book. With Link Editions, w=
e tried to bypass these problems without rebuilding the barriers someone ex=
periences when working with a traditional publisher. We offer to our author=
s our editing and design expertise; due to our weak economic model, we can&=
#39;t design all the books we publish, but we try to keep an high level of =
quality. We set a low income for Link Editions that basically pays back the=
 expenses produced by the initiative, and we offer all books in free downlo=
ad; everything is done in a very transparent way, and authors are always fr=
ee to request statistics on their sales / downloads, as well as to but thei=
r books at author&#39;s price through our account. It&#39;s basically like =
self publishing, but with a professional assistance, and delivering the boo=
k in a context that becomes

=A0 more interesting and rewarding for us and for authors any time a new bo=
ok is published. 
 
Sorry for the long presentation post, but I assumed that my role in this co=
nversation was more that of presenting a concrete &quot;case study&quot;, t=
han that of addressing the interesting topics raised in the first part of t=
his discussion. Hopefully I will be able to say something about them later =
on.

<br>
My warm regards,<br>
Domenico<br>
<br>
---<br>
<br>
Domenico Quaranta<br>
<br>
email: <a href=3D"mailto:quaranta.domenico at gmail.com">quaranta.domenico at gma=
il.com</a><br>
skype: dom_40<br>
<br>
<a href=3D"http://domenicoquaranta.com" target=3D"_blank">http://domenicoqu=
aranta.com</a><br>
<a href=3D"http://www.linkartcenter.eu" target=3D"_blank">http://www.linkar=
tcenter.eu</a><br>
<div class=3D""><div class=3D"h5">_________________________________________=
______<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href=3D"mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au">empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu=
.au</a><br>
<a href=3D"http://www.subtle.net/empyre" target=3D"_blank">http://www.subtl=
e.net/empyre</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div>

--001a1136c098f8b24d04f2355312--