Artwork © Part Time Punks
A couple of years back, Patti Astor and I were standing in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. She looked over at Andrew Pogany and commented on his beauty. “Wait til you meet him,” I told her.
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Andrew is one of my favorite people. It’s a bit indescribable really, except to say that he’s always disarming, even when he is totally hung over. A big picture thinker, a community builder, and an editorial wunderkind, Andrew is a creative whirlwind. In the decade that I have known him, he has never failed to impress, not just with his superior work, but with his inimitable charm and wit. Andrew recently launched launched Echo Park Books, and chats about his first release, Art Time Punks, which bridges the past, present, and future of publishing.
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Please talk about Echo Park Books. What was the inspiration to get into book publishing, particularly at a time when print is struggling?
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Andrew Pogany: My friend and partner Lee Corbin and I had been talking about making books together for a while now. I suppose we both have an affinity for reading and for the book as a physical medium. But really, there’s just a lot of amazingly talented artists, writers, musicians, activists etc in L.A., and these people and their work inspire us not just to publish but to represent. Also, the cultural moment is right. There’s an excitement in the world of book publishing. A whole new inventory of book making and book marketing tools is available to independent publishing houses and individual publishers; a new frontier has opened and both individuals and corporations are looking to stake their flag.
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As for print struggling, that’s just an issue of Format. The other side of that coin—Content—is thriving, assuming all different shapes and sizes according to the impulses and desires of its community of author-readers, whether that be long-form video or cell phone fiction.
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The plan is for Echo Park Books to eventually be just one of several book imprints available to a thriving online-offline arts & literature community. For now, we’ll mainly be publishing limited edition music, art, and photography fanbooks, chapbooks, and monographs.
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Art Time Punks, the first title under your imprint, takes us back to a time when visual culture and promotions were strictly a D.I.Y. affair. Do you see a connection between that old school ethos and the new school approach to self-publishing and marketing?
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There’s definitely a DIY sensibility to book marketing, book publishing, and to social media in its totality. The tools that were once only available to the media conglomerates and publishing aristocracy are now available to everyone, and the rebels are storming the gates, with spectacular results. But I think DIY ultimately is about raw physical materials and elbow grease. There’s a certain transparency of process and a feeling of spontaneity to the best DIY works. Each of the posters that Art Time Punks reprints (250+) was made by cutting, pasting, and Xeroxing—analog art, so to speak. As Michael says, he has “No knowledge of Photoshop and no desire to.” I think this faint luddist streak is common amongst DIY hardliners.
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Though Art Time Punks is not itself handmade, the design, paper and ink quality are far superior to your standard paperback. And because we’re running sales strictly through the Part Time Punks and Echo Park Books www.echoparkbooks.com websites, and marketing through our preexisting social networks, we’re able to avoid the heavy costs associated to distribution, retail, and promotions. We’re cutting out as many middlemen as possible and passing the benefits on to our community. That’s pretty DIY, right?
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How did you connect to Part Time Punks? What made you want to make a book on their flyers?
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Michael and I have known each other for a few years now. We’ve collaborated on several events and for a year or so he also wrote a column on record collecting for Flaunt magazine, which I edited for many years. We decided to make a book together because I’m a big fan of Michael’s musical tastes and a longtime follower of Part Time Punks. Each flyer of Michael’s is unique, handmade, and serves a specific purpose. They’re like awesome little experiments with form and function. Part Time Punks has a considerable amount of dedicated fans and we thought they might like something like this.
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You’re doing a limited edition of 250, which is brilliant since it will be gone right quick. How do you think that small runs increase an object’s value?
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Well, no object has value unless it’s desired, and if there’s more desire for a product than there is actual product, its value obviously increases. The old model of publishing says, “supply it and they will buy.” The new model says, “determine what the people want and supply it.” The latter is made all the more possible by the sophisticated analytics that websites allow for.
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We printed only 250 books because we’re interested in creating collectables, in giving the book a sentimental and social value that moves beyond its content and form and yet remains esoteric, i.e. linked to a specific niche community.
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I am of the belief that as digital culture takes over, the value of the printed object will increase as there will be less product on paper. What are your thoughts on the future of print, and our relationship to paper-based content production and consumption?
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I personally don’t think books will ever go away. But paper-based publishing will have to work hard to keep intimate ties to its community; by necessity it’ll have to serve at the alter of Demand, and be able to move quickly to supply it and market smartly to sell it. (See: Richard Nash ).
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Also, the big publishing houses won’t be able to forever depend on blockbuster books to finance their roster. Publishers will have to figure out a way to persist by selling not so many units of a lot more authors. (See: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson)
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The democratization of publishing will ensure vast flows of content, good and bad, and which is which will be decided by committee (online communities and forums) and curators/publishers, alike. Similarly, the array of publishing options gives authors leverage in bargaining for better book deals, and the authors themselves will become intellectual properties for the publishing houses to leverage in different ways.
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All in all, I’d say it’s an exciting time for publishing. The popularity of reading and writing, as well as interest in book publishing itself, seems to have soared, and though the print world will inevitably shrink in stature, perhaps, as you state, the decrease in quantity will lead to an increase in quality. But it’s seems more likely that the establishment will continue banking on book deals with the New York Housewives for a little longer. All the better for independent publishing!
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