PUBLISHING

medium-specific an artists’ book is, the less sense it makes to attempt to
convert it one-to-one into an electronic book. For example, an electronic
reproduction of Dieter Roth’s sculptural book objects 3 would no longer be
book artworks, but mere depictions of a book artworks.
Workflows
Since the artists’ book is not a defined genre, there is no such thing as a
standard methodology or workflow. The whole spectrum of the medium can
be used and experimented with. On the other hand, many contemporary
artists, designers and media activists actively experiment with electronic publishing
as a ‘poor’ (i.e. simple low-tech) medium of social sharing rather than
a ‘rich’ visual and tactile medium; this is particularly the case in the context of
artists’ pirate book-sharing projects.
For artists’ and designers’ books that are characterized by elaborate use of
typography and images, the simplest possibility is to design electronic books
as a series or sequence of page-size images which can be easily converted
into screen-readable PDF, EPUB and HTML5 documents. This approach would
be suitable for conceptual-visual artists’ books as pioneered by the Californian
artist Ed Ruscha in the 1960s. 4 This would require no drastic change of
workflow, and can be standardized as described in the sections on the other
genres.
When creating an electronic artists’/designers’ book, the editorial and design
workflow – even if it is non-standard and continuously changing from one
publication to the next – should nevertheless take into account the following
considerations:
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Consider first the specific medium being targeted: a print book will
require a completely different approach than a mobile app, a web
page, an EPUB, etc.
Depending on the final output medium, different input materials
may be included or excluded.
An artists’ ebook can be based on a ‘media art’ approach: experiments
with computer/server-generated EPUBs, use of collage and
3 Electronic reproduction of Dieter Roth’s sculptural book objects, http://www.moma.org/visit/
calendar/exhibitions/129.
4 Ed Ruscha’s conceptual-visual artists’ books, http://www.artnet.com/artists/ed-ruscha/.
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