Clear Cut, Matt Briggs, and Publication Studio

I got interested in Clear Cut Press a few years ago after someone recommended the book Shoot the Buffalo by Matt Briggs to me. The whole concept of this press excited me, validated my taste in books, and I must confess made me feel arty and intellectual. Clear Cut, is subscription-based and run by two ex-indie-music-label execs. The books are all the same size and are sent to subscribers and distributed only to independent booksellers.

Their marketing plan is interesting because it aims at putting books into the hands of people who want it and not to appeal to everyone. In an interview the founders describe how creating the model for the press has self-educated them on how to get books from the warehouse and into the hands of their buyers. There’s something to be said for their readership. We like feeling like part of an elite group, like we’re receiving valuable knowledge and information that the rest of the world is not privy to, and they know it.

I was doing some research for sustainability and I started off at Clear Cut and then linked to the author Matt Briggs’ blog. While on his blog I discovered that his book was recently reprinted by Publication Studio--a new press in Portland, OR.

Well, I had never heard of Publication Studio before. I went to their website and discovered that it begun last February as an experiment. The press prints and binds books on demand. They print books that “both respond to the conversation of the moment and can endure.” The Studio offers fee-based services, ($15/hot glue bind, trim to up to 500 pages at $5/book, etc) Publication Studio is run by one of the co-creators of Clear Cut Press. It started out in The U of O’s White Stag Building with a publishing project with Phil Everum--musician and painter.

This is a really intriguing concept to me because they have a storefront and aren’t internet run. If I were to print on demand with them I could actually go into their space and check out their products before committing. From their business description it almost sounds like they only print work by artists and writers they like, but they also describe themselves as a fee-based service provider.

They occasionally have happy hour discussions where they discuss the future of publishing in The Ace Hotel, in December their topic was bootlegging, pirating and non-exclusive rights. They posed the question should electronic reproduction be controlled and commodified, and. if so how?