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It’s been two and a half years since the debut Rehearsal Art Book Fair. Since then, we’ve often been asked when—or if—the next one would happen. Our answer reads in GRAPHIC #51: Art Book Fair Now (Summer 2025 Issue): “It happens out of necessity—when new questions arise, when critique feels urgent, when the field of (independent) publishing demands to be examined, broken apart, and reimagined.”
And indeed, conversations around independent publishing emerge and circulate, as always—new observations, new questions, yet the same unresolved tensions.
What does “independent” really mean at this point?
Doing publishing solely by yourself?
Publishing without external funding? Paying for every expense out of your own pocket?
Or publishing while pretending money isn’t involved at all, as if self-publishing were purely a labor of love, detached from economic reality?
Does financial independence determine independence?
And can independent publishing really survive by moving from one book fair to the next, from one bookstore to another?
What does publishing actually rely on?
A web of roles: artist, editor, designer, production manager, marketing strategist, distributor?
Affordable, high-quality printers, paper supplies, and bookbinders willing to collaborate with experimental ideas?
It is a known fact that the U.S. lacks affordable, high-quality printing options. Independent publishers often choose to print abroad—not because it’s ideal, but because it’s what is available.
China, Lithuania, Romania, Mexico—chosen for cost, perhaps. But then come international shipping fees and tariffs. And somewhere in the background lingers an uncomfortable question: are we quietly relying on cheap foreign labor, postponing these conversations out of convenience?
Running a bookstore puts you in a strange vantage point. You end up talking to publishers, distributors, authors, customers, printers, designers, delivery drivers. You realize independent publishing isn’t hard at a particular stage—it’s hard at every stage.
Among peers, we joke: maybe we should stop running bookstores or organizing book fairs but just open a printing house. At least New York could use one. A printer that understands content-driven needs, allows flexible (even crazy) binding, and learns alongside the publishers instead of correcting them.
Jokes aside, zines remind us that publishing can also be light, stubborn, and quietly persistent. Publishers like Independent Paper (Paris), Harpy House Press (New York / Chicago), Gloria Glitzer (Berlin), and Prickly Paper (Guangzhou) keep going. Not because it’s easy—but because something about it refuses to disappear. We learn from them. We’re inspired by them.
Here’s another unromantic fact:
A basic black-and-white laser photocopier costs about $300.
Add toner, paper, a stapler—maybe $500 to start this project.
(This doesn’t even include space, utilities, transportation, or labor.)
So instead of staging a loud open call or posing bigger questions, we’re presenting something more basic: an essential service—a free photocopy shop.
You book a 30-minute slot, that comes with access to the books at Bungee Space; You photocopy fragments that resonate with you; through reading and thinking they become interwoven in unexpected connections; You staple them into a booklet.
Is that a publication?
We’re not here to decide.
But the action quietly reenacts the publishing process.
Vaginal Davis’s HOFPFISTEREI, shown at MoMA PS1, offered a method—and then pushed us out of the museum, toward the neighborhood photocopy shop on East 4th Street. If you were at the sam iz dat exhibition at Rehearsal Art Book Fair two years ago, or if you’ve noticed its remaining one-square-meter corner shelves inside Bungee Space, you already know this: Where publishing is restricted, people often find ways to speak through the most ordinary means—like the photocopy shop downstairs.
Maybe this is another way to think about independence. And maybe it points—without solving anything—toward a way forward.
Rehearsal Art Book Fair presents:
How to Rehearse an Art Book (un)Fair?
Series #1: Rehearse a Photocopy Shop
Come READ, PRINT, REVOLT, at Bungee Space, from today to the end of 2025. Booking via the link.
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Presented by Rehearsal Art Book Fair, Organized by Bungee Space, Graphic Design by Sixuan Tong