People, if you gonna make books you might wanna go look at books. The entity that is the art book fair has EXPLODED in recent years. Many of the major cities now have annual gatherings. But wait, don’t go thinking this is your book fair of old. These aren’t staffed by old codgers in sweaters with patches on the elbow. Nor is it loaded up with impossible to reach traditional publishers. These art book fairs are more like a combination of a rave, concert, art opening and publishing fair. In short, they are fun, active, vibrant and loaded up with the most insane range of publication you can possibly imagine.
Someone texted me and asked
“Anything in particular I should check out?” My response was
“Just go.” As you will see by the following images, this baby was going off. Did I mention they have 35,000 attendees? Over 350 vendors? And for those of you who don’t know,
The New York Art Book Fair is presented by
Printed Matter, which is another organization you should know about and visit. If you come out of something like this and don’t want to run hope and print something….I think you are broken, damaged or might already be in the dream world.
I did have one person snarkily ask me if there were any Blurb books on display, which in itself cracks me up every time, but the answer was “Yes.” In fact, one of the best consultants in the industry came up and said
“Have you seen all the Blurb books?” “It’s incredible, and hey, this one table has Blurb and Magcloud right next to each other.”
