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Expeditions in Paper Science A4 | US Letter PDF 330Kb
Unguided A4 | US Letter PDF 1.3Mb

About : These two eBooks were created by Matthew Sheret at the first bookleteer Pitch Up & Publish event in October 2009. Matthew writes, “Expeditions in Paper Science was my first pass at the system, a reasonably off-the-cuff collation of some of my blog entries this summer. I’ve long been interested in the idea of physicalising web articles, and while an industry has solidified around POD in the last few years they remain a step removed from the immediacy I’m itching for. Bookleteer instantly unlocked that; simple cut-‘n’-paste gave me a nice little document I’ve been throwing around since.

“The speed of delivery got me thinking about incorporating illustrations into the format. With content just a link away I turned to a story the We Are Words + Pictures team created for an anthology earlier this year. Unguided was another speedy job, knocked up in less than five minutes. Finding the source images was just a matter of dropping links into Bookleteer’s interface. The end result was admittedly rough and ready – I’d done it without much consideration of the effects of shrinkage on the A5 illustrations – but the story is still very much intact. It would be the work of ten minutes to optimise the images, and an easy design decision next time to say to an illustrator “Okay, let’s go for an A6 format” which is the kind of space a panel from a webcomic could thrive in.

“Seeing two diverse types of content drop nicely into the format actually sparked a lot of thinking among We Are Words + Pictures about the restrictions of our work in an online environment. The physical nature of the books is a joy; cutting and folding them together doesn’t make them any less robust, and when you introduce them to a group they’re thrown, passed around and digested in a way that even link blogging can’t replicate.”

Published December 2009

Matthew Sheret is co-founder of We Are Words + Pictures, an occasional market stall and exhibition team that promote the work of illustrators and writers creating ‘zines and comics worldwide. They have taken part in events in London, Leeds, San Diego and Stockholm, and will announce a programme of events for 2010 in the new year. He also works as a freelance writer for clients that include Last.fm, Global Comment and Newspaper Club, and can be reached at www.matthewsheret.com

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