Lost Art Press

Note: This article is part of an occasional series of articles about the fifth anniversary of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” book. The previous entry in this series is here.

As an employee of F+W Media Inc., I was required to give the company the right to publish (and pay me for) anything that I’d written on my own time.

While that might sound draconian, it’s not. Many companies claim to outright own everything that you think, dream or fantasize about at any moment in your sleeping, waking, leisure or My-Pretty-Pony moments.

So after I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” I submitted it to the company’s editorial review board and held my breath. If they liked it, they would publish it. If they didn’t like it, then I was going to publish it on my own.

Neither result was ideal.

If F+W published the book, then the company obviously would get the lion’s share of the money. That’s what traditional publishers do (Lost Art Press, I might add, does not). So if F+W published the book I’d end up with a check that would allow me to buy a used, mid-range Japanese car with about 75,000 miles on the odometer.

In exchange I would receive legitimacy. In the media world, publishing your own book is akin to marrying your sister. Most self-published books are about encounters with aliens that involve wax paper and Wesson oil, or Klingon wildlife poetry, or recipes for curing cancer with celery salt.

Self-published books aren’t treated seriously. No one reviews them. Few people buy them. The only way they are useful to society is because paper has a pretty good R-value as insulation when stuffed between studs.

A week or so after submitting my book, my boss sat me down and said the editorial board liked the book but wanted me to change it. They suggested a title like “The Practical Woodworker” and suggested I refocus it on how to balance hand and machine work.

So now I had a third bad choice.

My head was so bleary that I don’t even remember what I said that moment, or even what I did the rest of the day at the office. But I do remember the ride home.

One of my favorite rock bands is Superchunk, a North Carolina-based independent group that started out with its own label, called Merge Records. That label has grown remarkably since 1989 and now publishes music by bands like Arcade Fire, The Magnetic Fields and Spoon. And they still release their own Superchunk stuff, too.

In 2010 Superchunk released “Majesty Shredding,” an album that I still listen to with devoted regularity. And on my drive home from work that day I cranked that very album.

Is Merge Records a vanity label?

Does Superchunk lack artistic validity because it’s not published by Warner Bros.?

By the time I reached my house I knew what I was going to do: Publish “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” myself and take the scarlet letter for doing so.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sweet mother of murder I am tired of writing about these posters. I have concluded they are cursed and exist only to suck the life out of me.

Bad news: Classic Hand Tools in the UK received its shipment of 50 posters. The custom box I constructed looked fine from the outside. But when they opened it, somehow the entire interior was waterlogged and the posters had melted together into one icky mass.

Apparently I forgot to check the box on the postal form saying the box was not a surfboard or sea anemone porn.

Bad news: Apparently postal employees are having sword fights with the hardy tubes we’ve used to ship these posters. So many have been mangled that it feels like a vendetta.

Good news: I spent the afternoon at Steamwhistle Press helping to make another 500 posters. Brian Stuparyk at Steamwhistle actually let me run the press for part of the run – pressing buttons and turning knobs. Very exciting.

The 500 new posters are drying now and I’ll pick them up on Monday. Then we’ll start dispatching them – a replacement shipment to Classic Hand Tools and (I hope) a few more to sell on our web site.

I asked John to punch me in the ovaries the next time I suggested we print a poster.

— Christopher Schwarz

Because of some weirdness we are going to do a second and smaller run of letterpress Anarchist Tool Chest posters this week.

We’ll only be making 500 this time and they’ll be in a slightly different hue of ink. We probably will have a few to sell on the website (and at our storefront in Covington, Ky., on May 14) but we have to increase the price to $25 (that price includes domestic shipping) so we don’t lose money on this project.

What was the weirdness? We had more posters spindled or mutilated during shipping and have to replace a lot more than we anticipated. Also, we ended up with fewer posters than we planned (still trying to figure that one out).

So if you are still lacking for one of these posters, hang tight and keep your eye on this blog. By the way, a few readers have asked how they can be notified of things like this. We don’t have a spambot – I mean newsletter – but you can sign up to receive an email from WordPress every time we post a new blog entry. Look at the top of the right rail of the blog and you’ll see “E-mail subscription.” Enter your email address in that box to sign up.

Note: We don’t sell, rent or give away anyone’s personal information to anyone. We don’t send advertisements or information on how you can get in on the exciting world of sausage making at home. All you’ll ever get is an email containing the blog entry.

— Christopher Schwarz