Public Publishing Diary / Why Self-Publish Under Fascism?

2025 20 staple-bound pages  6” x 8 ¼” Edition of 300 (Second printing)   Public Collectors publication #105 combines the text Why Self-Publish Under Fascism? with other recent writing on publishing and a fun selection of messy studio photos. From the back cover: After many years on other social media platforms, in October 2024 I decided to see what Bluesky is all about. People described it as like Twitter without the nazis, and I liked the lack of advertising and algorhythmic excess. I enjoy telling stories and do this a lot elsewhere online but was cool with the 300-character limit and found it helpful for condensing my writing into tight chunks of thought. If I needed more space, I could always say more in the replies, but mostly I tried to see what I could say with a single post.  I began writing about my self-publishing practice and quickly found a different and far more diverse audience than I have on other platforms. This booklet is a diary created through posts from near the beginning of my time on Bluesky until mid-September, 2025—almost a year.  2024-2025 has been a prolific time of making new publications for me, and some of those publications—particularly my text Why Self-Publish Under Fascism?—attracted many readers and new social media followers. That booklet was initially published on May 1, 2025. It came out of an invitation from Mariame Kaba to participate in a panel discussion titled: Why Make Zines in 2025: Information Control Under Fascism at the space Walls Turned Sideways in Chicago. I workshopped some of the text in a thread Mariame started on Bluesky. After making over 1,750 copies of that booklet by hand (I still might make more that way), I decided to fold that text into this publication since the diary content comes from a similar place of thinking and making. I’ve also added photos of my messy studio taken in September 2025, which became messier through printing, initialling, rubber stamping, and clipping the corners of so many copies of that popular booklet.   I love when a book or zine inspires me to make more of my own publications and I hope this little collection of short thoughts will motivate others to publish new things in their own way. Marc Fischer