Books at Rebel Press Photo: Mark Amery
This weekend in Ōtepoti Dunedin small presses and independent publishers from around Aotearoa gather to share and exchange at Small Press Fest.
The festival reflects a move among younger creatives away from the internet towards community, focusing on the empowerment of making your own printed media. There’s also an eye on sustainability with presses more likely to be printing small numbers of books themselves and using recycled paper - rather than sending off PDFs to China for mass production shipping.
The printing press currently working on a book about Small Press Fest 2023 and 2024, as well as the recent upsurge in independent publishing in Aotearoa, is Pōneke ‘underground publishing house,’ 5ever Books.
5ever books is collectively run by Sasha Francis, Achille Segard and Renae Williams Photo: supplied
5ever books is collectively run by Sasha Francis, Achille Segard and Renae Williams, out of the Rebel Press printing space who also shelter Freedom Shop, Left of the Equator and Lawrence and Gibson.
5ever publishes an impressive number of books every year with authors encouraged to help make their own books at the centre.
5ever offices Photo: Mark Amery
“We print, splice, bind and chop pesky dank little books,” 5ever proudly proclaims. Yet, going by Renae Williams’ own 2023 poetry book Butter on Toast the Next Morning - which she reads from on RNZ’s Culture 101 - they can look as refined as any from the publishing giants.
Aiming to democratise the making of books, using their machines 5ever also help others to make their own books, zines and posters.
“There are a lot of hoops you have to jump through in traditional publishing routes,” says Sasha Francis. “We are very much on another kind of path, which is about community, sharing time with each other, sharing knowledge, resources and kai.
“The book or zine being a kind of output - a byproduct of that relationship. But also the content is maybe a bit more experimental. We’re not at all driven by profit or how many books we will sell.”
Akin to direct action, 5ever says that every dollar first goes into paper, printing, binding glue, and authors getting paid.
Notebooks for prisoners poster Photo: Mark Amery
“No middle man, no Facebook ad campaigns. We make our own poster glue. We deliver to bookstores by foot. We dumpster dive for paper waste. We cook and provide our own book launch catering!“
5ever also run a successful ‘notebooks for prisoners’ scheme, where a volunteer network makes and distributes notebooks out of waste paper for prisoners in all prisons across Aotearoa. A collage of paper stock and re-purposed imagery, the notebooks themselves inspire creativity, and thousandshave been distributed to date. To aid this and other work, 5ever collects and reuses paper offcuts and waste from local commercial printers.
Important Information exhibition by 5ever Books Photo: supplied
5ever books' work also extends to postering. It’s currently running a major exhibition at Enjoy Contemporary Art Space in Pōneke, Important Information, in which they exhibit layers of posters from the street and a five-volume archive of past independent posters in the city. The show runs until Saturday August 31, concluding with a panel discussion from 1 to 4pm on the last day.
They spoke with Mark Amery of RNZ’s Culture 101.
Street art project for Important Information exhibition Photo: 5ever books
Example of one of a notebook for prisoners wilder spreads Photo: Mark Amery
