The Enthusiast: How long has Bookkake been operating? How long has it been in development?

James Bridle: Bookkake has been open for business for two months, in development for 18 months, and at the back of my mind for quite a bit longer than that.

Is Bookkake just you? What’s your professional background?

It’s just me, but with quite a lot of help from technology, and my friends. I did a Master’s degree in Cognitive Science – allegedly about Artificial Intelligence, but really a marriage-made-in-hell of Computer Science, Psychology and Linguistics – but when it was over, I never wanted to see a computer again. So I went into publishing, returning to books, which are my first love. A couple of years as an editor at a small, independent fiction house convinced me that my time with the computers had not been entirely wasted, and what publishing needed was a rapid bootstrapping into the information age, and the seeds of Bookkake were sown.

I love the name – what’s the story behind how you came up with it: a stroke of inspiration on the bus perhaps, or a joke that everyone liked down the pub?

Did you know that Friedrich Kekulé, before he realised the ring structure of Benzene in a dream of the ouroboros [an ancient image of a snake biting its own tail], first formed the idea of organic chemistry in a reverie on a night bus? The actual Clapham Omnibus!

Wow, I didn’t know that. Everyone! Brainstorming meeting! Get on the bus… Sorry, you were saying?

I like names that have a different weight to everyone who hears them. Homer Simpson said that a great name should be funny the first time you hear it, “yet become less funny each time you heard it”. I still find ‘Bookkake’ funny, and it stands for everything I believe in: what we all know, yet are afraid to talk about it, and which ultimately liberates us.

Why dirty books? Is it a question of personal taste, recuperating an undervalued area of literature, seeing a gap in the market, for the PR value of it, or other reasons altogether?

All of the above. Most of these works are not treated well, and if they are treated well, they are still seen to somehow stand outside the canon of literature. I want to restore them to their central place in our culture. If in the meantime I can prove a point about the value of literature as a business and give a modicum of hope and some technical advice to the many struggling and far more worthy champions of literature out there (witness the recent collapse of Impetus Press, or the ongoing struggles of Daedalus), then I will have done something good too.

It sounds ridiculously old-fashioned of me to ask this, but do you ever have to deal with that old literature-or-pornography chestnut? Is erotic literature controversial any more? And to what extent do you think its appeal depends on public controversy?

I’d be hypocritical if I said I didn’t court controversy to some extent: these are not your regular Classics editions. But that’s a sales gambit. I think the recent cases of controversy surrounding the unearthing of Kafka’s so-called pornography collection and the attempted firebombing of a publisher of an allegedly erotic novel about Mohammed’s wife suggest that erotic literature still stirs emotions other than the purely physical, and for me, that’s what literature is all about.

Calling the imprint ‘Bookkake’ and your products ‘dirty books’ seems to invoke an ironic awareness of the pervasive attitude that ‘real’ literature is noble and elevating for the reader, whereas erotica is smutty and debasing… Could irony be a refuge for readers who are uncomfortable with ‘owning’ their pleasures, perhaps?

Not irony, I hope. The ‘dirty books’ tag comes from the great Maurice Girodias, whose Olympia Press was the first publisher of works by William S. Burroughs, J. P. Donleavy, Samuel Beckett, Georges Bataille, Alexander Trocchi and many others. Girodias used the cover of, and revenue from, his ‘dirty books’ to support literature that has since entered the canon. If we are to own our pleasures, we must seek them wherever they are to be found, under whatever covers.

How do you decide which titles to publish? I understand you’re currently preparing the next batch of books by contemporary authors: what are your criteria for a Bookkake book?

Bookkake’s future is very much in flux, but I like a definition of literature, and hence of a Bookkake book, as anything that moves you, that makes you feel. When I look back on my favourite books, they’re the ones that have left me feeling that I myself have been changed, not only mentally, but also physically. Too much so-called literature is, frankly, boring, leaving its readers untroubled and unchanged, and my only intent is to publish that which could not ever be so described.

All Bookkake books have new and original introductions. How do you commission these? Who and what do you look for in your introduction writers?

I’m lucky enough to know a few great writers, and count some of them as friends. Many of the initial suggestions for Bookkake editions came from them, and if I agreed, they were the first I went to seeking an introduction. They were kind enough to tolerate my intentions, and to write what are, I hope, first and foremost, personal responses to the works. So Andrew Stevens relates how he and his teenage friends used Rakehell as a tool of seduction, Supervert, in his inimitable style, orders you to your knees, and Sean Walsh relates a history of 18th-century sex clubs. I think it’s really desirable to place books in their context, to know a little of their authors, and the times in which they lived, and I hope these editions provide that.

Is it a huge amount of stress to effectively take on the entire operation of a publishing house, from commissioning and editing to printing and distribution?

Meh. It was, and is, damn fun. I love books, so working with them for a living is hardly a penance. One of the keys to Bookkake is the technology behind it, which can be used to radically simplify the publishing process and keep the focus on the works themselves. Slowly, more and more tools are becoming available to make the business of publishing easier and more profitable which, if done right (and I in no way suggest that’s how I’m doing it), can only be a good thing for literature.

Who does the cover designs, and was there a particular thinking behind the look?

I am a very amateur designer, but they were all done by me. The photographs are all provided, with permission and under a Creative Commons license, by amateur photographers I found on Flickr, one of the great successes of the web. It’s this kind of collaboration that I think is at the centre of new kinds of cultural production. The jackets themselves went through several stages, with inspiration from classic Penguins to German museum signage, and I already wish I could revise them in new and interesting ways.

You also run Booktwo.org where you discuss future trends in publishing – do you see Bookkake as an extension of your observations there, a way of putting them into action?

Absolutely. Booktwo.org is an ongoing attempt to combine my geeky and bibliophiliac obsessions, and many of the subjects and methods I’ve discussed there found their way into Bookkake. The recent explosion of interest in ebooks and in print-on-demand has been really good to see, because publishing has been resistant to change for a long time.

Why print-on-demand technology – was it an ethical consideration for you, an economic model…?

I am appalled by the extraordinary wastage of the traditional publishing model, and the stark fact that, in the UK at least, over half of all books printed are never read. However, print-on-demand, for all its ecological benefits, primarily serves an economic need. For small publishers, the cost of printing huge numbers of books up front, with no idea if they will sell or not, is crippling, and POD offers a viable alternative, and a way of supporting authors and work that would not justify itself commercially otherwise.

And on the matter of economic models, how is Bookkake funded? Given you are also offering free ebooks, why would people buy the print-on-demand version?

Bookkake initially received a small grant from the UK Arts Council, a body funded by the National Lottery, for which I am incredibly grateful. Since then, it has been self-sustaining. However, it’s worth noting that the grant was given not to fund the works produced, but to explore the viability of the model itself, and I want to share what I’ve learned with other small presses so that they can use this experience to publish more work: the costs are far, far below what the traditional publishing model requires.

I’m just musing about how books are sensuous, tactile objects, and about how that’s a good fit for an erotic publisher. What are the pleasures to be had from books as ‘things’, and how do you square that with technological pushes towards electronic books and social media?

I wouldn’t have started a publisher if I didn’t share the bibliophiles’ love for the book as an object. But I also believe that literature can and should be found everywhere, and the book and literature are not eternally bound together. I’ve read many books in ebook forms – on my phone, on the web, and on dedicated ebook devices – and I believe we should take literature to these places, and to a wider audience. That said, I’m not convinced we have yet been offered an ebook reading experience that comes close enough to the traditional to justify placing real costs on the price of the ebook. Therefore I currently offer my ebooks for free, and hope that the goodwill thus engendered will result in more purchases of the paper books.

Do you ship to Australia?

At the moment, I’m afraid I don’t. Bookkake currently prints and ships books in the UK and the US, and to ship to Australia would incur such heavy fees as to make this uneconomical. If I can find a POD supplier to work with in Australia, however, I’ll be there in a shot.

Okay, if any POD fans are reading this, the ball’s in your court… Well, at least we can access the ebooks for the time being. James, have you had much interest from retailers? From what I’ve read, it seems that they’re the ones with the most to lose from a publishing model like yours.

I’ve worked in retail myself, and for all the wondrous availability of the internet, there’s nothing like good old hand-selling from someone who knows and loves books. My policies against the return of unsold books, another factor that cripples small publishers, means I’m unlikely to be stocked by the bigger chains, but I’ve got plenty of interest from the sort of independent bookstores I’d love to work with, and the first Bookkake editions will be available in physical bookstores very soon. I hope they have plenty to gain from supporting a more diverse range of publishers than the big guys.

What is your ultimate aim for Bookkake? On what terms will it ’succeed’ for you?

Honestly, I don’t know. It has already succeeded insofar as it has demonstrated that it is possible to set up and run a viable publishing business based on POD and direct sales via the internet. I would like to see it go on to publish new work I loved, but there are already many different and divergent possibilities opening up, and we’ll have to wait and see.

Do you ever begin to type ‘publish’ or ‘publication’ and find yourself typing ‘pubish’ or ‘pubication’? I just thought I’d ask because it has plagued me while writing you these interview questions.

No, but if it’s any consolation, I still find it difficult to say ‘Bookkake’ to my mum.