This book is a personal account of our experiences with Magnolia Cartonera, our handcrafted, in-home, and independent publishing house. Since 2014, we've been writing, publishing, and crafting cartonero books, which are books with handcrafted carboard covers, as well as zines, which are small self-published magazines made entirely by hand and independently.
When we say handcrafted, we mean that our books are made from cardboard boxes we collected ourselves. We repurpose, paint, sew, and bind the cardboard by hand, and the only machine used during the entire process is a home printer. That means we work with paint, thread and needles, cutting tools, scissors, and our home printer. It also means that the production process relies entirely on manual labor, so that every time we create a new copy, a new story begins.
Aside from sharing our experiences, our goal is to offer practical information and helpful ideas to solidify your desire to publish cartonero books with covers made by hand. We want to encourage and support people who are thinking of going into independent self-publishing, but who haven't found any literature to help them understand the process of handcrafting a cartonera.
We understand that part of our work as independent artists is to share information about our own practices of writing, publication, and graphic arts at Magnolia Cartonera so more people are able to access it. This book is our attempt to help anyone who wants to establish themself as an artist or writer create their own cartonera books and publishing houses.
Although lots of people know about cartonero books in our communities, we've noticed that the simple techniques of hand binding carboard boxes to make them into book covers remain largely unknown.
Through this text, we hope you learn Magnolia Cartonera's techniques for manufacturing books and that you feel encouraged to write and to publish. We wrote this book for people who want to cultivate and solidify their own autonomy over their creative efforts. We'll show you how we got our start and how we carry out our daily cartonera activities to inspire you to do the same.
- Daniele and Juliano
