.expub: Exploring Expanded Publishing

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This book is the outcome of the two-year research project .expub | Exploring Expanded Publishing. The project brought together four institutions and publishing initiatives om across Europe: the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), Aksioma (Ljubljana), Echo Chamber (Brussels), and Nero Editions (Rome). United by a shared curiosity and critical stance toward emergent publishing practices, we set out not to define expanded publishing om above, but to experiment with it in practice, to critically engage with it. Over the two years, this led us to ongoing reflection and dialogue about both the context and practical applications of expanded publishing. We explored this through a broad spectrum of formats: publications, public events, interviews, conferences, video essays, comic books, podcasts, and live streams. These weren’t standalone outputs but entangled and co-produced efforts between the consortium partners and a wide variety of authors, artists, and researchers. This collaborative methodology was central to our approach. 4 .EXPUB | EXPLORING EXPANDED PUBLISHING streams. These weren’t standalone outputs but entangled and co-produced efforts between the consortium partners and a wide variety of authors, artists, and researchers. This collaborative methodology was central to our approach. Rather than simply documenting our work, this book aims to focus on one of the key objectives of the project: coming closer to a working, shared understanding of what expanded publishing is — and could become. This effort is reflected in the first chapter of this book, manifesting expanded publishing. This text serves both as a summary of our collective position and a provocation for further thought. But we also wanted to move beyond statements, toward a deeper investigation of the inastructures, politics, and economies that shape experimental publishing today. Thus, this book is itself a publishing experiment. It was written and edited using Etherport — a tool developed by Open Source Publishing that connects collaborative writing pads (Etherpad) to a live, dual-format publishing system. This setup allowed us to work simultaneously on both a web and print version of the book while writing and editing together in real time. This method enabled not only co-authorship and versioning, but also made the book modular and open-ended by design. Videos, hyperlinks, and other non-print elements are included in the online version, and future iterations of the book are possible within this amework. This text also functions as a toolkit for expanded publishing: itis tagged and hyperlinked to form a navigable amework for exploration. Recurring themes throughout the book serve as organizational markers, enabling thematic and non-linear reading in both web and print formats.