Prospective self-publishers, take note: photographer James Radke is exploring new ways to produce and promote books. Earlier this year, Radke launched The Indentured Press, an experiment in the interactive digital publishing of monographs. Using a digital camera provided by Olympus, Radke shot images in San Francisco and Oakland and mapped out a plan for publishing a book, Digital Photographs from the Web, that would be the first of its kind.
    Fifty photographs were published on-line, in ten weekly installments of five photographs, and are available for download as fine art prints on good-quality paper, suitable for framing (images remain available and are archived on-line for the duration of the project).
    The images are free to anyone; the only price tag attached to the work is a $50 charge for anyone interested in having Radke bind all fifty images into a monograph. Radke hasn't yet fielded any Internet inquiries for bound books, but he says the promotional aspects have paid off: both his work and press have received interest and notice, and he has been approached by a few people to print individual copies of his book. "So it looks like the first edition is going to be very small and probably pretty valuable at a rare book auction in the near future," notes Radke.
    Though he wouldn't consider Indentured Press a financial success, he says that "this has been a valuable experience. Being a self-publisher means you wear many hats and you truly have complete control of your finished project." What will he do differently in future Indentured Press ventures? "I need to develop alliances with manufacturers and galleries to launch the book as well as being able to produce the work," he says.