We recently visited the legendary Printer Matter in New York. It exceeded expectations. I bought 'I See / You Mean' by Lucy R. Lippard and subsequently find that she was one of the founders in +/- 1976. Alongside her was Sol Lewitt. Throughout his career, he acknowledged and used the book format on merit, with a recurrent nine-or-sixteen-square-grid, as seen above (in Autobiography (1980)) and below (in Four basic kinds of straight lines (1969)) (via).
An excellent interview with Lippard here, where she describes the original motives for setting up Printed Matter; useful for us looking in the 'Publish' project, for propellant beyond the churn-out of a showcase 'zine. And also the importance of distribution. She says: "We were all into artists'' books at the time because they seemed yet another way to get art out of the gallery/museum, to give artists control of their own production, and to get art out to a broader audience. Somebody wrote about 'the page as an alternative space.'"
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