One branch of small press publishing is the fine art object, often co-existent with individually designed, sometimes handprinted and/or bound, often produced in a kind of opposition to the scruffy pamphlet, offset and digital print-on-demand publications, and the ubiquitousness of online texts. In the last decade there has been a renewed interest in crafted books, limited editions, the book as object, not just a container of stories or poems. Simon Cutts, of course, has always been ahead of this curve. Since the mid 1960s he has, often through his Coracle Press imprint, been making beautifully designed and crafted books and objects, but he was also thinking and writing about what he published and how he did so. The Small Press Model gathers up some of his articles and ‘attempts to group together approaches to the physicality of the book’.

I must confess that although I like beautiful books and own…