Behind No-ISBN examines the production processes of publications that withdraw from the international trading system. Do their authors bank on anonymity, aware of the efficacy of digital tracing? Or are they just too lazy to organize the distribution of their own artistic work? Starting from an exhaustive collection of publications, the research into the protagonists—individuals, small editions, institutions—combined an online-survey, data visualizations, and actor-network theory. The results challenge the persistent myth of self-publishing as the output of counterculture. What should an online platform for the distribution of self-managed, independent publications look like?

Behind No-ISBN was funded by the Austrian Research Agency FWF.