Imprint Director: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei (vincent@punctumbooks.com)
“Ils ont treize noms pour nommer le palmier, et le palmier n’est pas nommé.”
~ Léopold Sédar Senghor
Uitgeverij started as an independent, Creative Commons publisher founded in 2010 by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei. Its catalogue was converted into an imprint of punctum books in 2018 and made fully open access.
We publish under no name, the word “publisher” in all languages. We fight for language: poetically, epically, philosophically, linguistically, ethnographically, or otherwise. We put our faith into five maxims. We enjoy working with authors who recognize themselves in them. And even though this is written in English, you have to trust us.
Our guiding principles:
1. All languages are equal.
We acknowledge any language as absolutely equal to any other, carrying the weight of its world since it came into being. Hence, all languages are acceptable for publication: real, imaginary, artificial, dying, living, or extinct. We always make an effort to understand and think about whatever we receive.
2. Every edition is endless.
As traditional book stores are selling less and less, and large in-house stocks only raise the cost of production, we publish based on “printing on demand.” The moment a book is ordered, it is printed. All books are printed in an endless edition.
3. Copyright is no right.
The industry protecting copyright is not in the favor of the author, and we don’t like keeping the rights on his or her book. Therefore, all publications — on paper and digital — are released under a “creative commons” license.
4. Only experiment can present the present.
We only care about the new, whether past, present, or future. We enjoy publishing anything that’s between categories, obscure, or witnessing the edges of language. For us, all audience is potential. We do not like the word “avant-garde”; we are not in the military.
5. All publications are the same.
All publications are uniform.
