Bad Quarto

Bad Quarto is a private press listed in the International Register of Private Press Names. It produces literary work for fun, teaching, and exchange, and offers some publications for sale through its own website and through Spybeam Books. A major ongoing project is Taper, an online literary magazine for very short computational poems and digital literary work. The press produces book objects and other literary matter using a mix of traditional and digital equipment, including an Adana Eight-Five platen press, Espresso Book Machines at the Harvard Book Store and the MIT Press Bookstore, Epson and Commodore dot-matrix printers, standard consumer laser printers, flat-panel displays connected to Raspberry Pi Zero computers, and the World Wide Web. Its work is held in collections including the Library of Artistic Print on Demand and the libraries of Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania. Bad Quarto is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and operates as a private, independent publisher.

Bad Quarto is a private press listed in the International Register of Private Press Names. It produces work for fun, teaching, and exchange, and some publications are offered for sale online through its own site and through Spybeam Books. A major project of the press is Taper, an online literary magazine. Taper is collectively edited and has been published since Spring 2018. It is a web-based literary journal for short, computational work, hosting very short computational poems and other digital literary work composed under strictures of poetic compression and using practices of sizecoding, with work limited to 2KB (2048 bytes). Taper is edited by a collective, independent of the publisher, that develops each issue's theme, selects poems, and works with authors to prepare them for publication. All poems in Taper are free (libre) software. The printing and production of Bad Quarto book objects and other literary matter is done using various systems and equipment, including an Adana Eight-Five platen press (first made 1953, from c. 1975), the Espresso Book Machines of the Harvard Book Store and the MIT Press Bookstore, Epson and Commodore dot-matrix printers, standard consumer laser printers, flat-panel displays connected to Raspberry Pi Zero computers, and the World Wide Web hypertext system from c. 1990. Work is in the collections of the Library of Artistic Print on Demand and the libraries of Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others.

• Taper begins publication, collectively edited, Spring 2018–

• Bad Quarto listed in the International Register of Private Press Names

• Work added to collections of the Library of Artistic Print on Demand and libraries of Brown University, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania

Independent private press focused on experimental, computational, and print-on-demand literary work.

• Taper

  Online literary magazine for short computational work, limited to 2KB per piece, collectively edited, published since Spring 2018.

• Bad Quarto book objects

  Private press publications produced using a mix of traditional and digital printing equipment.

1. 1Bad Quarto official websitebadquar.to
2. 2Bad Quarto on Wikidatawikidata.org