Making Cartonera Books

This book is a personal account of our experiences with Magnolia Cartonera, our handcrafted, in-home, and independent publishing house. Since 2014, we’ve been writing, publishing, and crafting cartonero books, which are books with handcrafted carboard covers, as well as zines, which are small self-published magazines made entirely by hand and independently.

When we say handcrafted, we mean that our books are made from cardboard boxes we collected ourselves. We repurpose, paint, sew, and bind the cardboard by hand, and the only machine used during the entire process is a home printer. That means we work with paint, thread and needles, cutting tools, scissors, and our home printer. It also means that the production process relies entirely on manual labor, so that every time we create a new copy, a new story begins.

Aside from sharing our experiences, our goal is to offer practical information and helpful ideas to solidify your desire to publish cartonero books with covers made by hand. We want to encourage and support people who are thinking of going into independent self-publishing, but who haven’t found any literature to help them understand the process of handcrafting a cartonera.

We understand that part of our work as independent artists is to share information about our own practices of writing, publication, and graphic arts at Magnolia Cartonera so more people are able to access it. This book is our attempt to help anyone who wants to establish themself as an artist or writer create their own cartonera books and publishing houses.

Although lots of people know about cartonero books in our communities, we’ve noticed that the simple techniques of hand binding carboard boxes to make them into book covers remain largely unknown.

Through this text, we hope you learn Magnolia Cartonera’s techniques for manufacturing books and that you feel encouraged to write and to publish. We wrote this book for people who want to cultivate and solidify their own autonomy over their creative efforts. We’ll show you how we got our start and how we carry out our daily cartonera activities to inspire you to do the same.

We’ll describe the initial stages of creation, from assembly to the finishing touches, all the way to advertising and selling our books. We’ll talk about the most important, interesting, and motivating details anyone looking to dedicate themselves to cartonera art will need. You’ll read about the reasons why we want more people to be able to work creatively and make a living through the art of writing, publishing, and manufacturing books with cardboard covers.

This book is personal because it’s our story. These are experiences we have lived as part of Magnolia Cartonera within the world of DIY publishing and the ways we found our path to cartonera art, now laid out on the page.

Making cartoneras requires a lot of work, energy, time, ability to overcome adversities, some financial investment, and, more than anything, the desire to make it all happen.

Ever since we first started, we’ve invested everything we have—our labor, available resources, energies, and art—into the activities of planning, writing, illustrating, editing, publishing, crafting, and selling cartoneras. It has been an incredible journey.

In this book you will find a combination of ideas, inspiration, knowledge, tips, and insights from people who are already making it happen. We hope you find the inspiration and support you need within these pages to forge your own path.

– Daniele and Juliano