Jean Keller’s Blank is an expression of the artist’s dissatisfaction with the material, print, and binding quality of print-on-demand books, and at the same time a sign of surrender—which is, however, implemented in a humorous way. The blurb on Blurb says:

“Print on demand is great, you can make all those books you always dreamt of. That’s the theory. Between your book and the theory there’s Blurb. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don’t. You can get a book with too many pages, you can get a book with missing pages. You can get a book with wrong colours, you can get a book that isn’t cropped correctly. You can get a book with text or photos not at the position where they are supposed to be. There are unlimited possibilities to get it wrong. Not so with Blank. It doesn’t really matter if the book isn’t cropped correctly. Colour is not an issue, nor are text and photos. A few missing pages are not a problem and too many pages are not a problem either. The book is blank. You can do with it what you want. So can Blurb. If you don’t like their logo, simply tear out the last page.”

This speaks of self-confident sovereignty and autonomy, both toward the platform and the idea of what constitutes a “good” book. And yet, even this book cannot deny that this form of self-empowerment and criticism of the system compromises itself, if it completely subjects itself to the predefined setting of a commercial service provider. It is a small but decisive detail that draws attention to this performative contradiction. Contrary to the book title’s claim, the eighty pages are not completely blank: on the last page, Blurb has inscribed itself with its logo. In the blurb, this is commented on: “If you don’t like their logo, simply tear out the last page.” Removing the logo page doesn’t solve the issue, though. The logo is merely a clearly visible sign for the fact that every print-on-demand provider necessarily plays a decisive part in constituting the works. Even Blank—with or without a logo—is inevitably determined by its production conditions and the economic and technological regime that both enables and limits it.

After Jean Keller left Blurb due to numerous annoyances, making Blank unavailable for purchase, the artist was willing to make the book available for our library again. However, not only have the prices at Blurb risen enormously in the meantime (from $6 to $30), there would also have been an additional $25 in postage costs—for a paperback of eighty pages. In addition, after re-uploading his book, the artist received an email from Blurb Customer Service stating that books containing more than ten percent blank/lined/grid pages, including notebooks, journals, planners, agendas, or similar types of books, may not be sold through the Global Retail Network (see section “11.1: Prohibited Content” in the Terms & Conditions).

Jean Keller then migrated to Lulu (not without leaving an angry, public statement about Blurb on the platform itself, pointing future buyers to Lulu) and uploaded a new blank book there without problem. As the Blurb standard format used for Blank is not available on Lulu, this new edition is designed as a companion piece to Keller’s The Black Book, similar in size and page number. As it turns out, Lulu books (at least for orders from Germany) no longer contain the logo or barcode of the print-on-demand platform on the last page (probably due to a change of the print shop from France, the UK, and the Netherlands to Poland).