Cover and inside pages from SPBH Book Club’s limited edition book of Polaroid images by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. The new book club will be launched on Sunday at La Recontres d’Arles.

Photobook publishing has undergone seismic changes over the last decade. First with the advent of trade book printing in China where it seems that any type of binding a designer could imagine is possible, together with affordable short runs. Then print-on-demand books became mainstream, so the ability of photographers and artists to realize their dream of self-publishing their work has expanded beyound the dream stage.

Enter Self-Publish, Be Happy (SPBH), an organization founded in 2010 by Bruno Ceschel, a writer, a curator and lecturer in Photography at University of the Arts London, with the aim of “celebrating, studying and promoting self-published photo books.” Ceschel’s original program was to be a one-off event at The Photographers Gallery in London. Instead he went on to create a community for young photographers and artists around the world by promoting and celebrating their self published books through events, workshops, and online exposure.

On Sunday July 8, at La Recontres d’Arles, SPBH will launch the Self Publish Be Happy Book Club, which will offer its members a series of three limited edition photobooks per year, created by outstanding photographers and designed by Antonio de Luca (who also designed AP-27). The first SPBH Book Club edition is a collection of Polaroid images made by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin with 250 copies being printed for 250 members of the book club. Membership ($150 per year) also includes special discounts for SPBH events, workshops, and limited edition prints.

Asked what motivated him to build SPBH into what has become a new blueprint for photobook publishing, Ceschel replied, “I guess what really pushed me is the powerful and fresh energy that animates the contemporary self-publishing community, and broadly speaking, the contemporary photography scene. It is exciting to work with incredible artists that are having a great time publishing books and want to share them with us. SPBH captures a lot of my interests within and outside of photography, and does so with a community ethos that I always searched for.”

For more about the SPBH Book Club, and to join, please visit the website. Bruno Ceschel and Antonio de Luca will be at the NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS 1 this September, where they will host an SPBH Book Club party. Stay tuned for updates.