What is an Artists’ Book?

“The principal difference between the book hack and the book artist is that the former succumbs to the conventions of the medium, while the latter envisions what else “the book” might become. … The first aspires to coverage and acceptability; the second to invention and quality.
Common books look familiar; uncommon books do not.
Most books are about something outside themselves; most book art books are primarily about themselves.”

"Artists' books are books or book-like objects, over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself. They are not books of reproductions of an artist's work, about an artist, or with just a text or illustrations by an artist. In practice this definition breaks down as artists challenge it, pushing the book form in unexpected directions."

“…a book done for its own sake and not for the information it contains. That is: it doesn’t contain a lot of works, like a book of poems. It is a work. Its design and format reflect its content…. … The experience of reading it, vrieing it, framing it – that is what the artist stresses in making it.
The illusion is that it is something new. Not so. Blake’s most visual books are obvious early artists’ books.”

“That an artist in the late twentieth century finds the book an appropriate medium is a strange phenomenon to explain: what does the book format allow the artist to do that a film, video, performance, painting, sculpture or suite of prints cannot? Without doubt the extenuated condition of the ‘normal’ book, with its white paper, binding on the left, and conventions of title, half-title, running titles, preface, etc., provided almost a tabula rasa on which the artist could experiment, exploring notions of seriality, sequence, narrative, the relationship between text and image, in a relatively cheap way but reaching a potentially wider audience than an exhibition or performance: at the time rival information technology and mass media freed the book from the incubus of being the main channel for communication, opening up the book format for re-debating.”