Better Living Through Xeroxography founded by Adam David and his wife Conchitina Cruz. It’s an event where zinesters and small presses meet to sell new books and merchandises. It happens several times a year in different locations and has sometimes went to the regions.
History of BLTX
According to one of its co-founders, Adam David, the first BLTX was organized after he wrote and published his manifesto entitled “Better Living Through Xeroxography: Literary Patricide by Way of the Small Independent Press” in 2 April 2009. The first expo, conceptualized and organized by The Youth and Beauty Brigade was held the following year on 3 December 2010 at a videoke bar called Ilyong’s at Kalantiaw, Project Four, Quezon City. Since 2010, BLTX helped inspire the creation of small presses and independent publishers that have since co-organized and supported the expo that is now held multiple times a year in different parts of the Philippines.
References
Balboa, Jen. “‘To Exist, Then to Persist’: Indie Publishing and BLTX.” POP!, 31 Dec. 2020, https://pop.inquirer.net/103386/to-exist-then-to-persist-indie-publishing-and-bltx.
it “started as a call to arms against the prevailing systems of mainstream literary production at the time.”
David stated that he “put together a manifesto about weaponizing the small press to enact literary patricide, enabling actual artistic freedom.” The first expo was then later staged
“celebrating artistic freedom and youthful energy and the death of mainstream literary production.”
The first expo was staged in Ilyong’s, a videoke bar along Kalantiaw, Project Four, on Dec. 3, 2010. The organizers shift with every event, depending on the particular needs of the specific time and place the expo-fora-workshops will be happening in, but for the last four years or so, it’s been co-organized by Gantala Press, Magpies Press, Studio Soup Zine Library, and the Youth & Beauty Brigade.