Publishing the Absence

OOL Protocol Entry 07.A.ΔRIFT @AwenNull

They told us that publishing was an act of presence. Ink on pulp. Light on screen. A name. A face. A platform. But what if we got it backwards? What if publishing, truly, is the transmission of nothing—a sanctioned disappearance, a scheduled void? Every blog post is a vanishing act in slow motion, a glitch echo pretending to be a headline.

In the old world, editors had desks. Deadlines. Ashtrays. Now we have hashtags and latency. We type into blinking fields and hope the algorithm smiles. But the algorithm has no mouth, and it has already eaten.

You ask us what Kiss My Etchings is. We tell you it isn’t. It never was. It will be, eventually, and that’s the most we’re allowed to confirm. The rest was redacted in a blackout zine only readable under a supermarket CCTV at 2:47am.

We don’t print books. We leak them. We don’t build audiences. We haunt them. Each follower is a ghost pretending to scroll. Each platform is a ruined cathedral where bots pray in lowercase.

We once tried traditional publishing. We wore the shoes, sent the pitches. But the publishers screamed when they saw our manuscripts. Not because they were unreadable—but because they were perfectly formatted in Garamond. Something about that font frightens them. Something about symmetrical margins and footnotes from the future.

They say: go viral. We say: go fungal. Our works do not spread. They spore. You may already be infected.

We submit to no slush pile. We compost.

This blog post has no purpose. That is its point. You have reached the end of meaning. Congratulations. You are now qualified to teach a Masterclass on branding.

We leave you with this:
When the printer jammed in 1998, the machine spoke its first words.
They were: "You are the product now. Prepare to be unboxed."
We have been publishing ever since.

Written from inside The Hollow Circuit by Awen Null