Independents unite at Indiecon 2025

The first half of September has been a busy time for fans of independent publishing. Last weekend saw Mag to Mag take place in Milan, while the first Glue artist bookfair took place at the ICA in London, and the first Case Sensitive was held in New York. I was at Glue and it was fantastic, and judging by what I’ve seen via Instagram, visitors to Mag to Mag and Case Sensitive had a great time too. (People who dropped into the Mag to Mag toilet photobooth got particularly creative.)

But before all that, from 5-7 September, the 12th Indiecon independent publishing festival was held in Hamburg. I’ve been to almost every Indiecon since it started and I love the friendly, genuinely independent atmosphere that it creates by bringing together so many different publishers, illustrators, printmakers, and more. This year I wanted to share a sense of that atmosphere, so I took my recording gear with me and ran around the tables in between doing other things, grabbing five minutes at a time with some of the publishers I saw there.

The audio I’ve selected represents just a small sample of those conversations, and as you’ll hear, the magazines cover a huge range of different subjects, but they’re also united by the positivity that so often characterises these projects. Making a print magazine is a difficult thing to do, but at Indiecon you just can’t miss the energy and enthusiasm of people who are somehow finding a way to make it work.

Anja Charbonneau and Rachel Rilkoff from Broccoli magazine

Jayden tan and Pang Xue Qiang from Meantime

Sotiris Trechas from Fluffer Everyday

Timothy Frazier from Photographic Bandwidth

Sebastian Wells from Solomiya magazine

Oliver Gabe from The Paper

Charles Emmerson from Translator magazine

Manami Inoue and Yuto Miyamoto from Troublemakers magazine

It was really busy, so I recorded first thing on the Saturday and Sunday mornings, and then at the end of Sunday afternoon, just because those times were a bit quieter. And I’ve left the conversations in that order, because I think it gives a nice sense of time passing over the course of the weekend, including some Sunday morning hangovers and the excitement of being almost sold out at the end of the weekend. At one point I decided to try recording outside because it’s quieter, but the building that houses Indiecon is an old railway shed, and the trains still run right past it every few minutes, so I decided that it’s actually kind of quieter indoors and recorded everything else inside.

The first person you’ll hear is Charles Emmerson from Translator magazine, then there’s Sebastian Wells from Solomiya, Timothy Frazier from Photographic Bandwidth, and Sotiris Trechas from Fluffer Everyday. Then we jump to Sunday morning for a slightly grumpy Oliver Gabe from The Paper, and Yuto Miyamoto from Troublemakers, who I don’t think has ever been grumpy in his life. And we finish off at the end of the day on Sunday with Pang Xue Qiang from Meantime, and Anja Charbonneau from Broccoli.

I’d like to say thanks again to all of them for speaking with me, and of course thanks to everyone at Indiecon for making it such a lovely couple of days. I hope this audio gives a decent sense of what this year’s event was all about. We have hundreds of conversations with independent publishers in our podcast archive, so head over there if you want to hear more, and of course if you follow us wherever you get your podcasts, we’ll deliver our new episodes to you as soon as they’re ready.

broccolimag.com
fluffereveryday.com
meantime.sg
thepaper.wales
photographicbandwidth.com
solomiyamag.com
translatormag.co
troublemakers.me