Nine-Banded Books – Nine-Banded Books

Instead Indices

Richard Smith — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 22:48:13 +0000

7.44 x 9.68 | 348 pages | Perfect-bound softcover Coated interior Photo-illustrated ______________ JUNE 8 UPDATE: Despite rumors to the contrary, I have not mailed out any advance or gratis copies of Instead Indices. North American orders in receipt are on track to go out in a single bulk mailing on Monday, June 15, as initially announced. Reports of "early arrivals" almost certainly trace to international orders that were allocated to Amphetamine Sulphate and shipped at their discretion. My intention with this release has been to ensure that all advance orders handled through 9BB are received at approximately the same time. When the bulk transaction is scanned at the post office on Monday, purchasers will -- or should -- receive notification and tracking information through an automated email service. I'm using Pirate Ship for address management and verification, and I have flagged notes from customers indicating address errors to be corrected. For those who have asked, the books are securely packed -- first in a bubble mailer, then in a durable cardboard 10 1⁄4 x 8 1⁄4 x 1" Kraft Easy-Fold Mailer, then in a USPS Priority Mail cardstock mailer. I also have a certain number of copies on reserve to cover for loss or damage in transit. I regret that I have not been as responsive as I should with reference to email queries and correspondence. I will try to respond to everyone next week, following the big mail day. Thank you for your patience and understanding. MAY 17 UPDATE: I'm dropping the passive voice to give you a straightforward first-person account of where things stand with this release. First, a number of people have written to ask if Instead Indices is indeed "sold out." While I assumed that was the case, now that I have returned to my PC and looked under the hood, I see that I had initially set the sales limit too low. With apologies for the confusion, then, orders are again open, with ~50 more books available for purchase. Are there more? Will there be more? The accurate answer is that there are a few; but these copies are presently reserved for such contingencies that might require books lost or damaged in transit to be replaced. If any of these "insurance" copies remain after the smoke settles, I may dispatch them to Amphetamine Sulphate to sell at their discretion. This is speculative. Lest there be any confusion, I should clarify that my firm intention is to mail ALL of the orders in receipt on the date of release, which is June 15, 2026. I am enlisting a third-party service to see that this bulk dispatch is executed efficiently. International orders processed through Amphetamine Sulphate are being dispatched at their discretion. My below-referenced publisher's note ("Logic and Lemmata") will be made available here as a free download following the book's June 15 release. It may also be noted that Philip Best, having disclosed and expended his modest interest in this venture, has posted a pithily obliquitous commentary on something called a Substack. Look it up. I suspect a cipher. Finally, I should confirm that the allotment dedicated for overseas customers has been sold out. I have disabled the link. Thanks for your patience. Boxin' 'em up, boss. MAY 12 UPDATE: If you placed an order for this title using Venmo or PayPal and you did not receive an automated email confirmation, please rest assured that your order is in receipt. Also, if you recently contacted 9BB with a correction to a processed order or for another reason relevant to this release (other than to complain about the price), I will be getting back with you as soon as practicable. The initial spate of orders has ebbed as anticipated, but there are still copies available. I do expect this one to sell out, however, probably prior to the release date. Thanks for your patience, folks. UPDATE: We are now accepting advance orders for Instead Indices. The shipping fee for US orders is $15. For orders placed from Mexico or Canada, the fee is $40. Orders placed from outside of North America are being handled by Amphetamine Sulphate, with shipping and handling fees determined at their discretion. If you are placing an order from a continent other than North America, please click HERE [link removed] to be redirected to the Amphetamine Sulphate checkout page. Books will be shipped on or shortly after the June 15 release date. Please refer to the revised announcement below for additional information. Changes from the original text are charmingly indicated with strikethroughs and boldfacing. ________________ Announcement After a regrettably long hiatus, Nine-Banded Books is pleased to announce the upcoming publication of Instead Indices, a major new book by Peter Sotos. We will begin accepting advance orders for this title during the second week of May, 2026. The book will be officially released on June 15, 2026. Instead Indices is being published in a limited edition of roughly three hundred (unnumbered) copies. ~~Domestic orders~~ North American orders will be fulfilled exclusively by the publisher, while international orders ~~placed from outside the United States~~ not originating from Canada or Mexico will be directed to a trusted distributor. In response to prior customer feedback, purchases will be strictly limited to one copy per transaction. The book is $95. While this is a high mark for a premium softcover, the price fairly reflects the investment of time and resources entailed in the development, production, and efficient dispatch of the present volume. Short-run printings are invariably costly, especially for books of substantial heft and durable quality. It is worth noting that Instead Indices will not be available through traditional online retailers upon release, and subsequent printings are not contemplated. For reasons more mundane than ~~suggestive~~ insinuative, Nine-Banded Books has opted not to ornament the present announcement with “ad copy,” or such descriptive verbiage that conventionally functions to tease or promote a book’s content. Following the date-certain release of Instead Indices, however, this listing will be supplemented with an external link to a formatted text ~~tentatively~~ entitled “Logic and Lemmata” that may be of marginal interest to some readers. This document will consist of candid remarks by the publisher, primarily, if expansively, bearing on the book’s structural design and layout. ~~Thank you for your attention to this matter.~~ Memento mori.

Daddy Stories

Richard Smith — Tue, 21 May 2024 19:44:36 +0000

6 x 6 | 254 pages | Softcover International shipping rates vary by destination. Please contact us by email to inquire. ______________

Description:

They say a father is a little girl’s first hero and the standard by which she measures every other man. But what happens when your hero is a grifter and a schemer who treats you more like an accomplice than a princess? And when your hero is a lawless pill-popping prankster who cheats death and hoards guns and chugs vodka by the gallon and howls at every full moon, what happens then? In this darkly comic memoir, Meg McCarville grapples with her “daddy issues” while celebrating the outrageous life and legend of the man who taught her everything worth knowing.

Reviews:

Meg McCarville writes hilarious sentences that often double as sharp gut punches. And when she isn’t punching you, her memoir affects the delightful pain that comes from relieving discomfort—like prodding a mouth ulcer or picking a scab. Daddy Stories is a fabulous scab that I picked at until it was gone.

--Anita Dalton, author of TL;DR: The Best of Odd Things Considered

05/28/2024 UPDATE: Click HERE to read an excerpt from Daddy Stories.

Kee MacFarlane

Richard Smith — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 17:54:48 +0000

02/13/2024 UPDATE: If you placed an advance order for this title, chances are it's either in your hands or in transit. A few orders -- mostly international orders -- remain to be dispatched, however, and I expect to have these out by the end of the week. I apologize for the delay, which is largely due to some unanticipated setbacks affecting my workaday schedule. But it's getting done, and your patience is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Format: 4.5 x 7 | 124 pages | Softcover

Notes: Limited edition of 200 copies; includes a separate pamphlet enclosure written by the publisher 01/31/2024 Update: Orders begin shipping today! US domestic single orders go first, followed by combined and larger US orders. International orders will then follow. I expect this to take a few days, so your patience is appreciated. Publisher's comments: This is Chip Smith of Nine-Banded Books, first-person-bombing the space where you would ordinarily expect to find some artfully contrived voice-of-god description of the book that grabbed your attention—in this event, a new one by Peter Sotos that you’re probably going to buy anyway, while supplies last, maybe to sell on eBay when you’re short for a fix a year from now (old joke, I know), regardless of what promotional palaver I might otherwise parse and place here, whether as a coy tease or as a gesture of semi-professional form or, let’s be honest, as a cataloging crib-sheet for wholesalers. I figure it hardly matters, since there won’t be wholesale options for this one. This book won’t be in brick & mortar shops, and it won’t be listed on other online storefronts. You can buy it here and here alone. The price is fair, I think, and the press run is strictly limited to 200 copies. Okay. So, what is it? It’s a pocket-size paperback—a slim volume that you really can slide into your pocket. Which is lovely, don’t you think? Just like in the old days. Except you probably shouldn’t put it in your butt-pocket if you plan to do the eBay thing. That’s rough on books. Warps the spine. Sure. But what’s it, you know, about? Oh, it’s about 120 pages. Har, har. Sorry. The book is "about" Vanessa Place. Sort of. That’s an oversimplification, of course, which should go without saying. But for present purposes I’d prefer that as our shorthand. Better not to muddy the waters. It’s about Vanessa Place. If you don’t know who Vanessa Place is, there’s probably an internet nearby. If you do know who Vanessa Place is, then you probably know two things about her—both of which, I promise, are salient in Sotos’ text. And for what it’s worth, this one is mostly text. But for a spare selection of bracketing images and graphic drops at the front and back of the book—all of which derive from my gum-chewing aesthetic sensibility, so you’ll know who to blame!—it could almost qualify as a scholarly monograph. Except for the jokes. Scholarly monographs don’t usually have jokes. And there are jokes in this book. Just like in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. So, it’s a joke book? Yes. It’s a joke book. A “joke book” by Peter Sotos. Go with that. It’s not true, not really. But it’s a fun rumor. If it seems I’m being too glib for the occasion, I should also mention that I have written more elaborately—and I hope, more thoughtfully—about the present release (and matters tangential) in a short zine-like pamphlet enclosure that will be included with every order. That’s where I talk about my embarrassing role in the book’s origin, and more candidly, about my personal history as Peter Sotos’ friend and occasional publisher. And that’s where I try to explain, contrary to this display of ill-advised anti-promotional whimsy, why I think Kee MacFarlane is something more incisive and relevant than I'm letting on. Even if it doesn’t have an ISBN. Anyhow, my little pamphlet thing is factored in the price. Think of it as a glorified “publisher’s note.” Or just use it as a bookmark. Any other questions? If it’s a joke book about Vanessa Place, then why is it called— —Please. Read the room.

Parents: What Are They Good For?

Richard Smith — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 22:56:25 +0000

Formats: 6 x 9 | 120 pages | Hardcover 4.25 x 7 | 120 pages | Softcover -- Benjamin DeCasseres’ essay “Parents: What Are They Good For?” originally appeared exclusively in the premiere issue (dated January 1, 1916) of Revolt, a short-lived literary anarchist periodical that was published and edited by Hippolyte Havel in New York City before being suppressed by the U.S. government. Despite the appearance of novelty, the idea to feature this nearly forgotten, century-plus-old essay as a short book is informed by a greater appreciation for DeCasseres’ marque as a prosodist, rhapsodist, and polemicist -- and even as a kind of philosophical gadfly. The present volume has thus been typographically arranged (and graphically supplemented) to showcase the author's stylistic and polemical brio, and in the hope of drawing greater attention to a uniquely provocative document in the literature of resistance. Available in hardcover and pocket paperback formats, it includes a facsimile reproduction of the first issue of Revolt and an afterword by Nine-Banded Books publisher Chip Smith. Although it bears the Nine-Banded Books colophon, it should be noted that Parents: What Are They Good For? is being released in solidarity with Kevin I. Slaughter’s nonpareil Union of Egoists publishing and archival project, where it arrives as publication SA1252 in the "Stand Alone" catalog of troublesome tracts and sundry exhibits that resound within the variegated idiom of philosophical egoism.

Justice, Primitive and Modern

Richard Smith — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:03:45 +0000

5 x 8 | 300 pages | Softcover ---- ...in anarchist societies, consent is retail, not wholesale. Most modern anarchists, like most other moderns, are ignorant of how disputes are resolved in stateless primitive societies. And they rarely talk about how disputes would be resolved in their own modern anarchist society. This is a major reason why anarchists aren’t taken seriously. I have a lesson for the anarchists. But I also have a lesson for modern legal reformers.

A Disease of the Dust: Pessimism and the Illusion of Progress

Richard Smith — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 02:26:35 +0000

6 x 9 | 286 pages | Softcover ---- As humanity awakens to the dawn of the Anthropocene it faces two interconnected existential threats. The coming onslaught of environmental devastation and our inability to change the systems of inequality and exploitation that remain central components of our societies. Confronting both requires that we ask difficult questions not only about ourselves as individuals, but the entire history of our species. In calling for the construction of new historical narratives utilizing a Pessimistic philosophical lens, A Disease of the Dust weaves together philosophy, history, religion, science, film analysis, and cultural criticism. While it may speak to those academic fields specifically, it is also meant for a wider, more popular audience. Anyone waiting impatiently for the long moral arc of the universe to bend towards justice will find a new way of conceptualizing our history as a species, the longstanding systems of inequality and exploitation endemic to our societies, and how what it will take to fully confront the unfolding devastation of the Anthropocene.

A History of Violence (1973)

NBBDev — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:05:46 +0000

Publisher's Note:

A History of Violence (1973) is being released in two editions, both of which are available at checkout. While the trade softcover (retailing at $30) should remain in print for a while, the hardcover edition is strictly limited to 100 numbered copies, each of which has been autographed by David Cotner on a series of nine custom-designed bookplates. This deluxe limited edition hardcover also features a distinctive dust-jacket and case-binding design and is printed on high quality glossy interior paper to more richly display the extensive collection of archival images that complement David Cotner's text. It was very expensive to produce and has been priced accordingly ($65).

7.5 x 9.25 | 360 pages | Profusely illustrated | Softcover & Limited Edition Hardcover

“...book of the year. Any year.”

–Philip Best, publisher, Amphetamine Sulphate

“An incisive autopsy of concentrated cultural psychosis. Like Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip, A History of Violence (1973) is an association-tripping chronicle of misery – but filtered through David Cotner’s intimate prose, it reveals a strange hopefulness that counteracts its despair.”

–Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women

“By drawing together and juxtaposing a series of separate events on the screen and in real life, A History of Violence (1973) shows us the unconscious of 1973, and it isn't pretty. A seedy masterpiece.”

–Mikita Brottman, author of Offensive Films

Once in a century, a book comes along that both defines a genre – and defies it. This is that century. This is that book. The book is A History of Violence (1973). A memoir of the human race. Its concept is simple: take the date in 1973 on which a violent film was first screened – and go beyond the film to see the world that exists outside the theatre. It’s a book that realizes that the line between life and cinema is as much a horizon as it is a terminator. A History of Violence (1973) takes you across that horizon to places in time you never even imagined existed. Because bombs don’t explode in only one direction. 169 films. The brutal and transgressive sex films (Forced Entry; High Priestess of Sexual Witchcraft; Teenage Jailbait). The films of cinematic masters like Brian De Palma (Sisters), Terence Malick (Badlands), and Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now). The Italian crime films (Death Carries a Cane; The Flower With the Deadly Sting; Torso). The police procedurals (Blade; The Laughing Policeman; The Marcus-Nelson Murders). The flat-out shocking and bizarre films that can only be appreciated by surviving them (The Hunchback of the Morgue; The Night God Screamed; The Sinful Dwarf).1973. The year that the War in Vietnam ends, military coups convulse Afghanistan and Chile and Rwanda, and the specter of Watergate looms large.1973. The year that a teen thinks his neighbor is using telepathy to make him gay – so he strips him nude, kills him and his entire family, and burns down their house. The year that a husband kidnaps young men and holds them at gunpoint – while they have sex with his wife. The year that a man goes out for a night on the town with a friend – and comes home to find that his wife has murdered their children, then killed herself. 1973. The year of the deaths of writers W.H. Auden and Victor Jara; actors Bruce Lee and Lon Chaney Jr.; and artists Robert Smithson and Pablo Picasso. The year of Skylab and Pioneer and Kohoutek. The year of the mass murders of Edmund Emil Kemper, Herbert William Mullin, Charlie Chop-Off, and The Alphabet Killer. A History of Violence (1973) also stands as a testament to the tireless efforts of law enforcement to solve the violent crimes that grip America. In 1973, America sees the first blue flashing lights that complete the lightbars of today’s police cruisers; the breathalyzer comes into common usage; and Dr. Lester Luntz becomes the first forensic odontologist to try to crack a case by obtaining a search warrant to get a cast of a suspect’s teeth. A History of Violence (1973). A history book for the history books. A History of Violence (1973) represents the culmination of 20 years of exhaustive research, employing the digital advances that have thrown wide the doors of archives everywhere for a greater understanding of the human condition – both scaling the heights of creation and plunging to the depths of annihilation. With an audience as wide-ranging as true-crime enthusiasts, police detectives and horror movie buffs, A History of Violence (1973) also presents a seething array of lurid and alluring movie advertising art – some unseen for more than 40 years. This isn’t the book about violence you thought you wanted. This is the book about violence you knew you needed. David Cotner is a culture critic, composer, and conceptual artist. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. He lives in and around the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area. Instagram: #violencestories

What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines. Railway trains only begin to exist when they are derailed, and the more passengers that are killed, the more the trains exist. Aeroplanes achieve existence only when they are hijacked. The one and only destiny of motor-cars is to drive into plane trees. Fifty-two weekends a year, fifty-two casualty lists: so many dead and all the better for the news media if the figures keep going up! Behind the event there is a scandal, a fissure, a danger, as if life reveals itself only by way of the spectacular, as if what speaks, what is significant, is always abnormal: natural cataclysms or social upheavals, social unrest, political scandals…Awful! Terrible! Monstrous! Scandalous! But where’s the scandal? The true scandal? Has the newspaper told us everything except: not to worry, as you can see life exists, with its ups and downs, things happen, as you can see. — Georges Perec, “The Infra-Ordinary” (1973)

The Myth of Human Rights

NBBDev — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 19:36:43 +0000

5 x 8 | 130 pages | Softcover

“There are fashions in clothes and music. And there are fashions in politics. One current fashion in politics, all over the world, is human rights: ‘Human rights is the idea of our time.’ Everybody likes human rights. Not everybody respects them. I will make the claim that human rights are never respected, as human rights. Because human rights have no objective reality, there is nothing to respect. Some humans are worthy of respect, but not their imaginary rights.” So begins Bob Black’s eviscerating critique of perhaps the most sacrosanct dogma in modern political pageantry — the idea that humans have rights. Observing that human rights are conspicuously overlooked in foundational works of moral and political philosophy, Black argues that their conception is best understood as a hypostatic promotion of legal rights that were originally codified and enforced to advance the interests of the State. Examining the conceit of transcendental discovery that animates various attempts to mold reality around the resulting idée fixe, Black demonstrates that conflicting claims about inherent rights (and corollary obligations) – whether countenanced by God or nature or posited through tortuous sleights of sophistry – invariably collapse under a modicum of scrutiny. In the course of dismantling the shaky metaphysical and logical scaffolding underlying various declarations of human rights, Black exposes the authoritarian hobgoblins that lurk within the lofty rhetoric of rights. Engaging with the relevant work of thinkers ranging from Max Stirner to Noam Chomsky, he demonstrates that, far from advancing liberty and human flourishing, the ecumenical myth of human rights provides ultimate cover for a boundless array of coercive agendas. In short, every claim of right is a veiled threat of violence. Interlacing scrupulous scholarship with iconoclastic wit and erudition, The Myth of Human Rights is an essential work of modern myth-busting by one of the most incisive and original anarchist freethinkers of our time. This Nine-Banded Books edition is supplemented with Bob Black’s tangentially relevant essay, “Anarchy and Democracy: An Unbridgeable Chasm.”

Outlaw History

NBBDev — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 19:27:20 +0000

4.25 x 7 | 292 pages | Softcover

Best known as an underground satirist (Lucifer’s Lexicon) and an irreverent critic of bien-pensant libertarianism (The Myth of Natural Rights), L.A. Rollins [1948–2015] was also an unruly exponent of historical revisionism who courted reprisal for his skeptical interrogations of canonical World War II and Holocaust historiography. Drawn from a variety of marginal sources dating from the mid-1980s, the essays and book reviews in Outlaw History provide contemporary readers with a time-capsule showcase of Rollins’ scathing and scrupulous approach to dissident history—both as a nominal practitioner of revisionism and, inevitably, as a skeptic of revisionist dogma. If these texts are as “problematic” now as when they were written, they also offer insight into a mode of unfettered freethinking that has since been expunged from intellectual discourse. To invoke a popular expression, L.A. Rollins “went there.” And he didn’t care. Outlaw History is the third volume in the “The Portable L.A. Rollins” pocket paperback series co-published by Nine-Banded Books and Underworld Amusements. It features an introduction by the erudite revisionist and conspiracy researcher Michael A. Hoffman II and a prolegomenon by Chip Smith of Nine-Banded Books.

On the Verge of Nothing: Pessimism’s Impossible Beyond

NBBDev — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 18:47:01 +0000

6 x 9 | 196 pages

Gary Shipley’s On the Verge of Nothing moves according to a patient logic, asking us to consider what follows when we begin from pessimism, rather than arriving at it. Through Shipley’s ciphers – Nietzsche, Pessoa, Lispector, contemporary performance art – pessimism is illuminated as at once unliveable and unconsolable, and yet unavoidable. Reading On the Verge of Nothing, the primordial philosophical question of “how to live” now takes on contours that are colder, more detached, and yet, somehow, deeply engaged. –Eugene Thacker, author of Infinite Resignation “Beginning insistently with the end of thought, this panegyric of the pointless offers a withering post-pessimistic ethics and aesthetics of diversionary tactics for life in the void. Territories traversed include dreams and delusions, the limits and purpose of self-consciousness, human animality, and the paradox of feeling-thinking. Gary J Shipley’s lucid, often pitiless diagnoses; rigorous, informed, and tight arguments; bons mots and essential apercus – larded with a rich compost of quotation (Pessoa, Lispector, Cioran, Kafka, etc.) – pursue a relentless thrashing of thought, sketching both a Bartlett’s and a Baedeker of our inevitable doom. These essays, aphorisms, fragments, and quotations have been shored not against but amidst ruin. Experimental, exploratory soundings and performances, a fantasia for the end of the world: this word horde is an essential drug for addicts of the impossible.” — Stuart Kendall, author of Georges Bataille