C&F éditions is a publishing house founded in Caen in 2003 by Nicolas Taffin and Hervé Le Crosnier. Their editorial project focuses on digital culture and its critique.¹

It publishes “texts on digital culture, with a strong focus on the commons and education, and a critical stance that is reflected in the catalog as well as (in particular) in the choice of publishing tools”. Nicolas Taffin and Hervé Le Crosnier founded this publishing house, combining several professions and skills: graphic design, typography, and web design for the former; and library science and information and communication sciences for the latter.²

It is a small publishing house with in-house distribution, which gives it a certain amount of freedom in terms of pace and print runs. At C&F Éditions, editorial experimentation is taking a concrete turn with the “interventions” collection. The aim is to move away from traditional software such as InDesign and test a new book production chain based on web technologies: HTML, CSS, and the Paged.js library. In practical terms, this allows books to be composed directly in the browser, with a more flexible and collaborative approach.

Nicolas Taffin, a central figure in this approach, has been exploring publishing via CSS print for several years, a technique that transforms web content into printable pages. Starting with simple, sparsely illustrated texts, the “interventions” collection becomes an ideal testing ground for this method. The use of the AsciiDoc format allows for structured writing that is easily convertible to HTML and then laid out using Paged.js.

In 2019, Addictions sur ordonnance (Addictions on Prescription) by Patrick Radden Keefe on the “opioid crisis” in the United States was published. It is the first offset-printed book to have been produced with Paged.js³. Nicolas Taffin has documented the entire process on his blog.⁴

In 2011, they established the Fair Publishing License, which is intended for readers. “Authors use Creative Commons licenses to tell readers what they can do with their work. The Fair Publishing License aims to fulfill the same role in defining readers’ rights and responsibilities toward the publishing process.”⁵

I consider books to be an interface. They are not two different domains. When I say that I make books and that I make applications or websites, for me, it’s a continuum. (…) It’s the same in my work; I consider printed books to be an interface for accessing knowledge. So it’s an interface that has its own characteristics, characteristics that are interesting. (…) It’s something that allows you to navigate through information.⁶

> putting a number of books online, without protection, only the buyer’s name is displayed
> creation of tools
> concept of manufacturing