When I talk to people about some of my books, I am occasionally asked how many of them have I published to date. More often than not, I just chuckle and wave my hand casually. If I am pressed, I admit that the number is beyond me. Every now and then, I mention in passing that I have come up with a few professional books before my retirement from teaching and research, as well as a whole bunch of books that span art and literature, most of which have followed my retirement. At any rate, I have never attempted to come up with the right number. Until today, that is.

There are only four professional books to my name, of which the first one does not have a bona fide publisher behind it. It was published by an institute in which I worked for four years just after finishing my postgraduate studies, and it is impossible to find it in the marketplace any longer. Notably, the book in question is the very first selection from my Residua (www.residua.org). But the other three books bear the imprints of publishers of international acclaim, one from America and two from Britain. Back then, good publishers were essential in promoting books across the globe. Here goes:

Notes on Social Planning, Ljubljana: Urban Planning Institute of Slovenia, 1977.

Building as an Economic Process: An Introduction to Building Economics, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1989.

Economic Structure and Maturity: Collected Papers in Input-Output Modelling and Applications, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2000 (republished by Routledge, London, in 2018).

The Future of International Construction, London: Thomas Telford, 2000 (with David Crosthwaite).

All the remaining books are in art and literature. The first five of them were published in London by the Hereford Salon (www.herefordsalon.org), the publishing arm of which was in my hands at the time. Although this could be derisively called self-publishing, quite a few books authored by others came out under the same imprint. Back then, Hereford Salon was properly registered as a publisher, and copies of all its books were permanently stored in a number of leading public libraries across Britain. Here are my own books:

Three Conversations on Art Institutions and Their Future, London: Hereford Salon, 1995 (editor, with Lauren Bon).

Why I Am Perhaps Not and Artist, London: Hereford Salon, 1996.

Residua, Vols. I-XX, Selections, London: Hereford Salon, 1996.

Salon: Whence and Whither? First Lecture, London: Hereford Salon, 1997.

Salon: Whence and Whither? Second Lecture, London: Hereford Salon, 1997.

Now, there are four books in the art and literature category that have other publishers. Three of them were published in Belgrade by two different publishers, and one was published in Munich. The books published in Belgrade could be found in bookstores in the city, as well as on the World Wide Web, but the book from Munich has never reached the marketplace in Germany or elsewhere. Rather, it was presented to an international association of publishers to which the publisher of the book belongs. Here goes:

Belgrade Postcards, Belgrade: Vračarski Breg, 2002.

Istrian Postcards, Belgrade: Vračarski Breg, 2003.

Toward a Short History of Motovun, Munich: Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag, 2010.

What Is to Be Done? Climate Change for Beginners, Belgrade: HESPERIAedu, 2014.

And the following nine books are available for free in Portable Document Format on my Ca’ Bon Gallery website (www.cabongallery.org). This also holds for the above four books, as I have eventually regained copyrights from the original publishers. There is one more book that falls into the last category, but it not yet complete at this date. It is Residua: Directory, which is likely to appear in print, as it were, in about five years. By now, I am my own publisher, and I have long stopped looking for any other. As far as I am concerned, looking for the right publisher is a waste of time nowadays. Anyhow, here goes:

Cave Art Now: Shamanism and Geometric Art, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2003.

Motovun Postcards, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2007.

Dying to Go to Strasbourg: My Struggle with Croatian Courts, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2015.

Zagreb Postcards, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2016.

Who Is Yoga? The Will to Ignorance, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2016.

Letters to The Economist, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2017.

Catching Up with Issa: Haiku for the Twenty-First Century, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2019 (first published in 2011).

Fact and Fiction: Stories, Tales, and Fables, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2019 (first published in 2017).

I Dreamt, Motovun: Ca’ Bon Gallery, 2019 (first published in 2018).

All told, there are twenty-two books to my name at this time. In five years or so, there will be twenty-three of them. Amazingly, this is the very first time I have come up with the full count. Which is why the number strikes me as somewhat surprising. Before this exercise, my guess would have been that there were seventeen or eighteen books in my wake. From now on, though, I will always be on the ready when asked about the number of my books. With some luck, I will not forget it till my last day. My only hope is that I will not come up with any other books in the years to come. Alas, there are way too many of them already!

One notable thing about my many books is that most of them are selections from my Residua. This is not the case only with three professional books, and the first book in the art and literature category, which is based on interviews of friends and acquaintances in the art world. The eighteen remaining books come from the same source, which currently counts close to four-million words written over four and a half decades. The book of books, as I like to call it. But all I wish for it in the future is determined and prudent rounding off or wrapping up. I will be adding to it for as long as I can, but I wish it to peter off until the last and decisive burst, which is uppermost on my mind lately. The end!