Paparutzy’s 24.#PRICEPT.$ is a conceptual play on words and an artistic application of price policy enabled by print on demand. Except for the title page (and some blank pages at the very end of the book), it consists of a constellation of three images on a page that refer to the word “point.” This page is repeated twenty-four times. The first image depicts a typical box for selecting font size, such as in Adobe software, but it is empty except for the abbreviation “pt,” which stands for the smallest unit of measurement in typography. The second image is a photograph of a hand pointing to a small golden square on a wall, presumably an analog interpretation of a pixel, the screen-based unit that forms the basis for pt measurement. The third image shows a zoomedin finger, pressing the period key on a keyboard in the same color as the small dot in the second image. This sequence of images forms a semiotic loop between analog and digital representations, measurements and semantics.

Yet this loop remains arbitrary, leaving readers to wonder what the point of the book is. It becomes clearer when accessing the blurb on the Lulu webshop: “The price is the point is the price is the point,” repeated three times. The price of the book is exactly $24, which is also exactly the number of pages of content, making the price literally the point of this book.

24.#PRICEPT.$ is the first in a series of six publications with identical content, but always with the number in the title double that of the number in the previous publication’s title. The number determines the price and the number of pages of content. Paparutzy’s series ends with 768.#PRICEPT.$, sold for $768 and with 768 pages of content, which is the highest number of pages that Lulu can provide in that book format.