Category: General

I’ve been reading Meta Zine by Davida Gypsy Breier (review to come later this week), and Davida touches on the subject of the changing face of what zines are. For instance, in the 90s, having a zine with an ISBN was to go against that which was zine culture. Zines spat in the face of print matter with ISBNs and told them they should be ashamed of themselves. (Not even close to quoting Davida’s words, by the way. Davida has a more mature writing style than yours truly.)

In more recent times, some zines have grown an expanded to a point of needing ISBNs. Where zines were the answer to an inclusive mainstream publishing machines back then, the ease of self-publishing these days means ISBN’d productions can still be the answer to traditional publishing now.

So where do e-zines fit in all this?

Davida mentions our mutual desire of reading more international zines but postage making it difficult to do so. It seems only natural that PDF versions of zines rise up in answer to this call, and yet… PDF zines, online zines, etc seem to be to the modern zinemaker what ISBN’d creations were to the 90s zinemaker. I have seen smug disgust thrown at them amongst comments of how e-zines are ruining zine culture.

But are they?

I would say no, but I’ve struggled with the question. In this zine, Davida brings up the facet of intent when it comes to the creation of a zine as well as the parallels between zinemakers now and those 20 and more years ago.

The zinemaker now may have something to say but not the means to say it in modern media. Sound familiar? The zinemaker now can’t afford to make [an ISBN’d creation accepted by mainstream publishers/physical copies of the zine], so the zine maker uses the means available – [cut and paste/a computer] – to make the creation and distribute it through [postal mail/email].

Sound familiar?

Davida does a much better job of illustrating the parallels, but when you look at the intent of creation along with the means by which the creations are made, you find things to be… rather interchangeable.

The picture above features the digital section of my Etsy store. After receiving a few comments about shipping, I decided that PDFs were a whole lot better than not being read at all. Some people scoff at others for selling digital media, but I now can’t help but think of how some people must have scoffed at those wanting a dollar or two in exchange for their few pieces of photocopied paper.

I often feel like a hypocrite, as I only review physical zines (for now) but I still sell digital ones. I feel mostly justified, given the stack of physical zines I have yet to review. But there is still that niggling bit that wonders if I don’t also have some of the deep-seated prejudices that have come with stepping into the zine community at this point of its evolution.

I haven’t put up this post to provide answers or even step on a soap box as such. More that I’m thinking a lot about this, and I’d be interested to read your thoughts if you have some to share. Is the digital somehow less than the physical? Is that only applicable in the terms of media – be it books, music, zines? Is it only about words? Is it strange we’re seemingly more okay listening to thousands of songs on our mp3 players rather than carting around tapes or CDs and yet have this resistance to reading thousands of books on our e-readers instead of carting around novels or zines?

Today was an absolute miseryguts kind of day with grey skies and a lot of rain. What’s one to do on such a day? Work on zine projects, of course.

Or do what you can to clean up mistakes. This is what happens when I get ahead of myself and print off the table of contents labels and then decide to rejig the actual interior of the zines.

Waste not, want not. Thank goodness for short print runs so it doesn’t take long to take care of these sorts of things.

But for some folding and sewing, Don’t Call Me Cupcake 5 is done!

Not one to stop while I still have ideas, I also took advantage of the dreary day by starting another zine project that I’ve had in mind for a long time. More details to come soon, but for now, just a peek…

My friend Fishspit emailed me recently and asked that I review some different topics in zines. Reading that, I realised that, yes, I do tend to stick mostly in a certain arena. Part of that is because poetry and I have a relationship that consists of awkwardly staring at each other in complete silence. Another part of it is that I know very little about any sort of music scene. The rest is a bit of a jumbled mess.

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking about reviews in general and how I haven’t really visited the topic since that one (and only) time I made a podcast on the subject. While I’m not quite in the space to make another podcast, I thought I’d write a bit about what’s going on in my head in regards to reviews.

*Only positive reviews… and neutral ones. True, sometimes a zine doesn’t exactly hit all the right spots for me, but I’m not here to simply trash anyone’s work. If I really don’t like it, I won’t review it.
*I won’t post street addresses. The more I think about it, the more I’m leaning towards posting post boxes in with reviews. But I’m still firmly a ‘no’ on the street addresses. I am biased by having been stalked in the past.
*I’m so-so about interior pictures. For me, it’s about length of zine. If I think a zine is short enough where a lot of the content will be ‘given away’ by revealing a picture, I won’t do it. I’m also a bit hesitant in general because that’s someone else’s art and/or words, but I have started to make the occasional exception.
*Requests for certain zine topics and such are totally okay! It’s all good so long as everyone understands that I can’t just drop everything and grab a zine on that topic. I’m limited by zine cost, postage cost, so on and so forth. But I will keep track of all requests.

I’ve only been sent a few zines to review at this point. Most of what I put up still comes from my own stock with a small percentage of that being trades and such. Even so, I’ve come to appreciate certain things

*Telling me it’s for review/it’s okay to review. Even if we’re doing a trade, saying, “Hey, I’d love it if you reviewed this” is perfectly good. It lets me know that I should probably move it a smidge further up in the queue instead of sticking it behind my own stock.
*The date. This just makes my life easier and makes it a little less likely that the sender will have to wait months for a review.
*Contact details to share. I will mention it if these details aren’t in the zine itself, but it’s really nice to have them in one place rather than needing to go hunting them down. (Hunting for further information is fun. Hunting for basic details… not so much.)
*Your identifying pronoun. This is a bit of a new one to me, but I do want this to be a positive space. I read an article a while back about a zinemaker whose pronoun is ‘they’ was listed as ‘she’, and they were very upset about it. You know me – I don’t want to upset anyone. So if your name points a person to an assumption that is wrong, please mention your preference.
*When in doubt, type. I love a handwritten letter, but if it’s difficult to read the handwriting, mistakes are easily made. When it comes to the things listed above, I’d rather not make mistakes.

I’m sure there’ll be other things that I think of here and there in the future, but that well and truly covers it for now. I’m happy to be where I am, doing what I’m doing in a way that lets other people know about zines. Any requests that aren’t to do with reviewing are also welcome. 🙂

I spent this evening finishing up my answers for Zine Nation‘s interview, and I’m feeling a little underqualified to answer some of the questions. Am I enthusiastic? Yes. Am I well-versed on the history of zines? Not so much.

Ah, well.

It’s pretty much my normal swing of things to be really focused and passionate about something and then try to undermine myself.

In other news, the first print run of Dear Anonymous 5 is hot off the press and ready for folding. All I need to do is wrap up and print Don’t Call Me Cupcake 5, and I’ll move on to an entirely new zine series that I’ve had in mind for quite a while now.

As you may have been able to tell, I’m blathering on a little, but it’s a wandering kind of day today.

More to come soon.

Today got away from me in a whirl of getting mail ready to go, errands, and a belated birthday meet up with a couple of of friends. Time flies when you’re having fun, and here we are.

Now I can go back to being a happy little hermit for a few weeks, at least, so there shouldn’t be any more delays for a while. ^_^

A bit of fun for your afternoon or evening. 🙂 I came up as F, though A and C were very close. I’d love to know what you got in the comments.

Today I have just a quick post to introduce a page I’ve been wanting to put together for a while:

Zine Videos

Woohoo!

This page is just a small collection of various zine-related videos I’ve found on YouTube and in other places. I thought it would nice to have one page to serve as a playlist of sorts.

I will be adding to it in the future, so if I’ve missed one of your favourite videos, please let me know. I’d love to add to the collection.

Despite having every intention of getting zine reviews done in advance so this exact situation wouldn’t happen… Here we are.

Maybe it doesn’t really mean anything to anyone other than me, but I do like to at least try for consistency here. It’s important to me that this be a place where people can – if nothing else – at least start their journey into the world of zines.

When I was first contemplating making a real go of it here (after my half-hearted attempt years ago), I looked at many, many different zine websites. Mostly zine review websites. While there are certainly those that were and still are going strong (Zine Nation, Xerography Debt, to name a couple), there were many out there that had stopped recently or even years ago.

I began to feel a little despondent, thinking that my reinvigorated passion for the community had come too late. The party had finished, the confetti was on the floor ready to be swept up, and not even the DJ was still around to say that it’d been great while it lasted.

At that point, I realised that, while what came before certainly did matter, the fact that so many thing had already stopped or closed would not stop me. I’m not at this point exactly sure what my ‘end aim’ is – if there even is one at all – but I know I am determined to create a space where people can learn about zines if they are new to the community or feel comfortable to hang around if they aren’t new to the community.

I don’t by any means see myself as anyone special, but I’ve felt that I can maybe – just maybe – create a space that amalgamates everything I love to the extent that it inspires others.

That’s why I become disappointed when I miss a review. That’s why, despite being fairly exhausted, I’m posting this here. I care, and I want to be the person I wish I could have had in so many different ways.

That’s probably a long story that I shouldn’t get into at the moment.

Anyway, what I am getting at in the most long-winded way possible is that I’m sorry I miss reviews – even if it turns out that none of you mind it too much. I am excited to tell you that I should be able to move into my forever home next year. And, no matter what it says of me, I am partly excited because I know that that means for what I will be able to do here.

I thank you all in the most heartfelt way for all the support I have found here, the new friends, the new follows, the everything. I am so happy here in a life where I have had… Well, I’ve had my difficulties. Let’s just say that I’m so happy to be doing what I do here, and the fact that anyone is getting enjoyment out of it (let alone the number of people who have actually said as much to me) is an amazing, wonderful thing to me.

I will accept that things are what they are right now. I will be back home this weekend and will endeavour to catch up with everything. I might even have the time and energy to plan something special for my birthday, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself (again). Haha.

My absolute best wishes to you all.

Today’s post us brought to you by the WordPress app. I’m still not sure how I feel about blogging on my phone, but I can’t deny that it makes things a bit easier – especially when you have a short trip away suddenly.

Well, not suddenly as such… But definitely not enough warning to do things like pre-post reviews…

This post comes post very long drive, post walking through pissing down rain for a few drinks and snacks for dinner, post getting moved to another room because the heater wouldn’t work and it’s freezing winter! I’m in a positive space, though, because there is a lot to be grateful for and to look forward to.

Coherent thought not being on that list, perhaps. 😉

Until I’ve had a good sleep (and, perhaps, you have too), I wish you nothing but the best.

Bedtime zine reading.