NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/zines/418

Text File | 1993-01-28 | 5.5 KB | 93 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Johan Schimanski)
Subject: Re: Latest F5 info
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Followup-To: alt.zines,rec.mag,alt.postmodern,alt.slack,alt.music.hardcore,alt.cyberpunk,alt.thrash,alt.vampyres,alt.fandom.misc,rec.arts.sf.misc
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Organization: Comparative Literature - Oslo
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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 15:26:40 GMT
Lines: 79

In article <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (Bob Conrad) wrote:
>
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jennifer Engel) writes:
> >re: zines are only "punk" if they aren't sold for money, which is when they
> >become minature magazines

Bob, if you read Jennifer's post more carefully, you'll notice that this
first statement is a "quote", and that she is actually arguing against it.

Personally, I have published some 50-60 zines as of 1981, and only very few
of them did I sell for money. Just the first one, Outbreak, I think, though
some of the others had prices on them. Usually, if there was a price on
them, it was just to discourage people who weren't really going to read the
zine from buying it. Mostly I sent them in the mail to other
zine-publishers and handed them to friends I happened to meet. What I got
back was other zines, and contributions - even just a card saying thanks
was kind of cute.

Zines for me are something I do/did to stay alive, and I didn't mind using
money on them (other people use money on other stuff, so...). Often I
didn't have any money. Ok, how do you publish a zine on a minimal
subsistence level without having to ask for money? Well, there are various
methods. The main limitations are in time and space: if you want to go over
to a non-capitalist economy of zines, the first step is to tell yourself
that you are not interested in appearing regularly, and not interested in
reaching more than 50-200 people.

Printing: if you have to have xerox or offset, beg, borrow and steal.
Friends, workplaces, friends' workplaces, etc. This is underground
subversive stuff. I got a bit tired of it after a while, and moved over to
stencil. To print with stencil (mimeograph) is an art, and luckily it is a
fairly accepted form for sf-zines (I don't know, maybe punks are more
picky?). All you need is a mimeo, and since mimeos are now an "outmoded"
technology, it can be quite easy to get one cheap or even for free. Offices
sell them and dump them, political organizations more than 15 years old
usually have one in a back room, etc. For a time, we had 3 of them in our
house. This is cheap, and has the added advantage that you have total
control, because you are doing it at home.

Distribution: there are various ways of getting round high prices. Swedish
fans used to  mail zines with 10 ┐re stamps on the envelopes, judging
accurately that if you posted them in different mail-boxes, the post office
would never find out. They often reuse stamps as well, and some of them
used to spray soluble glue on the stamps so the reciever could remove the
cancelling marks. Envelopes are of course also reusable, in fact reusing
them is a good idea because it saves trees. And you can also co-operate on
distribution. The Swedish Fanzine Society, for example, is an organization
which exists solely to provide you with a) 6 packets of zines a year, and
b) the right to distribute your zine to all the members in one (or more, or
each) of these packets if you can get the right amount of zines to the
distributors for each mailing (the distributor changes each time, in
anarchic rotation). All this for 50 Swedish kroner each year; the price of
a cheap meal here in Scandinavia. They have about 60 members. And then of
course you have personal distribution at meetings and conventions.

Of course, the material constraints of such a process have a lot to do with
the contents of the zines produced - mostly very intertextual and
interpersonal. This is the way sf fanzines work - at least those which are
"post-sf" "meta-fannish" or whatever you might call it. If they at all talk
of an economy, it is an economy of barter, called "Trade". You get the zine
for "the usual" - your own zine in trade, or a contribution, say a letter
of comment. But after a while, many zine communities end up with people
sending each other zines just because they want to keep in contact, want
people to read their stuff. The only zines of this type which you can get
for money are newszines which come out on a regular basis, monthly,
biweekly or weekly. They often operate with subscriptions, because they
have to come out fast.

    So, there you have a few tools for getting out of the capitalist economy -
I'm sorry if I sounded snobbish earlier, I don't look down on zines which
take money as such; I don't like people who talk about EARNING money on
zines, but I don't suppose anybody else out there likes them either.
       Oh; mail-art zines - do they usually take money?

Johan Schimanski             [e-mail]
pb.1015 Blindern               N-0315 OSLO, Norway
[phone]                    [phone]
my love is like a liquid    it flow fitful day and night