Have you heard the good news? July is International Zine Month! Thanks to Alex Wrekk of Stolen Sharpie Revolution and Brainscan fame, you can celebrate every day with a fun zine-centric activity. Peruse our blog for daily suggestions from the crew at Quimbys too! Stay tuned for awesomeness. And thus, we commence International Zine Month, (a ribbon to cut and a horn to toot, if you will), with a top ten list courtesy Liz Mason, Quimby’s Manager, Zine Maven and all-around Jill of all trades. David Letterman, watch your back.
July 1st’s activity is “Make a Top 10 list of reasons why your love zines!”
Well OK then! In no particular order:
1. Zines are not usually done for financial profit, so there isn’t a lot of advertising.
2. Since zines aren’t published by big fancy magazine publishers, the writer is usually also the editor and publisher, so that means there is less interference from someone with a mainstreamy agenda.
3. Everything looks cool when laid out in scrappy black and white cut-and-paste style.
4. Zines are usually less expensive then magazines.
5. Zines can focus on charmingly specialized topics, like dishwashing, pirate radio, or how to make a haunted house.
6. When you meet other people who are into reading or publishing zines, they are usually really cool people.
7. As a zine publisher, you can publish as often or as little as you like, which I like to think of as the “I’ll put out another issue when I’m damn good and ready” publishing schedule.
8. When you meet someone new you can school them in everything they need to know about you if you just hand them your zines and say, “Read these.”
9. There is no intermediary editor! What you say goes!
10. If you publish a zine you can trade with other zine publishers for theirs, and it’s a great way to make friends.
More about International Zine Month at stolensharpierevolution.org.
