Somebody at a fair called our latest issue "great content" and I have been thinking about it ever since.
A feed is designed to forget you. Paper is designed to be kept. When you hand someone a zine, you are giving them an object that will sit on a shelf for years, get lent to a friend, and turn up in a box when they move house.
Paper doesn't refresh
- Print fifty copies before you post a single link
- Leave a stack at the library and the laundromat
- Put a mailing address in the colophon
- Trade, don't just sell
Every platform promises reach and then rents it back to you. A copier gives you reach at eight cents a page, and the only terms of service are the ones taped to the side of the machine.
The feed forgets. The shoebox remembers.
Nobody owns your stapler
None of this means the internet is the enemy. It means the internet is a great place to tell people where the zines are, and a terrible place to keep them.
If you are reading this at the collective, the good scissors are in the drawer marked "do not take the good scissors". Please do not take the good scissors.
Kit Moreno
Do you trade? I have a perzine about bus drivers I think you would like.
Jonah Mbeki
The photos are great. Is that the laundromat on Elm?
Pip Calloway
This is exactly the push I needed. Printing issue two this weekend.
Jonah Mbeki
Is there a way to do this with legal-size paper? That’s all our copier takes.
Rosa Lindqvist
Honestly this made me dig out a box of my own old zines.
Aurelie Fontaine
Saved this to print out, which feels like the right way to save it.
Ben Achterberg
The pull quote is going on my studio wall.
Ben Achterberg
Thanks for reading. Let us know how it turns out.
Mara KesslerAuthor
Seconded. A workshop would be brilliant.
Lou Ferreira
Thank you for writing this down. It’s the kind of thing people only ever explain in person.