Ciara Xyerra : extortion is so punk rock

yoursecretary:

At least once or twice a month I have a discussion with someone new to the zine community about why I chose not to support Microcosm Publishing. Here is Ciara’s blog post about the cancellation of the Microcosm-related “Bikes and Dinner” event in Lawrence, KS. 

Just dropping by with some good old fashioned self promotion! Back in March (geez! that seems so long ago!) I made a split zine with Jami (yoursecretary). I just found out that there’s a really nice review of it on the Quimby’s website, so I thought I’d post it here because I’m bad at summarizing things:

Complicated folding in both the physical and emotional realms [Jami and I each designed a fold out map, one folds out from the front cover and the other is a centerfold — Jami’s is more a traditional map, mine is modeled on reliquaries. Anyway…]. Your Secretary #6 draws a mental map of/for/with and around the memories of a dead older brother. Lake Effect #1 talks about permeating multiform violence, and complicating “survivor” as an identity term. Jami and K.’s writing is not just sincere, it’s a heartonsleeve guide to places of human pain and loss, and despite it all, a guide to similar places where resiliancy, vitality, wit and inner power seep through. There’s special foldout arts too and the whole is wrapped up in a foxy Dame Darcy cover. -EF

So, if you want one, you can get it from Quimby’s or you can PayPal me (info here.)

autostraddle’s post on zines

creatrixtiara:

garconniere:

lookuplookup:

I’m typically not a finger pointer, but this post about zines on Autostraddle is breaking my heart! For me, stuff like this strips zines of pretty much everything that got me interested in them in the first place. I thought about leaving a comment, but worried that I would end up coming across as a sanctimonious old biddy. But really? $10 for a half size zine that is only 8 pages and is just pictures and lists of things someone likes??? As a former distro owner, this is the kind of stuff that blows my mind!

A friend of mine who reads Autostraddle regularly and who has been involved in the same zine community as I have for a long time solicited feedback on the post for a response she plans to share with the article’s author and while I was giving her my 2 cents the most frustrating thoughts kept ringing through my head — namely, a lot of people just straight up don’t care about political/ethical components of pricing zines and helping to keep zines accessible & for me, it sort of hurts to see zines being ripped apart from politics and made slowly into consumerist things, because one of the things that (for me, at least) makes zines feel alive and vibrant and important is the fact that they’re oftentimes informed by a political subculture with a strong ethical code.

Also, it just sort of blows to see that they referred people to Microcosm for zines when at this point it’s pretty common knowledge that in addition to Joe being a known abuser, Microcosm is responsible for a lot of crummy business practices (reprinting people’s zines without their consent, withholding payment from people, bullying people into selling their zines at lower wholesale prices, etc.)

oh wow… i agree. this is kind of a bummer. of all of the distros they could possibly recommend, they only recommended microcosm? i mean, even if you are arguably new to the world of zines, the 4th google result when you search microcosm zines is called “Distributing with Microcosm… or not.” and it’s not the only one, so that’s not even a little bit snobby to question this rec by a queer, feminist, progressive blog. at least creatrixtiara pointed that out in the comments already. hear hear!

that issue aside, it is difficult (but important!) to find a balance between sharing your wisdom/suggesting more helpful resources without coming off as a condescending know-it-all or a purist (or as you put it, a sanctimonious old biddie tee hee hee). but the original poster herself admits she just got into zines and chapbooks a few months ago so i feel like it’s not out of line. i personally think it would be a great opportunity to respond with your feelings! i mean, it’s really easy to fall into straight-up snobbery when you’ve been interested and involved in this world for ages and you read a comment that says “OMG OMG, I was just bitching at someone about how zines need to be a thing again.” because to me, that feels incredibly dismissive to the amazing artists, zinesters, and distros who never stopped? and didn’t just start existing when you discovered them for yourself? part of my affection for zines and zine culture is that it has something that has been around for a while, and has a rich complicated cultural history. comments like those aside: at the same time, it is great to hear enthusiasm from people who are completely unpretentious about the fact that they are completely new to zines.

i like that the post makes it seem really easy and simple to do, but i don’t like that it doesn’t give any context about the history of zines or what the content should be. about having a cohesive theme. about the different kinds of zines you can make. about the difference between a fan zine and a per zine. about split zines. about punk zines, about riot grrrl zines, etc. that’s more what i would want the first conversation about zines to be, rather than the actual “this is how you can fold one kind of zine.”

(for the record, i’ve only made four zines (between the ages of 16-19) and never charged more than the price of making them… which was generally 1$-3$, max. and they were mostly just absurd and ridiculous save for one overly intense one i made for a class that ended up being epic and long and really hard to make copies of.)

I did think the $10 tag was excessive, but I thought it was mostly a fundraiser thing - they were fundraising to keep the site up and there were quite a few people who said they would contribute $X if there were zines involved. I don’t think they’re planning to make this a totally consumerist venture.

I’ve been thinking about the role that fundraising possibly played in the pricing of the zines being sold on Autostraddle & while I get that money is a very real and pressing need for projects like Autostraddle, I still think that the exorbitant prices could’ve been modified — I mean, instead of selling 10 zines for $8, they could’ve sold 80 zines for $1 a piece (or a base donation of $1 plus whatever the donor felt capable of contributing) and walked away with the same amount of money or more. I know that I would hesitate to spend $10 or more on a zine because I just don’t have the extra money right now, so in some ways, by pricing their zines so high, they might be alienating a potential donor base.

That said, I definitely don’t mean to come off as the Zine Police or the Fundraising Police — I know that not everyone has the spoons to assemble 100 zines and mail 100 packages. Sometimes 8-10 is all someone can handle and I get that. I definitely, definitely get that. For me pricing was only part of my issue with their article. I was a little more perturbed by zines being stripped of their larger sociocultural/sociopolitical history and by the endorsement of Microcosm Publishing as a place to go to find out more about zines. I did notice your comment offering some additional info on Microcosm & I was encouraged to see that some people had responded to it saying they appreciated being made aware of some of the ethical reasons some people might have for not wanting to support Microcosm, but I was disheartened to see that the endorsement of Microcosm remains intact on their post w/o any additional commentary.

Fundraising politics totally aside, speaking just from the perspective of an individual who makes zines, I think of pricing zines as both a political and a personal decision — I’m spending my Friday night assembling zines for a distro order and it’s really tough work (and I’m lucky enough to have resources like a paper cutter and a small booklet stapler.) There are times where I’d like to charge a lot more for my zines than I do — it’s labor to write, to print, to cut and assemble. It sucks to walk away from a project with sore wrists and an aching back. But I don’t feel like I’m devaluing my labor when I price my zines at $1 or $2 — I feel like I’m keeping them accessible to distro owners and individuals. I feel like I’m upholding an ethical tradition that’s based on building community as opposed to making a profit.

I’m typically not a finger pointer, but this post about zines on Autostraddle is breaking my heart! For me, stuff like this strips zines of pretty much everything that got me interested in them in the first place. I thought about leaving a comment, but worried that I would end up coming across as a sanctimonious old biddy. But really? $10 for a half size zine that is only 8 pages and is just pictures and lists of things someone likes??? As a former distro owner, this is the kind of stuff that blows my mind!

A friend of mine who reads Autostraddle regularly and who has been involved in the same zine community as I have for a long time solicited feedback on the post for a response she plans to share with the article’s author and while I was giving her my 2 cents the most frustrating thoughts kept ringing through my head — namely, a lot of people just straight up don’t care about political/ethical components of pricing zines and helping to keep zines accessible & for me, it sort of hurts to see zines being ripped apart from politics and made slowly into consumerist things, because one of the things that (for me, at least) makes zines feel alive and vibrant and important is the fact that they’re oftentimes informed by a political subculture with a strong ethical code.

Also, it just sort of blows to see that they referred people to Microcosm for zines when at this point it’s pretty common knowledge that in addition to Joe being a known abuser, Microcosm is responsible for a lot of crummy business practices (reprinting people’s zines without their consent, withholding payment from people, bullying people into selling their zines at lower wholesale prices, etc.)

sheresists:

 lookuplookup replied to your post:Had an awkward moment at a punk show tonight in…

This dude sounds like a real jerk, but he may have been charging for SS b/c he bought copies directly from Osa @ a wholesale rate. It seems like most online distro price copies of SS at $3. But if he’s just charging for copies he made, that’s fucked.

It seems like he was distroing copies that he made because when someone else asked him where they could get more issues of SS, he said, “I don’t know, I just got these from a shitty distro.” Which, probably means he bought them from another distro and made copies. Also, charging $3 is really besides the point. If you have no racial analysis and fail to see the fucked upness of many of the punk scenes, then your really shouldn’t be distroing SS, especially because SS talks a lot about the fucked up racial dynamics of the punk scene. Like regardless if it was bought wholesale, you don’t get to use zines like SS as your token punk of colour zine and then be super privileged enough to not give a shit if you’re distroing stuff that is racially appropriative. 

That’s totally messed up & I’m sorry to hear about your interactions with this guy. I’m oftentimes in a place where my privileges tend to lead to me giving people the benefit of the doubt w/r/t stuff like this when it turns out that they don’t really deserve the benefit of the doubt anyway. I apologize for my comment insinuating that it was ok for this dude to benefit from Osa’s work (my mind immediately went into “former distro owner” mode & my comment focused more on the economics of running a distro as opposed to the personal and political aspects of curating a distro selection.) I definitely agree with you that white distro owners should never have “token punk of color [zines],” should never use the work of POC zinesters to make their catalogue seem “edgy”or “radical,” etc. On top of that, I feel really strongly about recopying other zinester’s work without their permission and selling it for profit. When the politics of the person profiting are negligible (at best) and awful (at worst), it adds insult to injury.

The personal and professional politics of zine sharing and distribution are tricky, but I feel like they should be simple: check with someone to make sure they’re ok with you distributing their work; respect the rules that people have established for the distribution of their material; if you didn’t create something, don’t treat it like it’s your intellectual property; if someone asks that you stop distributing their work, respect their decision; etc. In a lot of ways, I continue to feel really bothered by the way a lot of people approach wider distribution of zines as a free-for-all where you can just copy whatever you want and sell it. I see the same old arguments happening over and over again in the zine world re: recopying zines or re-selling zines that you didn’t make. In my humble opinion, it’s just straight up never okay to re-copy someone’s zine unless you have their express permission to do so & it’s never ok to distribute someone’s zine without their consent & on top of that, if you do distribute someone’s zine, you need to be transparent w/r/t whether or not you’re charging for it & how much money you’re charging. I’ve seen my crummy little zines resold on eBay and been way marked up by distros & it really, really bothers me.

It really sucks to hear that Osa’s zine is being redistributed by someone who seems to have no understanding of/respect for the real, important, & necessary work she’s doing with Shotgun Seamstress.

(Source: mytongueisforked)

Chicago Zine Fest Roll Call! - We Make Zines

greycozyhouse:

hello-amber:

Two weeks away! Who else is going? I’m tabling with Fight Boredom Distro and debuting the latest issue of Culture Slut.

Me!  Not with any zines but with money to buy some, and with a lot of hugs for my faraway friends.  I’m looking forward to Cindy Crabb’s workshop because it is on exactly one of the reasons why I have been putting off making a zine for 7+ years of and working on it and then just pitching it. 

I’ll be there! I’m taking the bus with bluebeadsandbones and veryemergency and am tabling with yoursecretary. I’m hoping to have a couple of new zines with me.