Zine

A zine—an abbreviation of the word fanzine, and originating from the word magazine—is most commonly a small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest.

Zines are written in a variety of formats, from computer-printed text to comics to handwritten text (a famous example being the eponymous work of Aaron Cometbus). Print remains the most popular zine format, usually photo-copied with a small circulation. Topics covered are broad, including political, personal, social, or sexual content far enough outside of the mainstream to be prohibitive of inclusion in more traditional media. The time and materials necessary to create a zine are seldom matched by revenue from sale of zines. Small circulation zines are often not copyrighted and there is a strong belief among many zine creators that the material within should be freely distributed. In recent years a number of photocopied zines have risen to professional status and have found wide bookstore distribution. Most notable among these are Giant Robot, The Comics Interpreter, and Lollipop.

History

Since the inventing of the printing press (if not before), dissidents and marginalized citizens have published their own opinions in leaflet and pamphlet form. Thomas Paine published an exceptionally popular pamphlet titled "Common Sense" that led to insurrectionary revolution. Paine is considered to be a significant early independent publisher and a zinester in his own right, but then, the mass media as we now know it did not exactly exist. A countless number of obscure and famous literary figures would self-publish at some time or another, sometimes as children (oftentimes writing out copies by hand), sometimes as adults.

The exact origins of the name "zine" and the moment when the word was first used are controversial. The concept of zines clearly had an ancestor in the amateur press movement (a major preoccupation of H.P. Lovecraft), which would in its turn cross-pollinate with the subculture of science fiction fandom in the 1930s. Fanzines enabled fans to write not only about science fiction but about fandom itself and, in so-called perzine (i.e. personal zine), about themselves. As the Damien Broderick novel Transmitters (1984) shows, unlike other, isolated, self-publishers, the more "fannish" (fandom-oriented) fanzine publishers had a shared sensibility and at least as much interest in their relationships between fans than in the literature that inspired it.

The punk zines that emerged as part of the punk movement in the late 1970s changed everything. Created almost entirely by people who had never heard of fandom, they owed nothing to their predecessors. Simultaneously, cheap photocopying had made it easier than ever for anyone who could make a band flyer to make a zine.

During the 1980s and onwards, Factsheet Five (the name came from a short story by John Brunner), originally published by Mike Gunderloy and now defunct, catalogued and reviewed any zine or small press creation sent to it, along with their mailing addresses. In doing so, it formed a networking point for zine creators and readers (usually the same people). The concept of zine as an art form distinct from fanzine and of the "zinesters" as member of their own subculture, had emerged. Zines of this era ranged from perzines of all varieties to those which covered an assortment of different and obscure topics which web sites (such as Wikipedia) might cover today but for which no large audience existed in the pre-internet era.

The early 1990s riot grrl scene encouraged an explosion of zines of a more raw and explicit, more confrontational and definitely more gender-balanced (until this time, males tended to make up the majority of zinesters) nature. Following this, zines enjoyed a brief period of attention from conventional media and a number of zines were collected and published in book form. Some believe that the widespread adoption of web browsers starting in 1996 marked a change for this period of print zines.

Between 1997 and present, now out of the limelight, zines have been adopted by those particularly attached to the print medium; for artistic purposes not able to be replicated on a computer, functional purposes (a zine is innately more portable than a computer), or for subcultural reasons (like finding a zine can create a sense of feeling you are a part of something 'neat' or 'obscure').

Zines continue to be popular. Currently "zines" are important to the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement. Recently galvanizing social issues such as globalization, environmentalism, media conglomeration, American imperialism and consumerism have been addressed within the pages of zines. Not all zines endorse any particular ideology. Current trends are easing back towards obsessive fan culture about a specific topic as the personal zines are starting to dwindle in numbers, replaced primarily by blogging.

Distribution

Zines are often distributed through secondary circuits, such as: trade, zine symposia, record stores, concerts, independent media outlets, mailings, or zine "distros." Many zines are distributed for free or cost less than $1.00 and rarely more than $5.00.

Bookstores that stock zines and even zine stores have become increasingly common in the United States. Some notable examples include Gigglebot Distro in Atlanta, GA Reading Frenzy in Portland, OR, Needles and Pens in San Francisco, Quimby's in Chicago, Mac's Backs Paperbacks in Cleveland, OH, Arise Books in Minneapolis, Boxcar Books in Bloomington, IN, Wooden Shoe Books in Philadelphia, and The Book Beat Book Shop in Oklahoma City, OK.

Many major libraries carry zines and other small press publications, usually ones that are relevant to a local or special interest section. Two examples are the Salt Lake City Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library. Also, zine collections may be housed within a university library, usually in the Special Collections Department, such as DePaul University's or the Sarah Dyer Collection at Duke University.

There also exist libraries devoted entirely to zine production and/or archiving. Examples in the United States are:
*the Gigglebot Library
*the Chicago Underground Library
*the Denver Zine Library
*the Zine Archive and Publishing Project in Seattle, Washington
*the Papercut Zine Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts
*the Independent Press Resource Center, a Portland, Oregon zine library and resource for writing and distributing zines.

In Canada, there are:
* Bibliograph/e in Montréal
* the Welland Zine Library (11 Ascot Ct., Welland Ontario, Canada, L3C 6K7)

Despite all of these outlets, zines are most often obtained through mailorder distributors. There are many cataloged and online based mailorder distros for zines. Some of the longer running and more stable operations include Last Gasp in San Francisco, Microcosm Publishing in Portland, OR, Loop Distro in Chicago, Great Worm Express Distribution in Toronto, and All That Glitters in Nottingham, England. Zine distros often have websites which you can place orders on. Because these are small scale DIY projects run by an individual or small group, they often close after only a short time of operation. Those that have been around the longest are often the most dependable.

Zine Distros:
* 100 Lighted Trees
* All That Glitters
* Alive and AWOL (anarcho primitivist)
* American Waste
* Blank Page Distro
* Cause & Effect Distribution
* C/S Distro c/s
* Crimson Regret Zine Distro
* Driving Blind Distro
* Fall of Autumn Distro & Zinester Podcasts
* Fatcheeks Distro
* Gigglebot Distro
* Girl + Distro
* Girl Gang Distro
* Gluestick Distro
* Great Worm Express Distribution
* HousewifeXcore Distro
* Independent Media Room in Livingston, Montana
* Institute for Experimental Freedom(insurrectionary anarchy)
* Learning To Leave A Paper Trail
* MAD People Distro
* Microcosm Distro in Portland, Oregon
* Moonlight Requisition Distro
* My My Distro
* Nekusis Publishing & Distro
* North West Zine Works Distro & Review Site
* Not Today Zine Distro
* Powderbox Zine Distro
* Quiver Distro (insurrectionary anarchism)
* Silent Star Distro
* Spare Change Distro
* Surreal Awakening
* Tightspace
* Whammy! Industries
* Wingless Zine Distro
* Wrong Number Distro

Zine Distros That Are No Longer In Operation:
* Moon Rocket Distribution
* Neon Pavement
* NorthStar Distribution
* Sew True
* Spy Kids DistroWebzines are to be found in many places on the Internet. One such site, efanzines.com, makes an archive of more than 80 science fiction zine titles available for download in PDF format.

Zine events

In the United States, there are many high-profile annual events, such as:
*The Zine-A-Palooza
*The San Francisco Zine Festival.
*The Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco, California.
*The Portland Zine Symposiumin Portland, Oregon.
*The Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio.
*The Boston Zine Fair, formerly known as Beantown Zinetown.
*The Madison Zine Fest in Madison, Wisconsin.

In Canada, the largest annual event is Canzine in Toronto and Vancouver, organized by the publishers of Broken Pencil. Expozine is also held annually in Montréal, and the North of Nowhere (NoN) Expo is held in Edmonton.

In the United Kingdom, there are:
* The London Zine Symposium, which in 2006 was held in an autonomous social centre.
* The Manchester Zine Fest.

Zines in fiction

The main character of a Canadian television show produced by the CBC called Our Hero, Kale Stiglic Cara Pifko created her own zine.

Damien Broderick's novel Transmitters follows a small group of Australian science fiction fans through their lives over several decades. Pastiches of fanzine writing (from fictitious fanzines) form some of the text of the novel.

In the novel Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger, the main character John begins writing a zine called Bananafish after reading other people's zines he found at Tower Records. One of these zines is written by a girl named Marisol who writes a zine called Escape Velocity. After reading her zine, John decides to meet her and their friendship grows from there.

In the Nickelodeon cartoon show Rocket Power, one of main cast characters, Reggie, publishes her own zine, which she uses to expose embarrassing dirt on her friends Otto and Twister. In this way she is able to get back at them for mercilessly teasing her.

Books about zines

*Bartel, Julie. From A to Zine: Building a Winning Zine Collection in Your Library. American Library Association, 2004.
*Duncombe, Stephen. Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. Verso, 1997. ISBN 1859841589
*Kennedy, Pagan. Zine: How I Spent Six Years of My Life in the Underground and Finally...Found Myself...I Think (1995) ISBN 0312136285
*Spencer, Amy. DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture. Marion Boyars Publishers, Ltd., 2005.
*Vale, V. Zines! Volume 1 (RE/Search, 1996) ISBN 0965046907
*Vale, V. Zines! Volume 2 (RE/Search, 1996) ISBN 0965046923
*Wrekk, Alex. Stolen Sharpie Revolution. Portland: Microcosm Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0972696725

External links

*$100 and a T-shirt, a video documentary about zines
*Zine (zeen) listing
*Zine Usenet Newsgroup
*The Zine Yearbook, an annual zine anthology
*Zinelibrary.net
*The Book of Zines
*North Wezt Zine Works Zine reviews and distro, also contact information for the zine community at large
*Broken Pencil (Canadian zine review/digest)
*Art Zines Reviewed
*Zinestreet:A Goddamn Massive Directory Zine Distros, stores and libraries
*Zine Resource Community: Livejournal.com's first and largest zine community, communally moderated.
*Zinetrade.net
*The Forgotten Zine Archive
*Zine World (review zine)
*ZineWiki.com an indepedent wiki for zines and zinesters
*Photocopied Heart a forum for the zine community

Zine: Encyclopedia BETA

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