06 Apr 2009, Written by Kate Dandizette in zines, 1 Comments

Underground, Overground: the State of Zines Today

Zine publishing seems largely to have survived – touch wood – the current troubles facing independent magazine publishing (the collapse of IPA, the fall of titles such as Punk Planet and Kitchen Sink and the rest of what the Gawker media empire have been calling the great-magazine-die-off).

Magazines are flailing due to high production and distribution costs, two pitfalls that zines, by nature, avoid. But this isn’t to say that zines have remained unchanged since their heyday. After an explosion in the early to mid 90s, zines were arguably usurped by Livejournal as the independent (and navel-gazing) media du jour.

It is no longer simply a case of strolling into a local record or book store to peruse the zine rack. Aside from at your local (and sometimes rare) zine festival, finding zine networks or distributors can prove a bit tricky. For all their scarcity, zines are becoming hard to avoid in the mainstream media: books are being publishing, art galleries are hosting exhibitions and even newspapers are waxing nostalgic about zines. Is this a real resurgence or just a case of the media jumping on a bandwagon? According to Melissa, co-founder of Cherry Bomb, it is mostly the latter:
“the main change that I’ve noticed is the mainstream is starting to get interested, e.g there have been more books published talking about zines and zine culture , and also various public & academic libraries in NZ have started creating zine collections.”

Cherry Bomb existed as a dedicated comic and zine shop in Auckland, New Zealand from July 2004-November 2007. Moving online has proved a much different venture according to Melissa:
“It was sad in lots of ways to transition from our physical space to our online store. I felt like we had really built up a little community, we were a hub for people to come and meet at, a place where they could hold political meetings, parties, gigs, film screenings etc.”

“Our store acted as a very visible, political and creative statement in Auckland city, and there was something really nice about people being about to physically browse the stuff we had, and talk to us about it. Online however does have it’s advantages – it’s cheap (no rent to pay!) and makes it very easy for people all over the world to find out what you’re about….. The best thing of course would be to have an awesome website AND a shop space, but maybe that’ll come about in the future.”

This new-found attention paid by the mainstream media to zines haven’t exactly revolutionised those networks that still fly under the radar. Two recent examples of mainstream coverage do nothing to challenge this. Simon Reynolds claimed in a recent Guardian article that: “(a)lthough it’s hard to quantify, it feels like the fanzine is making a resurgence in the face of digital culture, just like that other analogue format, vinyl”. Despite this, the article focuses primarily on one-off art projects rather than self-made magazines. Harmony Korine (best known as the screenwriter of Kids) has released a book (called imaginatively The Collected Zines) of zines he created between 1992 and 1999, partly to stem the trading of the original publications at ridiculous prices on eBay. Neither of these events seem to indicate a major resurgence beyond the art gallery world.

Zine distribution networks are still out there, making the most of both email and postal connections. Marching Stars is a zine distro that stocks between 60-70 zines but, aside from a shift towards Paypal (rather than sneakily hidden money in the post), founder Lizzy hasn’t noticed any major changes over the last few years:

“There were a few UK distros that sold international perzine type zines which I LOVED and 2 closed and one went on indefinite hiatus (still hasn’t reopened) and I saw a gap. There’s Manifesta, which sells perzines with a feminist type slant, but most of them are from the UK and I have so many favourite zinesters who are international. I felt that someone should be making their zines more easily available in the UK, no-one was, I figured it was something I could do, so I started marchingstars.”

One difference Marching Stars has noticed is that there are fewer zine review listings amongst the back pages, a theory backed up by the recent decision by Xerography Debt to stop printing zine reviews. This decision was made because a blog provided a more timely way of providing zine reviews and the now co-exists alongside the printed version of the zine.

“The blog is fast and reaches a number of people, but certainly not everyone and it can be exclusionary”. (Davida from XD).

XD have also formed a partnership with distributor ‘Microcosm’ to try and offset some of the demands on the zine and allow it to stay in print:

“They will have no editorial control, but will help co-ordinate support and try and flow some new zines our way. Their mission and that of XD are actually very similar, so it is a perfect partnership. In this case, the zine and the distro are trying to actively support one another.”

On a larger and international scale, the Queer Zine Archive Project ensures obscure zine titles remains available across the world. While the QZAP’s main objective is to ensure zines are archived and future-proofed, new zines can also be distributed via the archive website.

Projects, like the US-based Trading Network seek to do for self-publishing what BookMooch and others have done for literary types. Inspired by postcardx.net project and similar in function to the now-inactive Zine Recycling Centre, The Trading Network encourages people to send random mail to others with similar creations on offer. This includes but is not limited to zines.

So, while this might not be the revival predicted in some quarters, there are plenty of reassuring signs of healthy and creative underground publishing networks.

Directories such as Zine World and Broken Pencil publish online guides as well as regular printed issues. Factsheet 5, a pivotal zine resource, also seems to be back in action. And sometimes, if you are lucky, there are Zine Fairs.

This feature originally appeared on Dandizette, A Pulp Magazine for Media Perverts

Kate Dandizette is the publisher of Dandizette, an online gazette about deviant media in all its forms, that celebrates unique and independent contributions to an increasingly saturated and standardized media world.

View all articles by Kate Dandizette.