Inspired by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
duranorak requesting my "wisdom." This concerns the music variety of zine; readers of this journal who do SF zines are invited to comment on those as well.
The trouble with paper fanzines is that the Internet has made them useless except as art objects — whereas zines rose to fame as the only way for vital subcultural information to get out, the Internet kicks their arse for immediacy. So news on paper is unlikely to have a point to it. Consider the shiteness of the weekly music papers paper, whose news function is basically obsolete, versus the highly successful monthly glossies with informative six-page features and a pretty good CD on the front who leave the news to the Web and make themselves well worth a few quid by doing well what suits their format for a market with spare cash living la vida High Fidelity. Professional music journalism also pays so badly and unreliably that it's mostly a stepping stone to elsewhere in the industry, and you do get to hate music in short order, so you can't expect it to be done well.
(The Internet collecting and spreading subcultural information is the reason goth is not further down the moribund slump of a forgotten subculture of the early 1990s, because the goths basically ran the thing — if you'd atom-bombed either 1998 Whitby the UK internet would have gone down for a month. And so fat geeks figured that dressing in black and listening to bleep might land them a sxxy deth chyk babe who would use Linux drunk wearing nice boots and a corset. And then it DID. Oh Ghod.)
I strongly recommend doing a website or email newsletter instead, because the overheads are so much lower and you're more likely to find readers who care. I've done paper publishing and online publishing; the former burnt me out utterly, the latter is virtually frictionless. The overheads can be zero if you pick the right hosting to suit what you're doing. I want a paper fanzine again, filled from cover to shining cover with good writing about music that doesn't suck. But with that comes dealing with ripoff cowboy advertisers, dealing with ripoff cowboy printers, dealing with ripoff cowboy record shops, dealing with bloody arsehole ripoff cowboy indie record distributors KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL.
But let's assume it's paper for you. For doing all these publishing functions (which are Not Fun), it really helps to speak Bullshit with near-native proficiency.
Your first problem is there are vanishingly few indie record shops any more. But you need to find ones that will take zines sale or return. I have no idea what the usual percentage of cover price demanded is these days; ask them. I have no idea what sales are either. But fanzines are shite these days, so anything good will stand out. Extracting your money is mostly only feasible if you can go there in person; sending the zines by post, you might as well be sending them to an indie record distributor. Selling it at gigs would be a damn fine idea too. SELL SELL SELL.
Indie record distributors: I am so pissed off at the concept I never want to deal with the fuckers again. You will get paid on legal threat and not before.
Selling advertising gave me a fucking ulcer. They won't come to you and they will not pay on time. Though I only once had to publicly name and shame a defaulter.
A token paper print run with most of the actual readers downloading the PDF resembles a presence nicely. That way you might be able to give the paper version away free if you can get the flow of advertising working. Printing is cheaper than photocopying for any quantity above a couple of hundred, but 100 is ambitious for a first issue in my experience unless you get out there and SELL SELL SELL.
I'll be sticking to LiveJournal and Rocknerd for now.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}