A superannuated music journalist pontificates on fanzining.

[reddragdiva]

Inspired by 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.

Comments

Well Said!

[magman.livejournal.com]

Being editor of Legends from 1990, starting paper and moving to online, the differences between the two are phenomenal. As of late, the paper version is done in very small quantities and is only of interest to those that are printed that issue - BandA wants a copy of the issue they are featured in. In 15 years breaking into indie shops, record shops, etc. have been almost nil. I've consigned to many, and virtually all of them have become a "give them away with this week's CD special" sort of deal and I ate it on the printing. It's near impossible without being able to blanket the world with thousands of copies using thousands of dollars that I don't have.

It helps that the magazine thing is a sidebar, really, and David is right in the fact that music journalists tend to move on. A lot have passed through my staff, and I myself am on a professional level a "technical writer," not a music journalist. While the paper version still exists, referring to it as an "art object" is very accurate. But I've resisted closing the paper version of Legends simply because of heritage and tradition - Legends began as a paper zine and it will die as a paper zine - with an online companion is the difference now.

100 is extremely ambitious for a first issue. Legends #1 put out...somewhere around 25. PDF and online is accessible, immediate, less costly, more timely and much easier. And 90% of that work can be done yourself without having to resort to all the cowboys David refers to.

The difference is...there's so many online zines out there you need to find a) a niche and b) offer something better than someone else if you're in the same niche.

Re: Well Said!

[reddragdiva]

My first issue in 1985, I photocopied as I went and sold 141 all up. Price-tagged issues sold up to several hundred copies - I went all-out for distribution and never mind recoverability of cash. Then I did it as a freebie, which managed 1500-2000. Then came the Internet.

Re: Well Said!

[magman.livejournal.com]

Very impressive, I couldn't come close to pulling that off. Even now 141 all up is high. If I had the cash to go the distribution route I would, but there's no way then or now. Wish I could...instead I made a valid but failed attempt to distribute myself.

I'm rather happy with my current main distributor though, the Internet. He doesn't pay me much, but he gets a lot of people to read it and that's really all I wanted. I'll keep writing about the techy stuff for the living cash.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Add the extra layer of "bullshit cowboy editors and publishers who pay when they damn well feel like it and who publish even more rarely", and you have a great understanding of why I quit writing. I miss doing paper zines, but only as four-pagers: I'll NEVER try making one to sell unless I'm able to go into each and every damn store selling them and kneecap the fucker who claims that "they didn't sell" when every last copy is gone.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

You will get paid on legal threat and not before.

that's true of some of the advertisers in Himself's photographic magasines, too. he's currently making a bit of cash off the company by doing debt collector duty - where threats of legal action have been ignored, he phones them an annoying amount, and points out that he has a lot of free time, and will come and visit them in their shops to complain that they owe him a lot of money, loudly and in front of customers.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I can still remember who it was you named and shamed. Indie promoters, as I recall. I remember you talking about how you actually saw them cross the street to avoid you.

[reddragdiva]

It was a band, specifically one member of the band, who the others had trusted to pay the bill ...

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Maybe you had to name and shame twice then - I distinctly remember you naming and shaming the Lord and the General.

[reddragdiva]

Ah, no, I did not! I subtly hinted to them, and it worked.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

If I still remember it, it must have been terribly, terribly subtle.

The General, btw, is still lurking around the Perth reggae scene, and RTRs reggae show I think...

Filll in the names yourself

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I gave two boys the option of picking what I should wear, and they both went for black corset and tall boots. Men! Err, goth men. So unoriginal!

'course, I'm not Goth m'self, you know.

Re: Filll in the names yourself

[reddragdiva]

Not at all! They were just thinking of what would suit your natural red and black hair.

[ashbet]

Apropos of nothing-in-this-post, I'm taking your name in vain in my LJ *grin*

-- A ^-^

[mickmercer.livejournal.com]

I find the pdf version far preferable to the thought of ever doing a print zine again. I never found shops much use at selling zines even though I was doing one which had established a name. We were selling five hundred in a month when we went to Betta Badges who took over for us. We never wanted to make money out of it so having them make the money and us buying issues back at cost to then sell for profit at gigs meant we ended up breaking even which was a sweet change from losing each month. In the end the zine was selling thousands every issue, but when Joly stopped BB and went to America I was in sole charge of Panache again and downgraded to doing no more than 500, as a set limit, because I knew I could sell them at gigs, which is how I preferred to operate.

With so many music sites out there, usually not generating much in the way of interesting content as they want to keep the freebies rolling in, there probably is a need for something seismic out there, but as it hasn’t happened for so long, I can’t see it happening just yet awhile. It’s just people like us ranting on about things in an honest way, not sacrificing any integrity, but it would be good to see people like lakini_malich or inverse_mod to take on the world somehow. In fact the Drop Dead magazine could be good with their enthusiasm stuffed inside it. We’ll have to see.

The pdf I have been trying to popularise as a stand-alone enterprise allows full freedom of creativity in any way I want to take it. I have been weighed down somewhat this year with other factors interfering and am looking forward to really enjoying it next year and going to great lengths to make it fascinating. I can do far more with it than I ever could with Panache and wouldn’t want to do anything else.

If some print zines are to be any good they have to serve a purpose. They have to be a snotty catalyst. They have to be, as they should be, capable of putting us all to shame. Otherwise they needn’t bother. And when they do appear they can act as an inspiration. That’s what they were always for, and must be again.