Brighton Zinefest was amazing. Completely, utterly amazing.
Saturday was workshop day. I managed to squish in all but one of the workshops, although I didn't get to attend all of them in full. The day started out with vegan cookery, ended with survival discussion and had all sorts of things packed in the middle. I learnt how to screenprint without using a camera bulb and how to rock a beetroot salad (and some stuff about zines I guess). That evening there was a fundraiser gig at the same place to help pay for all the spaces hired. Since I hadn't managed to get much sleep the previous night (because OMG BZF!), I ended up falling asleep on the sofa while a very loud electropunk band played about twenty feet away. Talk about sleeping like a sailor. I was awoken by a very sweaty guy collapsing next to me. Since sofas at gigs are not exactly the most comfortable places to sleep, I went and asked my lovely host if she could show me the way to her house, which she did, even though she had been tending bar. It is amazing how generous and friendly a lot of people you meet in the zine world are.
Sunday was the day of the fair. I managed to hitch a lift from a guy with the car to the place it was being held. Once I saw how steep the hill up there was, I was really fracking glad I hadn't tried to walk. I got there earlier than the start and was the only person upstairs when I arrived, so I spent some time trying to make my table look pretty (and measuring and remeasuring to make sure I didn't take up more than half of it). My fellow table occupants had a very smart looking art zine that I would have assumed was an actual magazine had I seen it in a shop. Fortunately the guy sitting next to was more my type: a grotty activist punk called Andrew Lips who still uses myspace but has some pretty good music on there that you should definitely go check out. Andrew also runs a distro of sorts, ie has a batch of zines carried around in a box held together with parcel tape.
The first couple of hours were pretty quiet and mostly involved people wandering around checking out each other's stalls. It was after lunch that things starting getting busy. Also, there were kids. And when I say kids I'm not talking about the fabulously mignon little pixie who writes Peach Melba. These were actual, primary-school-attending children. Which was a bit of a problem since I'd taken patches I'd made to try and pay for my train fare. Embroidered patches saying things like FUCK Y'ALL and SHOOT YR RAPIST. Every time one of them ran up to my table to have a look at the knitted monkeys I also had, I was forced to sweep all my patches behind the stall so they wouldn't wander back to their parents and ask 'mum, what does that mean?'. It hadn't really occured to me that there would be kids attending which turned out to be a massive fuck up on my part.
The patches were actually pretty popular despite their frequent disappearances. I only had a couple left by the end of the day, and wished that I had made a few more. I managed to sell out of xyz 1 entirely, and was left with only a couple of copies of issue 2 after Tukru bought five for Vampire Sushi (yay!). I'd say that out of all my zines, xyz 1 moved fastest, followed by Hunkerdown, then D and finally poor old xyz 2. Maybe because it has a baby on the front cover? Still, someone came along saying they were setting up a UK parenting distro, and was the zine aimed at parents? So there's a potential use for all the copies of xyz 2 I have left over.
I kept running downstairs in a panic because that was where Sarah Tea Rex was tabled and she was the only person I'd met before Saturday. "Sarah, help! Someone with grubby hands is touching all my zines!" "Sarah, I sold a zine!" "Sarah, the people next to me are all smart and fancy!" She was very nice about it and did not tell me to shut the fuck up and go back upstairs once. Props to that lady.
Anyway, I returned on Sunday night tired but happy and with a stack of zines that I'm going to be working my way through and possibly reviewing once I get the time. I'm starting my new job tomorrow, so we shall see how everything goes.
Tuesday 22 February 2011
Wednesday 16 February 2011
Whoops!
...Might have screwed up on that one.
The ticket I bought to get down to Brighton? It was for last weekend. Not that it would have mattered all that much; it turns out I've lost my travelcard, too, so would have had to either hide out and hope and conductor didn't come past, or repay the full fare.
Ah well, at least this way I get more of my precious sleep.
I've been quite busy this past week at the RFS but I'm going to update tomorrow with either a review or a new list of zines I've printed. Promise!
The ticket I bought to get down to Brighton? It was for last weekend. Not that it would have mattered all that much; it turns out I've lost my travelcard, too, so would have had to either hide out and hope and conductor didn't come past, or repay the full fare.
Ah well, at least this way I get more of my precious sleep.
I've been quite busy this past week at the RFS but I'm going to update tomorrow with either a review or a new list of zines I've printed. Promise!
Monday 7 February 2011
Brighton Zinefest 2011
Ten days ago I got an email telling me that I'd got a stall at Brighton Zinefest. After doing my celebratory dance (feet wide apart, lots of air punches) I started to worry. I had wanted to know what time the workshops were starting before I booked a ticket down, but now, three weeks before the fair started, there was still no timetable on their website.
Fuck.
I tried doing some internet research and eventually came upon BZF's Facebook page. There, it said that the workshops were starting on Saturday at ten. No problem! I could book an early bus down and sleep on that. Then I looked at the bus costs. ...OK, so maybe not the bus. Strangely the train turned out to be cheaper than the bus at £5 return instead of £9.
I booked my ticket and felt very pleased at my organisational skills until I was told the workshops would probably not start until midday. Since it takes me an hour to get to Victoria coach station from my house, my organisational skills ended up costing me four hours of sleep.
Funnily enough, this has not dampened my Brighton enthusiasm. I've been very generously offered a couch to sleep on so I don't have to worry any more about finding/affording a place to stay. The workshops all look really enjoyable and interesting, and I'm looking forward to meeting new zinesters in real life. With two weeks to go, I can tell this weekend is going to be great.
Next week I'm going to get myself to the copy shop and print out ten copies of each of my zines. Other things to do: find a place for my dog to spend the weekend, plan how I'm going to get to Victoria station, figure out how to fit my zines in my backpack, make vegan peanut butter cookies for my fabulous host. Wish me luck!
Fuck.
I tried doing some internet research and eventually came upon BZF's Facebook page. There, it said that the workshops were starting on Saturday at ten. No problem! I could book an early bus down and sleep on that. Then I looked at the bus costs. ...OK, so maybe not the bus. Strangely the train turned out to be cheaper than the bus at £5 return instead of £9.
I booked my ticket and felt very pleased at my organisational skills until I was told the workshops would probably not start until midday. Since it takes me an hour to get to Victoria coach station from my house, my organisational skills ended up costing me four hours of sleep.
Funnily enough, this has not dampened my Brighton enthusiasm. I've been very generously offered a couch to sleep on so I don't have to worry any more about finding/affording a place to stay. The workshops all look really enjoyable and interesting, and I'm looking forward to meeting new zinesters in real life. With two weeks to go, I can tell this weekend is going to be great.
Next week I'm going to get myself to the copy shop and print out ten copies of each of my zines. Other things to do: find a place for my dog to spend the weekend, plan how I'm going to get to Victoria station, figure out how to fit my zines in my backpack, make vegan peanut butter cookies for my fabulous host. Wish me luck!
Currently printed zines
I don't have zines that are in print and zines that are out of print. For me, those would be unnecessary categorisations. All it takes for one of my zines to come back into print is a trip down the library to use their photocopier.
However, recently I've been thinking about the advantages of using my local copy shop. I would have to print approximately thirty copies of one of my zines before they became cheaper than the library. When I first starting making zines I was sure that was a ridiculous number; there was no way thirty people would want a copy of what I'd made. Then I started trading, and got picked up by Marching Stars, and suddenly thirty copies didn't seem like such a huge number after all. Now that using the copy shop has become the cheaper option I can certainly see why people would choose to label their zines as in/out of print. That doesn't mean I'm going to. If someone wants a copy of one of my zines, I'll just pop back down to the library.
So instead I'm going to go on what I have right now. These are zines that, if someone wants one, I can just stuff in an envelope and put in the letter box. The price I've put after each is what it costs me to photocopy them; I'm more than happy to accept trades of roughly the same page length/size from within the UK. To buy them with cash instead, email me so we can swap addresses.
xyz issue 1, Nov/Dec 2010, 68p, A5, 24 pages inc. cover A few articles on etymology, one on hormones, some pretty pictures and some history. This is a pretty basic genderqueer 101 zine.
xyz issue 2, Jan/Feb 2011, 68p, A5, 24 pages inc. cover Babies and kids! How children relate to gender, raising a gender-variant child, gender in children's media and other articles.
Hunkerdown issue 1, Feb 2011, 54p, A6, 36 pages inc. cover This zine is a reaction to how the mainstream media play poverty against ethics when it's perfectly possible to have both. It includes articles on foraging, benefits, how the new craft movement is harming more people than it's helping and how to get around on a budget.
However, recently I've been thinking about the advantages of using my local copy shop. I would have to print approximately thirty copies of one of my zines before they became cheaper than the library. When I first starting making zines I was sure that was a ridiculous number; there was no way thirty people would want a copy of what I'd made. Then I started trading, and got picked up by Marching Stars, and suddenly thirty copies didn't seem like such a huge number after all. Now that using the copy shop has become the cheaper option I can certainly see why people would choose to label their zines as in/out of print. That doesn't mean I'm going to. If someone wants a copy of one of my zines, I'll just pop back down to the library.
So instead I'm going to go on what I have right now. These are zines that, if someone wants one, I can just stuff in an envelope and put in the letter box. The price I've put after each is what it costs me to photocopy them; I'm more than happy to accept trades of roughly the same page length/size from within the UK. To buy them with cash instead, email me so we can swap addresses.
xyz issue 1, Nov/Dec 2010, 68p, A5, 24 pages inc. cover A few articles on etymology, one on hormones, some pretty pictures and some history. This is a pretty basic genderqueer 101 zine.
xyz issue 2, Jan/Feb 2011, 68p, A5, 24 pages inc. cover Babies and kids! How children relate to gender, raising a gender-variant child, gender in children's media and other articles.
Hunkerdown issue 1, Feb 2011, 54p, A6, 36 pages inc. cover This zine is a reaction to how the mainstream media play poverty against ethics when it's perfectly possible to have both. It includes articles on foraging, benefits, how the new craft movement is harming more people than it's helping and how to get around on a budget.
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