Don’t Preach to the Converted
It’s probably obvious to everyone, but certain obvious topics and words
will GREATLY reduce your zine’s chances. I suppose this mainly involves
the kneejerk factor of including sex, drugs, or profanity, especially in
prominence. When many folks, shopkeeps, see this they automatically won’t
touch your zine no matter how great it is.
This doesn’t matter if you don’t want to make impact or have much of
an audience or if you don’t care if your audience is narrowly limited.
This was a big problem for me in that it violated my sense of publishing
honesty. In my last issue I reprinted a fantastic Gogglebox piece which
included the f-word most exuberantly. —In followup I had the chance
to ask a Mormom missionary subscriber what he thought and he said
he loved the zine no holds barred. But others did balk. And I know it
limited my newstand placement potential.
I can’t see how I could’ve solved the situation. Had to lose somewhere.
So I went with integrity.
However, the rule is generally that by avoiding kneejerk flags you will
not hurt the quality of your zine at all.
I’m shooting for clean next issue. But with the last one I don’t see how
it could’ve been otherwise handled—I rather scoff at dashes and blackout.
Anyway, it’s best if you really consider who you want for your audience.
I now see that I’m interested in infiltrating EVERYONE’S mind. That there’s
hope for everyone. Well-written eye-opening material can boost anyone.
And if you give them no easy reason to reject you, true general interest
results. IT’S GREAT SEEING A TRULY DIVERSE AUDIENCE CONSIDERING
YOUR WORK. —That’s the best thing. I like hooking *everyone*. It’s
great seeing little old ladies get sucked in; truck drivers; teens; anyone.
—I drop them off at shops and often see a couple first-timers catch a
peek. That’s great nerve-wracking fun. Heck, getting past the shopkeep
is a quality challenge also. Getting them to go ‘hmmmm’ in a positive way.
That takes doing! The number one spoiler I’ve found to stop this process
is for them to find a kneejerk rejecter element in the zine when they’re
first flipping thru it.
Anyway, I realize that my goal is the support of individuals with gumption
anywhere anyhow. I realize that I’m majorly into supporting OWNER OPERATED
SKILLED TRADES. Be they restaurants, moviehouses, shops, crafts. If someone
is sticking their neck out against the Monster, I’m behind them 100%.
I’m against megacorps and chains. I’m for someone putting their $ and life
behind a true skill (instead of a marketing scam). So I want to sell my zine
at their shops. My zine promotes them and fights against mallsville
effectively, I think. So why would I ever want to put them off? Now,
I don’t let their fiscal interests influence me either. But what they’re
doing is far more impt than money. I promote them as culture. They
can see that, if I don’t turn them off with what might be misconstrued
as gratuitous trash. I’m under no obligation to go further. I can prove that
it’s BAD to go further; they know that. Their short-term interest might be
that every customer spend all their money there. But my only duty is to
culture. And they realize that over-indulging short-term interests is bad—
or they wouldn’t be skilled craftsmen! However, they appreciate my not
overtly alienating them or their customers. That’s an EASY road to walk.
After killing the Monster in customers, my zine still lets them shop at
owner-operated places for their real needs.
The purported interests of youth carry very little weight for me now; their
rebellions are of the flimsiest and most temporary stuff. “Look what I can
publish! The Man ain’t keeping me down!” is kindergarten. An impt, first,
brief step. Move on! Catering to their derailed sense of libertine liberty
is counterproductive for them and me. My duty is to help them, to boost,
to help draw out what they really have inside (latin for educate)—same as any
other adult’s duty. Helping them cultivate their sense of party, crazy, wild, fun,
shock is abusive. (Shock can be very good—only if immediately used to
lift a reader. Break the old, replace with something better. Shock is a fine
slate-cleaner. But never for its own sake. Then it becomes amusement
(‘against the muses’—against learning). The only thing promoting wild,
fun, crazy, strong, free *on its own* would be good for is making me money
—say, I wonder if that’s why the all-encompassing anti-culture has taken this
approach with youth? And with the youthful element in us older folk.
Party is what kids (we all?) naturally do. The better goal is for them to get the
vision to work uphill, to become adults, to become human. It’s clearly what we
all really want, but that root desire is so easily derailed and falsely energized by
all the things, groups, concepts on the side.
It’s hilarious how things get co-opted. I know a radical zine-mag full of wild ads
about the hobby at hand (folks hate their ‘lifestyle’ to be called a hobby! –a good
shock) but the text is always firmly set against posers, it’s always saying ‘diy’,
‘glitz and fancy stuff is for lightweights’. —Yet the ads are pure pricy image.
The content is all ‘roots’ and ‘homebrew’ yet the scene as it gets played out
in life is one of the most superficial I’ve come across. It’s
easy to see how true literature would really have a hard time in ad-based pubs.
But I like, need, ads for my zine, too. Fine line to walk. The message always
seems to involve shopping. Well, shopping is a part of life. I guess we just
need to push that it doesn’t act as a replacement heart-pump for life. I need
zines, I need mail, need, need, want, want….
