Zine Books Suck
This is a very important topic. Notice how the counter-revolution
happened BEFORE the revolution!
Notice how empty and fluffy the ‘major press’ zine books have
been! (5th graders know more about zining than the ‘inside’ info
delivered in those fluffers.)
Notice the chilling effect of ‘advances’.
‘Costs and complications of book publishing’—-another zine revolution
solution waiting to happen!!! ZINESTERS GOTTA BUST THRU BOOKS TOO!
Find a cheap simple way in! One exists for sure! The armor is thin!
Notice the topics of ‘underground’ zine books: freakshows and ‘way out’
stuff mainly. ReSearch—tame critters: ‘Oooo, look at those guts!’
Notice how the small press usually out-New-Yorks New York (to quote
Jack Saunders). Exploit which way your particular herd will run.
The mainstream runs this way, the tattooers run thataway.
The underground press hasn’t done anything with IMPACT in a long time.
Hasn’t pulled off any end-arounds in any way that wasn’t obvious,
predictable, or exploitive of whichever ‘niche’ we’re talkin about.
Notice how SLOW it all happens. Bukowski suffered for a decade writing
down a hole before a small press grabbed him and rode him UP.
Zining had been networking and in its stride, building for a decade also
before the first mainstream ‘beginners guide to zining’ came along.
BUT IT CAN BE DONE DIFFERENTLY! —The time is always ripe for reality.
The question is only who has the nerve.
The funny thing is that the mainstream is the offshoot…it’s a blah niche
manufactured AGAINST the desires of the reading majority, to keep them
tame. AGAINST THE GRAIN is the real mainstream. (see Saunders)
Whenever Americans especially get a taste of the real thing they go
ape. Sure they buy the book but they also go FURTHER than that.
Makes *dem* a tiny bit nervous. (Ha…pee their pants. You don’t
think that a real book right now wouldn’t threaten the entire academic
literary mafia?)
Who’ll grab the next Thoreau, Miller, Kerouac from oblivion and
change the country with a book???????
Kris from Menace Publishing & Manufacture wrote:
>
> Retro Systems wrote in message <353CE615.5D14@wenet.net>…
>
> >On a related note, I wonder why so many of the zine books out there
> >(especially the slew that came out last year) are with major publishing
> >corporations instead of self-published. It just strikes me as odd.
>
> I don’t *know*, but I would guess it’s because major publishers approached
> zinesters and zine-type people about these projects and offered advances.
> Publishing is a really uncertain business, and the profit margin is pretty
> low if you go the traditional routes (all of our books are, so far,
> distributed solely by us), and publishing zines and publishing books are
> quite different. I think a lot of people might be intimidated by the costs
> and complications of book publishing.
