INTERNATIONAL ZINE MONTH 2013: I Love Zines week (week 1)

Hello comrades!

As you know, July is International Zine Month, and every year IZM creator Alex Wrekk creates a list of 31 activities to do throughout the month, a task every day (above).  I've decided this year to pledge to do every single one, and for extra credit I'm reading a new zine every day.  I've been writing about my daily progress on the STZ Facebook and Twitter pages; here is a round-up of the past week!

IZM WEEK 1: 'I LOVE ZINES' WEEK

1 – Sign up or sign in to WeMakeZines.ning.com and write about IZM and what you plans are to celebrate zines this month! 
I wrote about IZM on this We Make Zines thread.  Get over there and say hi!  A load of other people have also written about their plans for July, so do check it out for some interesting blogs to add to your blogroll this month.

2 – Make a Top 10 list of reasons why your love zines.
1. Content is honest and from the heart
2. Not motivated by profit
3. Can be left lying around for people to find/take
4. Cheap to buy
5. Cheap and easy to make
6. Ephemeral/time-capsule quality
7. Portable
8. Create a sense of community
9. Connects people
10. Anyone can make their own!

3 – Zine Distro Appreciation Day! Order from a zine distro.
I ordered loads of zines from Vampire Sushi, a lovely little UK feminist/perzine distro.

4 – Reread your favorite zines and remind yourself why you love them so much.
Here are some of my favourite zines that I enjoyed flicking through again this week:

5 – Teach yourself a new zine skill: learn how to book bind, make a 1 page zine, photocopier art, etc.
Ok, confession time - it was my intention to teach myself how to do photocopier art, but I was in work all day and had a busy stressful day, so didn't get around to doing this today :(  I will make time for it next week instead, during my week off!  Forgive me?

6 – Check out ZineWiki.org and add your zine or update existing entries.
The entries on Spill the Zines, Catherine Elms, and Here In My Head have all been updated - take a look!  If you make a zine, why not pop over and add your page to the wiki?

Read a zine every day
Here are mine from the week:

---

Next week is POSTAL APPRECIATION WEEK - what will you be getting up to?  Start with today's task - make or decorate some envelopes or postcards to get ready for the week. :)

Zine Resources

image by Shannon Gerard

As you may have noticed, we’ve added a new set of links in our blog sidebar – Zine Resources.  Sadly, we feel that many of these resources are underused, so this blog post is just to draw your attention to them.  This is mostly where we get our info from for the biweekly news posts – also via flyers, word of mouth, emails, and tweets that get pinged our way – so they can be very useful!  Hope you enjoy spending the evening exploring these sites (if you haven’t done so already)!  If you have any more useful zine resources that we've missed, let us know in the comments or email us so we can add to this entry.

Zine Wiki

A Wikimedia-powered site dedicated to zines and independent publishing.  It’s a cracking resource, featuring lists of distros, zine events, zine libraries, and much more, from all over the world.  There’s a zinester directory, which can be categorised by country, type of zine (e.g. perzine), or theme (e.g. feminism).  There are also pages dedicated to zine history, production, and distribution.  Sign up for free to become a contributor, where you can create pages about anything zine-related; though what the wiki really needs is pages on individual zine series or zinesters.  As you can see by the UK Zinester category page, Zine Wiki is desperately in need of updating.  The creators write that they would like Zine Wiki to act as a central catalogue for people interested in zines, where most zines would be instantly searchable from anywhere around the world, with the same quality standards as Wikipedia.  Sign up today and help make this aim a reality. 
(if you want your zine to be listed, but don’t fancy creating an account for whatever reason, you can always email me with the info you want and I’ll create a page for you!)

Compilation Station

A handy blog that reposts submission calls for zines.  It consists of mostly US-centred submission calls, but if that doesn’t bother you too much then it’s a great place to find lots of zines to write for!  I’ve been using it for about 4 months, and have been published in 5 comp-zines since, which isn’t too shabby.  Go take a look today and see if any submission calls take your fancy!

Syndicated Zine Reviews

A nice blog to pop in your Google Reader if you can’t be bothered to subscribe to many zine blogs.  The blog features zine reviews, news, announcements, and calls for submissions that are syndicated from various blogs (including this blog!).  It’s more of an RSS feed or forum rather than a blog, as the only original content featured are reviews by the editors, Jack and Dan.  It also features lots of useful links in its many sidebars, including lists of zine review sites, zine libraries, zine fairs, distros, and general zine resources.  I find it a little tricky to navigate – there’s a bit too much going on, with too many sidebars and adverts – but other than that, it’s good for a browse.  They also have a Twitter account syndicated there, which I recommend following (though most of the news they tweet is from the US and Canada).

We Make Zines

Okay, so I’m pretty sure you all know about We Make Zines, but I want to talk about it anyway.  WMZ was a huge phenomenon when I first got into zines in 2008, but seems to have fizzled out a little recently.  Most people think that the rise of Facebook and Twitter has rendered WMZ a little redundant, which I think is a fair point.  Having said that, We Make Zines is still a valuable tool for zinesters to keep in touch with each other, not only due to the fact that it’s tailored specifically to zinesters, but also because many zinesters don’t use Twitter or Facebook!  The groups (the biggest ones include Perzines, Over 30 and Still at it, and Let’s Trade Zines), active forum, and event directory are all very useful tools that you can’t get anywhere else.  The location-based groups are great for bringing zinesters together - as well as the 200-strong UK & Ireland Zinesters, many subsections of the country have their own groups, including Kent, Wales, Midlands, East Anglia, and Brighton.  Members can create your own profile page where people can message you and leave you comments.  Zinesters can upload photos of their zines and projects to their profiles, join and contribute to groups, create events, upload videos, and IM each other.  Lots of fun!

Zinescene UK

A LiveJournal community dedicated to the UK zine scene, where members can advertise their zine, discuss zine issues, ask for advice, network, and trade with each other.  It could be a great resource but, again, is underused.  If you’re on LJ, add Zinescene_UK to your friends list and post your news there! 

---

PS - While we’re here, we’ve got an important announcement to make: Sheffield Zine Fair is now being held on the 25^th September (Sunday) instead of the 24^th as originally advertised.  Change the date in your diaries – we hope to see you there!