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TEN THINGS THAT ANNOY ME ABOUT MY FELLOW ZINE PUBLISHERS
(In No Particular Order)
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 JEFF SEZ: "Nothing makes me want to read the damn thing less than a bitchy letter in ARGTTUP. Hell, at least someone’s reading your goddamned zine. Suck it up, silky boy." |
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| SOMETIMES, you just have to be cranky. I will name no names, but there are plenty of annoying people out there publishing zines. I’m sure I’m on other people’s lists (“Number three, people who put their disembodied face all over their zine. . .”) but that just makes me feel “big-time”.
Ten Things That Annoy Me About my Fellow Zine Publishers
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1. When they send me their pathetic zines with nothing but a note (sometimes a photocopied note), which says REVIEW ME. The arrogance is breathtaking, as if there were legions of heretofore unknown zine publishers who have nothing better to do. Am I a Review Zine? Nope, and a cursory glance at TIS will reveal that to anyone.
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2. When they include a big stack of random advertisements for other people's zines, or when they send me a stack of their own ads and ask me to distribute them to everyone I mail something to. I don't work for anyone but myself, and I am never asked if this is cool before they mail this shit to me, so fuck them.
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3. Spamming the alt.zines newsgroup with what seems like hundreds of postings that merely announce, over and over again, a new issue or updated web site. Certainly, one posting to this effect is fine. Twice earns you a scowl, three times in the span of two days and I'm mailing you a dead rat.
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4. The ones who assume that just because I put out a zine, I must be 16 years old.
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5. When they bitch and moan about a "bad", "inaccurate", "biased" review in one of the Review Zines out there. Nothing makes me want to read the damn thing less than a bitchy letter in ARGTTUP. Hell, at least someone's reading your goddamned zine. Suck it up, silky boy.
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6. The ones who e-mail me out of the blue and ask me to link to their web site, without offering to link back, or even hinting that they at some point even read my zine. I'm happy to link with people who either link to me or have given me support of some sort (money, advice, service, genuine criticism) but an e-mail from a complete stranger urging me to up their hit counts? Fuck 'em.
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| It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. |
7. The ones who submit stuff to me without asking first. A long time ago in a far-away land, I did implore my readers to submit works to me. This stopped in 1996, when I stopped kidding myself and realized I only had interest in printing my works. Since 1996 I've printed a few pieces I didn't write, but all of them were either commissioned by me (translation: I begged a member of The Inner Swine Inner Circle to write it) or just randomly caught my fancy. The only indication that TIS entertains submissions is in the boilerplate on page 4, which reads in part: "Address submissions and correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, PO Box 3024, Hoboken, NJ 07030, mreditor@innerswine.com. But let's face it, when was the last time we published anything not written by me or one of my cronies? Other people's pimply writing gives me hives. Still, all submissions or requests for Guidelines (there are no guidelines, though) must be accompanied by SASE." This is set in 7/8 type at the bottom of the TOC, and I just can't believe anyone reads it. In any event, the statement is not asking people to submit, it is just warning you that if you don't include a SASE with your submission, you'll probably never hear from me. I don't mind the occasional submission, but don't just mail me 65 poems and expect me to care.
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8. Their endless, endless first-person navel-gazing. I am rapidly coming to believe that the worst part of zines is when people select any pointless episode in their lives and write about it in painful detail. Why do they assume their rambling, pointless tale about what they did two months ago is interesting in any way? At least have a compelling reason to write about your recent unemployment, or personal crisis, or whatever. And yes, I'm aware of the irony of complaining about this in a first-person narrative, dammit, but at least I'm not telling you a supposedly interesting story about my life.
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9. When they gripe at me about some aspect of how I handle my zine that they disagree with. I don't recall signing a membership agreement in some fucking Underground Press Society, and I resent being treated like I did. Don't like bar codes? Fuck you. Don't like poetry? Fuck you. Think I ought to be more active politically? Double fuck you. The beauty of self-publishing is you don't need to care what anyone else thinks.
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10. Handwritten zines. It sounds romantic, sure, and I guess when you're 13 you can get away with it. I've had a typewriter since I was 10 years old. No kidding. Is it that fucking hard to peck out a few pages of material? Even when your handwriting is legible, it's generally annoying, because it's either filled with hearts-for-dots or little doodles or just frightening personality hints. While even in this age of technological wonder some people are still without computer access, typewriters are cheap. Buy one. Handwritten zines blow goats. |
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