zines, tea and jon hassell

drinking tea, reading zines and listening to jon hassell's music - a lovely way to end the long weekend. and Happy Birthday QEII. the washing has been done, the clothes are in the dryer which is heating up the apartment (& saving me from putting on the heater this afternoon / tonight - as it's cold!)

listening : "Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street" Jon Hassell

zines : I pulled out the zines I've recently come across + some from a few years ago. I've been sending them little thank you emails as I read them - I'm never sure if zinesters like this or not or if you're meant to - they have their contact details and sometimes say to write so I guess it's ok, but it's always nice to receive a thank you message.

the trouble with reading zines - or rather, perhaps the good thing about reading zines, is that I start reading a couple then I get inspired to write something down in my own notebook - even if it is just little random thoughts or ideas. for me, they help get the creative juices flowing. the problem is, that sometimes I don't end up finishing reading the zine in one sitting. sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. also the DIY / grassroots feel about them makes me feel like I could make one too, though perhaps I'm too old for this these days, and if I write it should be about serious issues or in an academic manner (though I don't tend to write in this way anyway)

(not in any order)

100 fishes - an illustrated guide. illustrated by Mel Davis, Amy Ranck, Richard Scott & Anna Vu - a collection of hand drawn fish pictures with labels of the names of the fish and pronounciation. rather cute

310 Danceskool - photo zine with pictures of stencil art & graf & a band in a bar / performance space in Sydney that no longer exists. nice documentation of the ephemeral place.

antithesis - phase shift - issue 2 - by Daniel Cotton - A Zine of (mostly) science fiction short stories. I remember picking this and the other issues up at the TINA zine fair a few years ago. he says in the cover intro, "This zine is a result of my desire to become less one dimensional. It is titled Antithesis since it represents a portion of my personality that I am unable to express as a Physics student. Every moment I've spent on it is one I haven't spent working toward my PhD thesis.". I suppose he has his PhD now, as this zine is dated 2005.

two heads - part one - janus - by Ben Platt-Mills and Wes White - I bought this one for it's 28th December entry on the first page about remembering - premembering
http://www.ecartilage.co.uk/twoheads.htm ::: @weswhite

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

printing press :
All Thumbs Press
Ptilotus
Vignette Press
Overland
PressPress

zine distros & stores
Sticky Institute - zine distro & store - Melbourne
Bird in the Hand distro - Sydney / Newcastle
Click Clack distro - Virginia, USA

zine projects
International Zine Month
24 hour zine thing

zines
Mulch Zine

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

on We Make Zines forum a question was asked how do you market/advertise/dissiminate your zines?
my reply :

you could try sending to one of the zine distros?

http://www.allthumbspress.net/zineinfo.html is a page written by Keg de Souza that I came across last week (apparently it was written for a zine commissioned by Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art) - it has some distros in Aus & overseas listed

http://groups.google.com/group/zines-aus is an Australian zines mail list. this week there was a thread about selling zines in Aus (timely) so a few more stores/distros listed there too.
http://groups.google.com/group/zines-aus/browse_thread/thread/a42ee...

sending the guys at Sticky Institute a message would probably be your best bet to start with - they're a zine store based in Melbourne. http://www.stickyinstitute.com

&/or Bird in the Hand distro (sydney/soon to be a Newcastle-based store so I've heard) http://zines.wordpress.com

there's an Australian zinesters section on this wemakezines ning site too - asking someone there would be a good start.

(I'm not sure what the stores' policies are about Australian & International zines - I guess they stock both?? so maybe contact them to check)
or trade/swap as mentioned previously

or maybe send to a zine reviewer site? I found a good one (blog) the other night (Aus) but I can't remember the link sorry. google it perhaps?

also flickr has some groups - & you see pics
http://www.flickr.com/groups/zinesters = Zinesters group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1061227@N20 = Zine Reviews group

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------