THE SMALL PRESS CONSPIRACY
In bedrooms, garages and loungerooms across the nation, hundreds of dedicated zine editors cut & paste, staple & bind, write & draw, design, publish and create zines.
Each zine must find its own audience, whether that be a handful of people who share a particular interest or an audience of hundreds. Zine print runs range from the rare one-only to the thousands, with the average zine costing a couple of bucks and sold at independent record stores, zine markets or newly-developed online distributors.
Every zine is picked up by a stranger for their own reasons, but the common thread that binds zines together is that they provide a raw, unvarnished account � created by real people. Normal people by day, zinestars by night. They�re not trying to sell you the latest brand-name sneaker, the hit-album from your favourite corporate punk rock band or your own culture in a glossy format; they�re just telling you what they think. Zines have no obligation to please you, which is why, on the contrary, they often do.
The dedication and effort that goes into making a zine comes from the passion for zine editors to express their own ideas, whether supporting the underground music scene, creating a comic strip or publishing excerpts from the editor�s personal diary. In a world where we daily inhale media, messages, images and advertising at a phenomenal rate, here are some people who choose to exhale as well as inhale.
Compared to the traditional mass media dinosaurs � who have always been unwilling or unable to provide content that is quirky and off-centre � zines don�t regurgitate the status quo. Mass media is a business like any other and, with advertisers to please, it certainly can�t take the risks or publish the racy, personal, outrageous, amazing ideas that you�ll find in zineland.
So how did it all begin? The word zine actually stems from �fanzine� not �magazine�. The history of zines can be traced back to as early as the 1930s and 1940s where they began as newsletters for science fiction fans. The heightened political atmosphere of the 1960s coupled with the release of the first commercial photocopier saw the growth of activist zines, which set the framework for zines as forums that challenged the mainstream. Zines had become a radical counter-culture of their own. Music zines became popular in the 70s and 80s, as they documented the rise of punk music and later, alternative music.
These days technology such as personal computers, desktop publishing programs, scanners and digital cameras are widely accessible to zinesters, as is the internet. While the internet � married to this technology � has given birth to the proliferation of a younger sibling, the e-zine, hundreds of people just can�t resist the urge to cut, paste & print and be the Rupert Murdoch of their own private bedroom publishing empire.
If you�d like to submit your own zine to noise, click here.
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