The Ding Dong Lounge hosted a ‘zine fair on Saturday. They didn’t do a very good job of promoting it as it seemed like only ‘zine publishers were in attendance slapping each other on the back and outnerding each other. If you want bar regulars to come in and hang around, you may not want a naked old guy with distended testicles and large man boobs walking around your zine fair. I know it’s a pagan sort of act, but it’s really grody.
I didn’t take notes but a couple of the zines I looked at were interesting and some had great color graphic work. I also looked at a couple that might’ve been done by fifth graders. You shouldn’t charge $8 for your zine if it looks like it was done by fifth graders. Given the proliferation of blogging, publishing a zine is sort of like making yourself breakfast every day and tossing it in the garbage. I threw out all of my friends’ zines from the 80s and 90s. They’re not worth anything.
Unless you’re Dave Eggers and can produce something as slick (or nearly) as McSweeney’s or n+1 or… you know what I’m talking about– don’t bother. Definitely do it in color. Maintain a nice website/blog and pass out cards with the URL. Take it multimedia people. Once you’re hipper than Dave and get an audience, you might consider charging Kindle subscribers.
The band Wolfhaven performed and Chet messed up by introducing them as Wolverines. They played really nice blues rock sort of like Masters of Reality. I like that they have “333” in their myspace URL. That means they’re half-evil.