Do You Have a Physical Address Inside Your Zine?

[James N. Dawson]

I've gone on about this a little here and there in WMZ, so maybe there's not much point in rehashing it, but maybe it's worthwhile to approach it from another angle. I imagine I may step on some toes and get myself into trouble.

When reviewing zines, I sometimes got a few that didn't have any postal addresses for people to contact. At least one even seemed to discourage postal contact. The idea behind doing their zine was just to promote their web activity. That left me cold...and I'm getting colder still, the more I see of the new "zinedom".

How many of you refuse or refrain from publishing a physical address FOR OR IN your zine, either on the Internet or Papernet?

How many of you refuse to send your zine to Zine World because you don't want to have a physical address published?

If you don't mind having it published in Zine World or the papernet, then why are you concerned about publishing it on the Internet?

Does it concern you that when you make your zine available only to people with Internet access, you may be discluding people who cannot or choose not to access the Net?

I can see including Net addresses, but not Net addresses ONLY.

It seems that "zinedom" in it's present evolution (or devolution, depending on your perspective), is gradually becoming less and less friendly to the papernet AND PAPERNETTERS.

I remember the old Factsheet 5 and how awesome it was. This whole "web-centered" zinedom is such a far, sad cry from that. The old FS5 had the feel of an old basement flea market. The new webocentric "zine scene" has the feel of a suburban mall.

I'm seriously considering seceding from it. But would I just be cutting my hand off?

Something to ponder.

[Heather ONeil]

I still have copies of Factsheet 5 floating around. 'course I'm old and remember days when a zine was whipped together under a tree at lunch. We each did a page or two and put it together at night. All pencil and pen mostly. Those were the 60's and everything was mostly pencil or pen. My zines all contain an address, email and website. Not much sense putting them out there if no one can contact you for more... or to give you an opinion or whatever. I can still remember the first zine that published a piece of my poetry. The poems were just cut out and glued on to pieces of newspaper and then stapled together. It was an awesome little zine. He had his address printed neatly in red pen on the bottom of every page. Just in case you lost part of I guess.

[Heather ONeil]

Believe it or not, the very first zines my friends and I made were on a Gestetner. It was a hand-cranked one and we would pass out copies and coffee shops and on corners. LOL Gosh, I hadn't thought about that in a while. It was the 60s so most of our zines were about making love not war, peace, pot, sex, communes. Phil Ochs was one of the singers we hung on, Joan Baez, Buffy Ste. Marie, Sonny and Cher. Lots of times we hand printed like 20 or 30 copies of a 4 page zine. Talk about hand cramps. But we were young and poets and we all had opinions and no job was too big as long as we got the word out. Thank God for photocopiers, printers, scanners and computers. I'm afraid arthritis wouldn't let me hand pen 5 copies of anything let alone 20. The very first zine I made was in 1959. At the time I didn't know it was a zine. I was just getting my "stuff" out there. So I have been zine-ing for 50 years. Oh my gosh.. I'm old.

Smog City Ed said:

You've been doing this stuff since the 60s? That's great. What kind of reproduction technology did you use? What were your zines about?

[Monkey + Seal]

So I skipped page 2 out of laziness, but I'm a total newbie on the zine scene, and an above-average techie, but I totally agree that not putting a mailing address is excluding people.

Granted, I just realized that I haven't put a mailing address on any of the zines I currently am creating now, but that'll change on the next round of photocopies.

[Wes White]

I have both postal address and website listed. I sometimes think I should get a PO Box for security, but we're in the middle of nowhere anyway and the stuff I do doesn't seem the most likely to attract unwanted personal visitors.

[Frankie]

The only reason I haven't put a physical address on my zine is because I don't have a PO Box, and I'm way too paranoid to be handing out my home address, even if it is to a relatively small number of people. I do give my email and online shop addresses though, which is the best I can do until I get a PO Box.

[Hannah Peat]

I think, as most people have said, the only reason I won't be putting an address on my zine is because I don't have a PO box. That said, I've included my email address and would happily send out my address to anyone who contacted as long as they sounded OK people!

[incurable hippie]

The only reason I have 3 zines complete and not yet printed is because I've been waiting for weeks to find out what my new PO box address will be! It does feel really important to me to have a physical address in there, it just wouldn't seem like a true paper zine without it!

[James N. Dawson]

Hello everybody. I've just announced my new issue of .Zap!!omania, #4, on the New Issue Announcement Thread. I discuss this matter, and Zines & the Net, mutually vis-a-vis, in general.

I particularly reply to reply to bibliophile83 & Clementine. You can look at the post if you're interested.

Alan, Zacery & Heath, your copies are in the mail.

[Matthew Murray]

I put my physical address on one zine I made, but when I reprinted it I got rid of it because I didn't live there anymore.
Last time I lived somewhere (Vancouver, up to July of this year) I had 5 addresses in 17 months. Since then I haven't really had an address at all (travelling). It wasn't even worth me putting a physical address on the zines. As I didn't know if I'd be somewhere in a week/month, let alone a year in the future.

Whereas, my email address is going to stay the same for a long time.

[St. Joshua Norton Press]

I include both physical address (PO Box) and website/e-mail address in everything. The PO Box because I enjoy doing trades and getting something random in my box will pretty much guarantee that I'll send something back (and I love doing that). The website/e-mail because I enjoy people contacting me and that's another way for them to do so. Besides, my e-mail address is pretty much permanent (or at least as permanent as those things can be) and is a backup in case I ever wander away from this area. Plus, for issues of one of my zines (Haiku a Day) I put the previous month's issue up online as soon as I mail out the current month's issues, and that's a way to find them.

[Mo Karnage]

PO Box is how I operate. Emails are much less fun to get. I'd rather get an order in a letter, maybe with a sticker of button. And I put my PO box on my zines and stickers

PO BOx 6025
Richmond, VA 23222

write me ; )

[APFuchs]

Haven't decided yet.