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.

[rogerSIMIAN]

"There was a span of time, maybe '99-'04, whenever I went to a comic show that there was ALWAYS someone telling me that print was dead and web comics (that you can charge for, mind you) was THE FUTURE."

Heeheehee - reminds me of all those dance music Nostradamuses that spent the end of the last millennium telling us that guitar music was dead and gone for good...

[Madrea Marie]

My zine is solely in print right now. I'm hoping the next one will be in print and online. Printing is costly, so having it online also would be nice. I really like being able to hold a zine in my hands, so I plan to always print some issues. I definitely include my mailing address so people can contact me, I like letter writing a lot more than emails!

[Lotte Rubbish]

I have been reading this thread and thinking about it for a couple of days now, and I think I've come up with an idea that I like. Instead of putting my actual mailing address anywhere on the zine itself, I might simply put my personal website url and email address and then include an extra card, sort of like a business card, that includes my mailing address. This way I know that old addresses won't be floating around, and I won't have to feel so uncomfortable about strangers knowing my contact info. I could even give a card to a distro and say, "Please only give this information out to people who like the zine and express an interest in contacting me."

Paying for a PO box is not really an option for me at the moment, but I do love giving and receiving snail mail, so this seems like a decent compromise. Just an idea!

[Amazing Sunflower]

Probably we should all start making/promoting/distributing zines via text messaging on our cell phones! (Well, since I don't have and don't want a cell phone, if that's the wave of the future, I am going to be left standing on the beach.)

I've done a lot of prisoner support work in the last seven years, and I am ASTOUNDED by folks who aren't in prison who assume prisoners have internet/email access. Three days ago, a friend in her 60's was totally surprised that my partner and I aren't able to communicate via email. Some federal prisoners DO have internet access (to the tune of 17 cents a minute!) but the majority of state prisoners do not. (I know one federal prisoner who is able to send/receive email and not a single state prisoner who can.)

I guess I am a bit off topic too...

Part of me really appreciates the internet and especially We Make Zines. I have met more zine people, and traded more zines in the last ten weeks (maybe even in the last 10 days) than I have in the last 10 years, thanks to WMZ. However, I know that if I didn't spend so much time fucking around on this website and the internet in general, I would have time to sit down and write letters to zinesters that I know and care about. (That means you Katie H., and Laura-Marie. Someday I will send a real letter!)

And as to the original question, yes, I do include a physical address, as well as an email address in all of my zines. I do see how physical addresses could be a pain in the neck for people who move a lot, but I believe it's free to have the post office forward letters, but that service may last only for a year. I could see how an email address would seem like a viable alternative for people who move a lot. But James, I also see that you are making a point about a larger issue.

[Amazing Sunflower]

Sure, some prisoners are reading some zines.

I can totally understand folks not wanting random prisoners knowing their address. There are plenty of folks who aren't in prison that I would rather not know where I live. That's why I use in a post office box to communicate with strangers.

Zacery Nova said:

Are prisoners still reading zines nowadays?

(forgive my naivety, I've never sent a zine to a prisoner...I'm not sure I'd like them knowing my addres)

[Emma Jane Falconer]

I'm female, and currently live by myself, and would rather not give out my home address to all and sundry wherever I lived. I would open a PO Box, but the Royal Mail make it stupidly inconvenient. The basic box is £60 per year, but I'd have to go to the central sorting office between 9&5 mon-fri to collect the stuff (ie times when I'm least likely to go, because it's completely the other end of town from my work), not my local post office, and getting it delivered is an extra £40 per year, making it £100 per year (ie nearly $200) which you have to pay when you open the box.

I never seem to have an extra £60-£100 about to pay upfront, so I'll stick to including my email in the zines, and only sending the address out to people who email me and don't seem creepy.

[Tom Hendricks]

I always add my mailing address to issues of Musea.
I am also one of the Zine World reviewers (the only one there from the start). I don't see many zines that don't have mailing addresses - those that don't usually don't have any address at all! That is frustrating for us because the reader has no way of getting in touch with the zinester. Usually it is just an oversight on the part of the zine maker.
I think print zines are special and shouldn't be just an after thought of some net site.

[Coco Negro]

i never actually thought about the privacy thing regarding postcards but you're right that's potentially troublesome, although for the most part i think you're fine, especially if it's someones p.o. box or something like that.

Amber / Culture Slut said:

Here's something I've been thinking about lately. Postcards. I love postcards, though I tend not to mail them to zinesters as often as I'd like. I don't have a problem writing personal details about myself on a postcard, but I'd be worried that the zinester I'm writing to may not want to share the content of their zines with whomever they're living with (parents, roommates, what have you), so a postcard may be an accidental violation of privacy. Anyone else ever think of that?

[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.