leaving your zine in random places?

[KellyRose-Pulse Zine]

hey i know some people have mentioned this on here before, but i just wanted to know everyone's opinion on leaving your zine in random places..

i mean just leaving a copy at a coffee shop or library or store in the hopes someone will pick it up and read it or just for the hell of it.

have you ever done this? if so why and did anyone who ever "found" a copy of your zine somewhere contact you because of it?

[Dan 10things]

Iza Straightshooter said:

I'd love to find a letter in a library book! Sad thing is, library workers often have to sift through books' pages as part of their jobs.

They don't. I've worked in libraries all my life. Sure, if someone returns a book with some obvious papers in it they will be taken out, but libraries don't have the staff, time or resources to sift through books looking for things people left behind. If you were going to do this, it would be smarter to put the zine in a book on the shelf, chances are the next person to touch it would be someone wanting to check out the book. It would have to be a pretty popular book though, many books sit on the shelves for years or decades without being checked out.

I totally think everyone should try some random zine gifting/guerilla marketing, but you would probably find a more receptive audience if you put it on the reading rack at an indie coffee shop, the flyer rack at an alternative/punk record store, at a thrift store, or even a public library (most libraries have free publication areas in their lobbies, when I did my old magazine we dropped a lot at libraries).

[twilight gecko]

you know, i've never done this..
but i gave my zine to a friend of a friend, who after he read it, liked it enough to leave it in a shop in Woodstock, he thought other people in this town might enjoy my writings.. :) and he hoped i wouldn't be offended.. of course not, i thought it was interesting.. and i'm thinking of leaving some copies about myself, the only thing is i want to print some without my snail mail address in them for that purpose.. the last few i made for trading on here have it, and if i were to leave it out and about, i'd probably just leave an email.. i wouldn't want some of the creepers around here showing up on my door.. lol

which also brings up another topic.. how comfortable are you putting your snail mail address in them? for those of you with po boxes, it's not an issue, but for god sakes we attract the creepers? any thoughts?

[kit feral]

I don't put my address on my zines. Just my email. For that matter, it's an email I only use for zines. And it's not even like I'd just be putting myself in potential danger, but my family as well. It's just too risky, you never know who'll find them. And my zines mention I'm a young girl. Unfortunately in today's society I have to be worried about stating that I'm a young female and where I live.

twilight gecko said:

you know, i've never done this..
but i gave my zine to a friend of a friend, who after he read it, liked it enough to leave it in a shop in Woodstock, he thought other people in this town might enjoy my writings.. :) and he hoped i wouldn't be offended.. of course not, i thought it was interesting.. and i'm thinking of leaving some copies about myself, the only thing is i want to print some without my snail mail address in them for that purpose.. the last few i made for trading on here have it, and if i were to leave it out and about, i'd probably just leave an email.. i wouldn't want some of the creepers around here showing up on my door.. lol

which also brings up another topic.. how comfortable are you putting your snail mail address in them? for those of you with po boxes, it's not an issue, but for god sakes we attract the creepers? any thoughts?

[Amy]

I've never done it but am thinking about trying it. I only made 20 copies of my last zine because I didn't have much money, and I somehow ran out of covers when stapling them together. What do you guys think of leaving them on buses? You never know where they'll go...

[Tom Hendricks]

They'll just be thrown away.
Most places don't like people sneaking in their stuff. Find the manager and ask - once you do that once, you can put them there on a regular basis. And another tip don't push someone elses zine out of the way to give your's better viewing. It'll just come back to haunt you when they see what you did and dump your stuff. Be courteous. I've learned over 17 years. Good luck.

[Iza Straightshooter]

OH! Post-Its! That's a good idea :)

star blanket river child said:

oh, really? I've never seen them do that with mine, but maybe that's just because I spend so much time there that they trust me, haha.

something I find interesting- with the PostSecret books, I always find people have added post it notes with their secrets. It's great.

[James N. Dawson]

So far it looks like none of the zines/flyers I've put in laundromats have just been thrown away, though I suppose it's a good possibility they might at some point.

People leave old magazines and newspapers at laundromats all the time. Jehova's Witnesses are very big on leaving theirs. There are bulletin boards that I'm sure people post on without asking. I don't see it as that "discourteous" to leave zines at a laudromat. I think it's sort of an unwritten rule in our society that it's generally okay. Asking permission might just arouse suspicion and almost guarantee a negative answer. The state, the government at all levels, more than any time in our history, has all but banned alternative media, from TV, radio, who knows where and how else. How else can we protest and have our voices heard, if we have to "ask permisssion" first???

I can understand fears about leaving your address for all to see. Even a POB can be traced by authorities, and I fear the police and other authoritarian/bureaucratic apparatchiks FAR MORE than I do "creeps". However, not having a contact address would take all the fun, the excitement out of it for me. The freebie I'm putting out to the public has sort of a "semi-anonymous" physical address at a private PO and e-mail address to act as sort of a "buffer" to hostile conventionals and authoritarians who might try to harrass, hey, even arrest me, for "littering" and "trespass". (They try to do this with racist groups who do the same thing. I'm totally against racism, but if you take away their right to communicate, then nobody's safe. RICO laws are tools of oppression.)

My private POB is about 6 or 7 dollars a month. That doesn't seem very expensive for somebody who loves the Papernet.

Tom Hendricks said:

They'll just be thrown away.
Most places don't like people sneaking in their stuff. Find the manager and ask - once you do that once, you can put them there on a regular basis. And another tip don't push someone elses zine out of the way to give your's better viewing. It'll just come back to haunt you when they see what you did and dump your stuff. Be courteous. I've learned over 17 years. Good luck.

[kit feral]

6 or 7 dollars a month?! gah, i want to live where you do!

James N. Dawson said:

So far it looks like none of the zines/flyers I've put in laundromats have just been thrown away, though I suppose it's a good possibility they might at some point.

People leave old magazines and newspapers at laundromats all the time. Jehova's Witnesses are very big on leaving theirs. There are bulletin boards that I'm sure people post on without asking. I don't see it as that "discourteous" to leave zines at a laudromat. I think it's sort of an unwritten rule in our society that it's generally okay. Asking permission might just arouse suspicion and almost guarantee a negative answer. The state, the government at all levels, more than any time in our history, has all but banned alternative media, from TV, radio, who knows where and how else. How else can we protest and have our voices heard, if we have to "ask permisssion" first???

I can understand fears about leaving your address for all to see. Even a POB can be traced by authorities, and I fear the police and other authoritarian/bureaucratic apparatchiks FAR MORE than I do "creeps". However, not having a contact address would take all the fun, the excitement out of it for me. The freebie I'm putting out to the public has sort of a "semi-anonymous" physical address at a private PO and e-mail address to act as sort of a "buffer" to hostile conventionals and authoritarians who might try to harrass, hey, even arrest me, for "littering" and "trespass". (They try to do this with racist groups who do the same thing. I'm totally against racism, but if you take away their right to communicate, then nobody's safe. RICO laws are tools of oppression.)

My private POB is about 6 or 7 dollars a month. That doesn't seem very expensive for somebody who loves the Papernet.

Tom Hendricks said:

They'll just be thrown away.
Most places don't like people sneaking in their stuff. Find the manager and ask - once you do that once, you can put them there on a regular basis. And another tip don't push someone elses zine out of the way to give your's better viewing. It'll just come back to haunt you when they see what you did and dump your stuff. Be courteous. I've learned over 17 years. Good luck.

[Matthew Mu]

I came out of a show earlier this year to find that someone had left a zine (about bicycles!) in the rack of my bicycle. Awesome!
Admittedly it was the weekend of the Portland zine symposium and the concert was the launch show, but way to target your demographics. I enjoy it too, don't remember what it was called but half of it was a history about huffy (I think) bicycles, and I gave it to a friend so now I can't check.

[Saling Pusa Distro/closed]

i've tried it a few times before... but never got any feedback... i've always feared that maybe it ends up being cleared ny whoever works in there...

[Elaine]

I've done that. They were mini-comics and I left a stack at the vets, at the pet pharmacy (we have one in the city here) and at the library. They're also good advertising if you sell anything, tossing in a small 4 page mini- 'zine' always seems to add value.

I even got feedback from the vet techs at the clinic, they said the teens all thought they were hysterical.

[Musculoso Barbaro]

I just finished the final mockup of "La Lucha!" and this thread is giving me some GREAT ideas of where to leave a couple copies of it. Awesome!