Obnoxious behaviour about trading

[Emma Jane Falconer]

When I was at a zine event recently I was going around doing some trading, and there was one guy whose behaviour really rubbed me up the wrong way. I don't mind if people aren't up for trading, maybe they need the cash, or have a huge backlog of traded zines to read at home or something, but this guy said he was up for trading, but then insisted on inspecting all my zines for a good 10 minutes "to see if they were good enough" and quizzed me about my "motivations for making them" before trading. The zines we were swapping were exactly the same size with the same no. of pages (and his turned out to not have much in them actually). I can understand asking what the topic or zine type is, and having a quick flick to see if it's your thing, but to deliberately try to make the other person feel small? Not cool.

Anyone else experienced this when trading face to face?

[Milwaukee Zine Fest]

I have literally hundreds of zines waiting to be read but if someone asks I will still trade with them, that's part of making a zine in the first place. Most of the time when I ask about trades the other person doesn't do it. I also started making zines for trade only because I run a distro and people want to trade for something I didn't make (which means I have to pay the maker) or a new issue that may have cost a lot to create and I need to sell first to make some of the initial cost back. This ensures I can trade in the first place and also prevents people from picking and choosing from 50+ titles. It seems to work for me.