Reserve your page now!

[Nygaard]

So, I'm off the wagon and trying to make a print fanzine again.

Here's the deal: We will make a magazine. It should have at least 24 pages. You get to reserve pages in the magazine; these pages belong to you, and you can do whatever you want to do with them. Five pages have already been reserved. (Hurry while there is still space!)

(Imagonem's superior gutenbergological technology prefers to use black on white; colours and grayscales are for the weak minded and the troglodytes! But if you need colour on your pages, tell us, and we shall see what may be done.)

Imagonem usually covers gaming of the indie/artish/DIY variety, with a bit of comics and other cool stuff thrown in. But we're letting you reserve your pages for whatever, so feel free to do something completely different. We intend to recklessly mix english and norwegian content.

The call for articles goes something like this:

Some things can only be said on paper. Some stuff you have to touch, tear out, cut up, make copies of, and possibly chew on, if you are that sort. Some stuff must be carried around a bit, sat down with, browsed, and thought about. Some things you have to point out to other people, read together and talk about.

 You have something you need to say, and it can only be said on mashed-up, dead trees. Imagonem will be happy to help you with this. One day, very soon, when we have enough pages, we will print Imagonem # 38. Tell us how many pages you need in the comments here, or, if you're shy, send it to

[e-mail].

We imagine a magazine in A5 format - that's regular A4 office issue pages, folded. What you do with your pages are, of course, up to you. Take a look at our archive if you need some inspiration. 

 If you also want to determine how the magazine should look, who should have it, and other editorish things, we promise to come back with a date for an editorial meeting.

Also: the print run is probably going to be rather small. So I'm thinking of printing the front page without a logo, and adding the logo with a rubber stamp. Anyone have any experience/tips for doing this?

[Krissy PonyBoy Press]

please post this on your blog. Call for submissions are not for the forum. See guidelines on the front page.

Thanks!

Krissy

[Nygaard]

Krissy PonyBoy Press said:

please post this on your blog. Call for submissions are not for the forum. See guidelines on the front page.

Thanks!

Krissy

Ow. Sorry; should have spotted that.

To salvage the thread: This approach to getting contributors caused a rise from zero to 100% success rate. 'course, they still have to deliver, and I'm a bit uncertain of how to work out a deadline. But still, it's a bit uncanny. Suggested reasons?

My first suspicion was that most of the bright young things I have been asking do not really have an idea of what a fanzine entails, and that this explanation hit the right spot. On the other hand, this also seemed to work for some of the grognards...

[James N. Dawson]

On a gut level, I can relate to Krissy's doggedness about this, though I can't say I'm really zealous about it. It would be nice to have a sub-forum that doesn't get all "spam-clogged". Psychologically, I gradually become less and less inclined to visit forums as they get more and more spam. Also, all the blogs have reply boxes, so if anybody wants to reply, they can easily go ahead and do so.

To tell you the truth, I think now and then about participating in the forum, but I don't want to bore or irk anybody with what most I'm sure is my "negativity". Paradoxically, it the discussions that many or most on here find "negative" that have the slightest chance of getting my attention.

I was going to make some comments and ask some questions about APA's, and may do that, but from my past responses or dearth of them, I don't think many zinesters share my concerns or visions about zinedom (not that they necessarily should).

But I'll give it a try soon.

[Krissy PonyBoy Press]

For the first year or more I didn't have this rule and everyone posted everything in the forum and seldom used the blogs, even though it is more central on the front page. Consequently, people often commented that no one ever read the blog posts and they got no attention, so even more people use the forums. It seems unproductive to have multiple announcements and call for submissions clogging up the forum (and therefore taking space away from discussions, since there are only a certain amount shown on the front page) when most people don't even respond to these. Add to that the fact that comments can be made on blog entries just like on the forum and it seems unbalanced to have everyone post everything on the forums.

So, to try and get people to post more and watch the blogs more i started that rule. I mean, it makes sense. The forum is something made for discussions and not announcements. I think it's worked out pretty good. People are using the blog feature much more than they did. Also, keep in mind that there is a New Issue Announcement thread and I think a Call for Submissions thread in the forums as well.

Sometimes I don't catch them all and if a lot of comments have been attached to an announcement I won't ask them to move it. I'll suggest we keep this one open so that people can see this discussion, but in the future I want people to post announcements and call for submissions on the blog & events on the events or blog.

Thanks,

krissy


Mulnix said:

Hey Krissy...have you ever considered loosening that rule? I mean, this place gets about six posts a day, so why discourage people from posting? I don't get it. WMZ is in no danger of being flooded by people asking for submissions, and said calls for submissions could easily become conversations...so what gives?

[Blake]

If I've commented on this once, I've done it at least a dozen times on sites like this. The way community "blogs" are set up, generally anything that has been posted over a week ago just "rolls out of view" no matter if there are any active postings/comments associated with the blog. With forums, topics that are years old can come back to "life" and float right there to the top of the list for all to view the latest activity--a feature I strongly prefer. I just believe forum topics have more staying power whereby blogs are more like a "single-use" item, if that makes any sense....

... stated another way, imagine the famous "New Issue Announcement thread" as a blog entry. I could easily imagine that only those that were around very shortly after the 2008 creation of that thread as a blog entry would even know that it existed.