a place for zinesters - writers and readers

Those Crazy Zine Days

I went to the local charity shop today to photocopy some backgrounds for zine pages (they are the cheapest around, and the money goes to charity rather than big corp).

I had one of those moments where you kind of stand back and look at yourself, and wonder what on earth you are doing. I think it was the looks of people around me, as I stood at the copier, with piles of wrapping paper, collaged Chinese newspaper, sheets of funky foam, and was sticking them all on the scanner and pressing 'copy'.

It's quite funny really - the same has happened to me before (doing the same thing in the same place!), but the poor boy behind the counter had no idea what I was doing, and looked quite suspicious throughout!

Ah, these crazy zine days!

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Permalink Reply by Amazing Sunflower on July 21, 2009 at 12:33pm

Is there a UPS Store nearby? I go to the UPS Store in my town. For a while I was able to find coupons for 3 cent and even 2 cent copies. The one here has a deal where if you prepay for 1,000 copies, it only costs $30 or 3 cents per copy.

I'm not thrilled by UPS as a corporation, but I hope to never have to give Kinko's money again as long as I live.

The UPS Store I go to is a locally owned franchise. The owner is often in the store and is very nice to me and I've never experienced her being shitty to her workers.

BestAvailable said:

A random someone picked up a copy of one of my comics in Kinkos and told me that it looked too much like SpongeBob.

I didn't even say anything. I was too baffled.

We're trying to work out a solution that involves NOT going to Kinkos. Anyone know of a decent copy shop in Philly or South Jersey? I need cheap color copies in a bad way.

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Permalink Reply by Saling Pusa Distro/closed on July 21, 2009 at 1:54pm

i only scan mine in campus(and print at the office or at home)... and i'm not sure if those behind me usually stare of curiosity or because i sometimes take long.. or maybe both(?)..

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Permalink Reply by Adrian Fynch on July 22, 2009 at 11:58am

I went to Staples for the first copy run of my new zine this month with a friend cos I had money left over on a copy card and while I was busy copying, my friend was folding my pages for me [yeah she's awesome] and this Indian man came over, picked up one of the half-finished zines and started asking her what it was, and if it was about lesbians. When she said no, that it was more about art and journal entries, he put it down and walked away. By far the strangest reaction I've ever gotten to my work!

I get a lot of looks when I'm copying my zines, and today at the post office as well, cos I had to buy envelopes and then I was just standing off to the side, stuffing them and writing notes, and the guy behind the counter was just kind of starting at me oddly the whole time.