Where is your distro run out of?

[Bird in the Hand Zine Shop]

So where do you run your zine/small press distro from? And how much ziney action is coming from your town/city/country?

[lizzy / marching stars distro]

I currently run my zine distro out of Reading, which is a big town about an hours journey from London (UK). There is zero ziney action in Reading. In a week I'm moving to university in Nottingham and I'm determined to find or make ziney action there. The UK as a whole isn't too bad though, 2 or 3 zine fests a year if I'm prepared to travel up to about 3/4 hours :)

[Sage]

I started my distro online in 2004 here in rural Georgia, surprisingly there were a lot more zinesters here then opposed to now. I lived in Philadelphia for almost two years and the zine scene there was completely inspiring and wonderful ... now I am back in Georgia and still *happily* running my distro but not many orders come from my area at all...

Sweet Candy has now gone mail order (no more web site) for a few reasons. One is because I am simplifying my life and I am trying not to base all of my creative projects solely online. I do have a myspace for Sweet Candy so people can be kept updated on all of the hip happenings going on as well as the ability to broswe the catalog and even place an order if they wish in case they haven't gotten a recent catalog yet.

Here is my distro info in case you'd like to get in touch :)

mail order:
Sweet Candy Distro
c/o Sage
PO Box 1833
Dallas, GA 30132
USA

online:
http://www.myspace.com/sweetcandymailorder

[Bird in the Hand Zine Shop]

Bird in the Hand is run out of Sydney, Australia where the zine action just seems to be happening. There's plenty of zine fairs each year within a two hour radius of Sydney but it feels like the zine fairs are always coupled with something else - possibly Sydney's recent infatuation with cupcakes and these beautiful crocheted or knitted cute-things.

i'm just starting out in the distro-ing business but have been making zines here for many years. I've got a myspace... http://www.myspace.com/quietchirps and would love to make friends with you!

[NicoleIntrovert]

Click Clack Distro and I are in Richmond, Virginia USA. I just started the distro, I am currently in the stocking stages at the moment. I am debuting it at the RIchmond Zine Fest. Myself and a couple of pals have been really trying to promote zines in the Richmond area the past couple years. This October is the second (hopefully annual) zine fest. Once i really get the distro underway and launch the web-order i think i'll be a better judge of where zines are popular and who is reading zines.

Strange enough... upon having a conversation awhile back with Taylor from Parcell Press he said he seems to get a lot of middle-aged women who order zines. I think that's pretty cool.

[ciaraxyerra]

i run learning to leave a paper trail distro (http://www.papertraildistro.com) out of boston, & have for the last five years (save for two months in 2005 when i moved to minneapolis & was running it from there). there is some zine activity in boston, though it's not a fever pitch & the community doesn't seem very tight-knit, but that's par for the course for most sub-cultural-style activities in boston. people stick to their little enclaves, & that includes sticking to their own small friend groups even within an already small community like zines. but there is the boston zine fair (happening this weekend), which has been going on for eight years or something like that. there is the papercut zine library in cambridge, which has been around for three & a half years. i know a lot of people around he city who read zines, even if they don't write them, or maybe they have done some one-offs but wouldn't consider themselves "zinesters," per se. pretty much all of my buddies in boston over the years have read or written zines, even if it wasn't as big a part of their lives as it is for me. the overwhelming majority of distro orders i receive are from outside boston. but i have gotten a few from inside the city, from people i didn't know & have never met! which is pretty cool. i like the idea that there are zine readers/writers here that i have yet to meet, even after living here for so long.

[Katie]

Hey everyone. I live just outside of Philadelphia, and I started my little distro last year with the idea to carry only "lit" zines, ones that feature poetry and/or fiction. Ciara, I am traveling by bus up to Boston this weekend for the Zine Fair. I'm very excited! A friend told me about The Grolier, a bookstore in Cambridge that carries only poetry books—one of only two like this in the country. Do you know this place? I'm looking forward to visiting the city.

[Lauren Arcade]

I run Arcade Distro out of my bedroom in a huge Houston suburb. I don't know anybody in my town who is into zines. Half an hour away in Houston, there's a few random people who read zines, but I haven't met many people who order and read zines as often as I do.

I used to organize zine events in Houston with this one guy who made comics, but we called it quits when we realized that nobody else was ever going to start coming to our little events. Houston is a really spread out and disorganized city and anybody who is into subcultural events eventually gets burnt out on trying to get things started here and moves to Austin.

[ciaraxyerra]

i think the grolier is this little place that is located kind of between the harvard bookstore (an awesome independent bookstore that is not affiliated with harvard university) & the papercut zine library. i'm not entirely sure though, because i really don't pay attention to poetry. my friend david (one of the organizers of the zine fair, also my boyfriend's brother) mentioned it to me recently.

[Katie]

Oh, thank you. I will visit the Harvard Bookstore too, and of course the zine library also—I got the email yesterday (or whenever it was) that the organizers sent out that mentioned a get-together there on Saturday evening. I'm excited about this trip.

[Mae Undead]

Gimme Brains!!! Distro is running out of my bedroom in San Francisco, CA which started in 2005. It web-based and where I make most of my orders. There are a few zine stores here in SF and there is an annual zine fest. Most of the zines I've seen here are art zines and such. Although I'm glad when I'm talk to some people here, they know what zines are. Back when I was running the distro in San Jose, no one knew what zines are.

[Bird in the Hand Zine Shop]

hmmm yumm brains

Mae Undead said:

Gimme Brains!!! Distro is running out of my bedroom in San Francisco, CA which started in 2005. It web-based and where I make most of my orders. There are a few zine stores here in SF and there is an annual zine fest. Most of the zines I've seen here are art zines and such. Although I'm glad when I'm talk to some people here, they know what zines are. Back when I was running the distro in San Jose, no one knew what zines are.

[Erica S.]

Mine will be run out of a root cellar (er, no, it's a bedroom) in Pittsburgh, PA. I've recently become aware of a bit of zine activity around here and met a few zinesters, but it's not widespread at all. There are probably more self-done local comics than there are personal zines, which suits me since I'm concentrating on comics for the distro and feel a lot more comfortable chatting with the owners of the local comic book shop than the local radical bookstore, which is only open until five p.m. four days out of the week because apparently nobody who reads zines and radical literature has a day job. Just one of my many gripes. But yeah, even though I've been dropping ads around the burgh I expect most orders to come from other places.