Dead Trees Part I

Dead Trees Part I

Posted on June 13th, 2008 by Katie Haegele

I make zines. I’m a writer, and making zines is a big part of my writing life. At this point it’s a big part of, just, my life-life. A sizable percentage of the people I consider good friends are folks I’ve met at zine fests, by trading zines with them through the mail, or in online ziney gathering spots.

I’ve been interested to notice — and thought it would be interesting to note, here on the world wide web — that on occasion over the last several years a person who isn’t involved with zines will ask me or my fellow zinesters, rhetorically, musingly: “I guess blogs have kind of killed zines then, right?”

This annoys me. First of all issuing questions as statements annoys me because it’s presumptuous and difficult to respond to since it’s not really the proper start to a conversation. How do you answer? “Right you are not!”

But it’s actually an interesting topic to look at. Blogs have not replaced zines. I understand why it might seem logical to many people that they would, particularly if one’s understanding of a zine is as an outlet for short bursts of personal opinion, often political or social in nature, that can be created by anyone for close to no money.

But I know that the content of zines is much more varied than this (they can be cookbooks, comics, how-to guides, poetry collections, meta-zines (zines about zines!), or really anything you can think to put on paper) and also that — this is more salient, I think — a large part of the pleasure of making zines is in their physical production. When someone buys a zine of mine they are buying something that I sat on my living room floor to assemble, with scraps of bright paper and paper products like cut-up grocery bags, a big scary guillotine paper cutter, my long-armed stapler, and maybe some glitter. Much of the pleasure of reading zines is in handling these low-fi art objects, collecting them perhaps, and knowing that the essay or poem you’re reading isn’t only a piece of writing but also a THING that another human being has sat down on her living room floor and assembled with her special stapler and whatnot. I’d venture to say too that the multiple waves of the craft revolution have brought about a resurgence in the interest and appreciation of these (often) handmade publications. Zines are objects; blogs aren’t.

The Internet has affected print zine culture, though, and I think it’s mostly been in a really nice way. I make many zines sales online and I have hooked up with illustrators and other collaborators through online networks. Some fellow zinesters have recently started an online radio show on-topic, and friends of mine made a series of zinester podcasts that featured DIY publishers reading their work.

I like the Internet. So, hi! I plan to blog about Dead Trees in all their incarnations regularly.