How To Put Your Zine Online - BLaCK BeaRD
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one of the things i think is cool about putting your shit online is that it
makes your
zine accessible to tons of people all over the world without
killing a single tree. but you
probably knew that already. it also gets rid
of all those printing and distribution costs.
so if we’re going to talk in online terms, there are a lot of cool ways to
to put
your zine together, like for example, the web. but remember, the
simple pleasure is the ascii
format. it’s nothing more than your words
dumped on the page–no bold, italic, underline,
graphics, or any of that
other crap sizes. just plain text.
makin a zine in ascii
can still be cool, and perhaps more importantly, give
you a fuckin huge audience since it can
be read by any personal computer in
existence. that may not be the dopest way to do a zine,
but it’s the easiest
and most widely accepted at this point. just remember, though… it takes
an
experienced ascii manipulator to make plain text ezines look good.
some of the
guys i know who call themselves the "editors" of zines just do
an ascii version and
leave it at that. that’s cool, and my personal fave 
others move on quickly to more
complicated, graphically intensive stuff.
still other guys do two or three versions of each
issue, including a print
version. whatever you choose, online publishing will be easier in
some
aspects than a print version and more complicated in others. most times,
you’ll get
so into makin it look good online, that you forget about content.
that really sucks.
of crazy shit
you’d like to publish, all those great designs, fancy
graphics, but what happens is the zine
never gets finished. if you keep it
simple when you start, building on it is easy to do later.
i say this from
experience.
another tip from BLaCK BeaRD, test your work with as
many people as you can.
all you coders know that that’s how the software developers test
new
products cuz it gets rid of a lot of headaches later on. you gotta do this
cuz most
of the archivists who store zines for people to get are volunteers.
they don’t have time or
patience to let you upload nine million corrections
or upgrades. and your reader might forgive
one mess-up, but not two or
three.
for ascii zines, email is also an option. many
guys i know who edit zines
have lists of email addresses from people who have requested the
zine and
mail their zine out to the distribution list they’ve compiled (it’s not
smart
to send your zine out to large numbers of people unsolicited. people
get pissed easily). other
guys i know who edit zines make use of automatic
mailers called listservs.
you
can also post your ascii zine to newsgroups such as alt.zine, alt.etext,
rec.mag or
misc.writing, which can be accessed using web software, such
netscape or through commercial
online services. that’s the way to reach tons
of people who actually care about zines and what
not.
okay, so i think i gave you some cool ideas on how you can get your zine
online. from the simple fact that you’re reading this right now, it gives
some credibility to
the idea that people pass shit from hand to hand. so
don’t worry, dude… chances are
*someone* will read your zine.
BLaCK BeaRD
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