Available from Microcosm in August 2011

To order a copy of this issue, please send $3 (order online, or send cash, stamps, money order, or check) to Microcosm Publishing

Introduction

Welcome to Xerography Debt #29! The issue where we resurrect the revolution from our rocking chairs. But seriously, there has been a degree of complacency and with the last issue we started voicing issues and concerns that applied to XD, as well as the community. In this issue we continue to push and analyze the state of the zine union. To that end, we here at XD HQ thought up a few “useful” rules (if useful translates to pissing a few people off in order to make our points).

Some Rules to Zinedom:

• Support zinesters starting out.
• Support stores and distros who carry zines. They aren’t making much (if anything) selling our stuff, but they help support the community.
• Don't get into unnecessary pissing matches, the whole community just ends up pee soaked.
• Consider what you are trading before you ask. If you have a 16-page comic you slapped together on your breaks at work (starring oversized dicks talking) and are asking to trade with a 72 page zine that someone labored over for a year, your trade is likely to be declined. Possibly even ridiculed.
• F5 is dead and for all practical purposes has been for longer than it was alive. GET OVER IT.
• A blog is not a zine any more than an mp3 is a record album.
• If you are going to cut and paste please go find a ruler and X-acto knife.
• Don’t tell me you can’t afford a copy of my $3 zine when you are emailing me from your iPhone and printing your zine in full color.
• Maintain consistent ethics. That means that you can’t give rumors more weight than proof. Case in point, a fellow zinester is alleged to have been an asshole, while the inmate you give free zines to was convicted of rape. Vilifying the zinester and befriending the prisoner makes you appear to be a total hypocrite.
• Review other zines in your zine.
• Date zinesters with caution. The minute your first zinester romance ends, you’ll see just how fucking small the community is.
• If you want people to read your zine make it legible. Inscrutable 6 pt fonts reek of inconsiderate laziness on the part of someone too young to need reading glasses. <insert rocking chair noise>

I forgot to do it in the last issue, so let me now welcome aboard Australian zinester Stuart Stratu (Blackguard and Grunted Warning) and my Rigor Mortis cohort, Dread Sockett. Also, and this issue marks Liz Mason, of Quimby’s and Caboose fame, induction to the review staff.

Keep reading,
Davida