Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on
The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of
Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and
Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses
Twitter.
6 responses
Kind of counter-intuitive, when you think back on how the t’internet saved so many zines from paper/mailing costs, etc., and gave them new life.
Sarah – That is true, and also it has become more expensive to put out a paper zine, as postage has gone up and the ease of scamming copies has gone down. But still, there is nothing like holding a zine in your hand and seeing the care that went into making each one. It’s a tactile and sensory experience the internet has yet to replicate in any meaningful way.
Saving on postage and paper and printing costs isn’t “meaningful”???
C’mon. Get real.
who would i send it to?
i did a print book last year (see my website link) – little more than a ‘zine in size — and all in, once i paid production costs and gave copies away as presents, the damage was over $500. it was well worth it to have cool presents to give people, but i only say that because i had the money to begin with.
Sarah – Whoa, harsh much? I’ll admit, I have been involved with zines for about a decade now, and I have a very strong emotional attachment to the medium, which may preclude the more practical considerations of things like paper and postage, but I am also not the only one who feels this way, not by a long shot. Zine communities are still very active, despite the fact that the internet was supposed to kill them off.
Let me paraphrase one of my friends, who has been making zines for much longer: When you get a zine, particularly a personal one (which is the kind of zine I focus most of my energies on), you can smell the house it came from, you can see the pressure from the pen the person used to address the envelope and the note that came with it, and you know the person put together the zine by hand and that they handled the paper…it’s a very intimate experience. You are holding the most intimate part of a person in your hands.
I’ve been taking part in internet communities since the mid-90s and there is nothing on the internet that has come close to that kind of tactile, physical connection for me. With everything being all digital and bytes and binary code, it’s nice to have something you can actually hold in your hand. It’s the difference between a handwritten letter and an email.
I made a zine on my mom’s mimeograph machine way back in high school in the late 60’s early 70s, so I know what you mean about being able to smell the house it came from. Mimeo stink is probably one of those smells that has gone extinct from the land and if you’re not of a certain age you won’t understand its weird appeal but le temps do perdu whether we want them to or not.
I have also been involved with various other zines, one of which is now a slick quarterly. I owned and published a 15k circ local monthly tabloid for a while, too before distribution costs pushed me over the edge and I got folded up into the local Gannett rag for a time, until I couldn’t bear working for them anymore (like a month or so). So, I do understand the appeal of analog publications. There’s nothing like them.
But I guess I’m more responding to what I perceive as a sort of mass hysteria over the death of books, or or paper, or of a whole “way of reading.” We own an iPad and it’s a nice thing to read certain things on; other things not so much. I understand how the changing platforms affect writers and publishers in remuneration, etc. and I’m sorry to see that happen, but don’t really know what to do about that. Things change, and people get hurt. I think what Stephen Elliott is doing with the Adderall Diaries is very positive and his ideas on building community – of readers, writers, etc. – are pretty brilliant and forward-thinking and people like him give me great hope during this really chaotic and troubling transition time.
I “get” the whole idea of grabbing onto print and holding it and not letting go, and it might be therapeutic and team-building and remind people about all the good stuff from the past, but don’t get stuck there I guess is what I’m saying or we’ll all be watching you recede in our rear-veiw mirrors.
The pendulum may seem like it’s swinging way out into terra incognita and it may look like there be nothing but dragons there, but it always finds it’s way back, even though it might only be part way, and the dragons can usually be tamed enough to do our bidding if we’re willing to put in the work, like Stephen seems to be.
I’m sure the print revenge thing will be a lot of fun and very inspiring. I’m sorry I have no copies left of The Monthly Period, or of my brother’s zine, Smegma to send along. We were *real* trailblazers, a little confused sexually and thinking we were really pushing the boundaries (both were banned from the school grounds), but young and stupid, so don’t be too harsh back, ok? =)
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