Last month, Microcosm Publishing released a public statement, on its website, addressing “abuse and support.” It reads, in part: “This statement is in response to individuals in the zine community accusing the founder of Microcosm, Joe Biel, for emotional abuse. Alex Wrekk (of Brainscan and Stolen Sharpie Revolution) and Cindy Crabb (of Doris zine and distro) have written about this, and other zinesters have requested information. … We unequivocally stand for those who have suffered from abuse. And we’ve struggled with where to go from there. The collective believes that ostracizing someone isn’t a healthy, restorative response, and we’ve struggled with accountability being more than a radical judge-and-jury trial. We believe that we’ve been ill-equipped to address emotional abuse and support on an organizational level. We’ve struggled with how to provide that space and forum in Microcosm. … While the movement is gradual, there have been many organizational changes in the past months. Joe stepped down from being a collective member, and Microcosm will be collectively owned by the remaining members by the end of this year. The collective is working to create a Resource Council, an independent group of volunteers to offer support and mediation to Microcosm. Our hope is that an external ring of support could offer help with personal conflicts that fall outside of our Non-Adherence Policy and assist in maintaining a compassionate Safer Space Policy for the non-physical space that is Microcosm. We can’t expect to bandage anyone’s wounds. We do sincerely hope to open the conversation and aid in creating the resources that may someday help others.”

It’s unclear what continued role Joe will have in Microcosm. For the time being, he’s still listed on Microcosm’s “about us” page as the person to contact about “upcoming publishing projects, printing questions, or owing you money.” Microcosm has also announced that it is moving its mail order headquarters, new address: Microcosm Publishing, 112C S Main St., Lansing, KS 66043.

Initially, the page on which this statement was posted allowed for users of the Microcosm website to post comments. In less than 1 day, commenting was closed and all comments were deleted. However, Derek Neuland created screen captures of the comments, which Alex Wrekk has posted at her website. Among the comments was one left by Sparky Taylor (Joe Biel’s partner after his divorce from Alex), which said “I’m sad to say that I no longer support Microcosm Publishing. I cannot support a group of people who so adamantly claim to oppose abuse, but in practice have let it continue for years. This abuse was perpetrated against me, and I have remained largely silent in hopes that Microcosm could be salvaged. I no longer believe this is possible.”

Alex has also published a response to Microcosm’s statement. A discussion of the topic is ongoing at WeMakeZines.

July is International Zine Month (also on Facebook). If you have been procrastinating on joining the Revenge of Print challenge, this would be an excellent month to make your new / first zine!

July is also the month for the 24 Hour Zine Thing challenge — pick a day and devote a full 24 hours to making 1 issue of a zine. If you live in Richmond, you can join your comrades on July 8; the IPRC in Portland is hosting its challenge on July 16.

Need a little motivation to get cracking?
Here’s an interesting zine-making technique using intaglio (from ABC Open South West Victoria):

Whadyaknow? zines from ABC Open South West Victoria on Vimeo.

And, here’s a demonstration of 3 binding techniques for your zine (courtesy of Salt Lake City Library):

Have you got zines you’re waiting to mail? Don’t procrastinate — new rates for First Class mail go into effect on April 17. The cost of a 1 oz. letter is staying at 44 cents, but pretty much everything else is is increasing. Here’s our updated U.S. Postal Rate Chart.

Speaking of stamps, with our excitement about 2011: The Revenge of Print, I decided to make some custom stamps to celebrate! Don’t they look awesome? Would you like to have some? I ordered a few extra sheets, and I’m willing to share them (at cost). PayPal $7.50 for 1/2 sheet (10 stamps) or $15.00 for 1 sheet (20 stamps) to zineworld@gmail.com; be sure to include your mailing address! If there’s a lot of interest, I’ll order some more (which could drop the per-sheet price).

(While you are at PayPal, consider making a donation to Zine World — your donations help us cover extra expenses such as website hosting, PO Box rental, mailing zines to reviewers, and sending zines to prisoners. Every extra dollar helps!)

Also, we’ve updated our list of Recommended Distros & Stores, so you can see what zine-selling outfits our readers recommend and who’s got Zine World for sale. If your favorite distro is absent from the list, we’d love to get a recommendation from you. If you run a distro and you’d like to have it included in the list, send us your distro’s name, website, mailing address, and a one-sentence description. Email comments to wordofmouth@undergroundpress.org. (Interested in selling Zine World in your distro? Visit our distribution page for info.)

There’s a few projects out in the zine world that could use a helping hand.

A group of zine publishers affiliated with the London Zine Symposium are organizing an event called EGAKU, a zine/print/art/etc fair to raise money for victims of the Japanese earthquake & tsunami. The event will be held April 2 & 3. They are seeking donated works to see at the event to raise money. 100 percent of the money raised will be donated. Email deadtreesanddye(at)hotmail(dot)com for more info on how to donate your work.

Once again, Reading Frenzy has reached a bit of a financial crisis. To make it through the recession of the past couple of years, Reading Frenzy has made cutbacks, organized fundraisers, and conducted membership drives. This time, Portland’s most awesome zine shop isn’t asking for charity, it’s just asking you to put your money where your mouth is. If you want to see the shop continue, pick one of 10 ways to support it.

The IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) has launched its first Kickstarter project, to help 1000+ teens creatively confront bullying and poor body image by learning media literacy and making zines.

When a blizzard hit Chicago back in February, the building housing the Chicago Underground Library suffered some damage, causing a part of the collection to be buried in snow. The library has since gone mobile while looking for a new home. You can help keep the project going by making a donation.

And, maybe helpful to you:

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has released a guide called “Legal Hazards of Crossing International Borders with Comic Book art,” as a “response to an increasing number of reports from travelers who have been stopped, searched, and/or an detained by customs agents because of comic book art.”

(This article is excerpted from two articles appearing in Zine World #30: “Cindy Crabb Says No to Microcosm” and “Microcosm Says No to ZW, Other Zines.”)

In July of last year, Cindy Crabb of Doris wrote a blog post in which she stated that she would not be publishing her next book with Microcosm Publishing, and unless certain criteria were met, she would be removing her zines from the distro. The reasons for this are not easy to summarize, but relate to Microcosm’s founder Joe Biel’s former relationship with Alex Wrekk, which has been characterized as abusive and manipulative, and his behavior toward other zine publishers. Cindy has been an active abuse survivor advocate, both in her publications—such as her zine Support, about sexual abuse—and in her day-to-day life. Cindy asked the Microcosm collective to issue a public statement “confronting/admitting Joe’s abuse and manipulation, and/or for Joe to legally remove himself from the collective.” (See these links for more context.)

At the end of December, the Microcosm collective finally released a statement in response—a statement that was not published on its own website, or within an active zine community, but instead was published at Anarchist News. The statement said that the collective has “spent many hours discussing this topic,” and “we want to say that we do recognize Joe’s history of emotional abuse and manipulation. Not just with Alex, but within other relationships as well.” The statement said that collective members “have noticed some positive improvements in Joe’s behavior” and that because they “believe that he can work through this,” the collective has chosen to continue working with Joe.

Cindy issued her response in January. She will no longer distribute her zines with the distro, she said, although because Microcosm published Doris #23, the Doris anthology, Support, and Learning Good Consent, she has no control over those publications.

Her response, in part: “I wanted to give the workers at Microcosm a chance to show their commitment to confronting Joe’s manipulative behavior, and a chance to make a strong stance against abuse. The statement that was recently released by Microcosm is too little, too late. … If this statement had come out immediately, and they had followed up with concrete examples of change months later, that would have been great. If they had waited six months and come up with a statement that firmly placed the responsibility of change on Joe’s feet, discussed concrete changes the collective was making to deal with his abusive behavior, and took a strong stand against abuse, that would have been great. This statement is very weak, particularly considering that Joe’s abuse has been known for years.”

Cindy is hardly the only zine publisher who has decided to stop distributing zines through Microcosm because of Joe (Ker-bloom!’s artnoose is another), but she is perhaps the most well-known.

Also in January, Microcosm Publishing announced it would be making “significant changes” to its operation: to reduce the number of books it will publish and to increase the distribution requirements for the zines it will stock. “In the future, we will focus primarily on publishing instructional DIY books and the coolest of zines,” the announcement reads. “Distributed zines will be required to sell at least 40 copies per issue per year in order to remain in the catalog.” The change seems tied to financial losses the collective has incurred, as shown in its financial statement for 2010: “We think that with these changes we should be back on our feet by the end of the year and able to pay ourselves and our bills.”

This means that Zine World will no longer be stocked by Microcosm, who had been buying 30 copies of our zine.

While Microcosm itself has said “we strongly suggest you not to think of being distributed by Microcosm as a ‘goal’ or mark of success with your zine,” there is no doubt that many zine publishers have adopted that exact attitude. The organization has been called a sort of Wal-Mart of zines. It is undeniably the largest distributor of zines, and because of its large catalog, Microcosm offers one-stop shopping for zine readers, zine libraries, and others. Having one’s zine distributed through Microcosm—making it available through its widely distributed catalog, on its website, at a significant number of zine events, within Microcosm’s Portland store, and potentially through other stores (via Microcosm’s offering of wholesale orders for stores and other retailers)—can dramatically increase the reach of your zine.

We certainly understand that no distro has to carry every zine; each distro should be expected to set its own criteria for what type or quantity of zines it carries. However, Microcosm’s new distribution plan of only selling zines that it can sell in large quantities in essence denotes those zines with an elite status.

Lest you, dear reader, think that our ponderings about Microcosm here stem from sour grapes, because we are no longer among “the coolest”—Zine World staff had, in fact, been discussing whether we wanted to stop distributing our zine with Microcosm, for the same reasons that Cindy Crabb and others have withdrawn their zines. Some of us on staff do believe that Joe exhibited abusive behavior toward Alex and has continued a pattern of manipulative behavior towards other zine publishers, and we felt uncomfortable with supporting an organization headed by such an individual. We were waiting to see Microcosm’s public statement, to see if Joe had taken steps to become accountable and to see whether Microcosm adequately addressed the issue. We had not yet reached a consensus about what course of action to take. Perhaps we should thank the Microcosm collective for making that difficult decision for us.

We’d like to hear from you: If you have been sized out of distribution by Microcosm, how will that affect your zine? Will Microcosm’s decisions and/or the issues surrounding Joe Biel affect your decision to continue buying zines or other products from Microcosm? Do you think that Microcosm’s new distribution policy will marginalize less-popular zines? Or do you think this change will encourage zine readers who have previously bought exclusively from Microcosm to now cast a wider net and search out other distros? What do you see as the role or responsibility of the Microcosm collective within the zine community?

Nicki Sabalu has made a great little video called “How to Make a Zine.” It’s clear, simple, and super cute.

how to make a zine from nicki sabalu on Vimeo.

Monday is the last day to nominate a person or group for the 2nd annual Long Arm Stapler award. Sponsored by Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago, the Long Arm Stapler Award highlights accomplishments in self-publishing. The first ever award was presented to QZAP, the Queer Zine Archive Project, last spring. Nominees must show enthusiasm for and commitment to self-publishing, be a cause for inspiration within other self-publishers, and have a high level of quality in output. This year’s prize will be awarded during the Zinester Karoke party at Quimby’s on March 25 (part of the Chicago Zine Fest).

Do you Tumblr? Check out these zine-related links: We Love Zines is dedicated to all things zine-related (and other independent works), including loads of images. You can become a contributor! fuck-zines is a blog showing images from “kick ass zines, books, publications, experimental magazines and shit!” Includes lots of European publications. Know of other ziney Tumblrs? Let us know!

Nicole Harris pointed us to this site selling old magazines, zines, books, etc. for outrageous prices — including an old issue of A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press they’re trying to sell for $25. Dude, seriously. Don’t ever pay anyone that much for a back issue of our zine. If you want an old issue of Zine World or ARG, just get in touch with us.

The Revenge of Print is underway! Are you publishing a new zine or issue this year? Be sure to send us a copy for review!

We are working to (massively) update the zine events listings, which we hope to have online tomorrow. Look for additional updates to the site (with content from the new issue) in days to come.

Let’s hear your zine distro & store recommendations. Zine World is going to run an updated list of reader-recommended distros & stores in our next issue. Who distros your zine? What stores sell zines in your town? Who do you buy zines from? Please share, and tell us why you recommend them. (Please don’t recommend your own distro.) Email your comments to jerianne@undergroundpress.org (or post them here).

Also, now’s a great time to send in your submissions for Zine World #30:

Classified ads (up to 50 words) are free for any DIY or out-of-the-mainstream project.

Display ads available for as little as $15.

Share your resource listings: new zine libraries, review zines & websites, online resources, mailing or publishing tips, zine fest and zine scene reports, etc.

Letters of comment, artwork, or articles related to zines, publishing, or DIY advice also welcome.

Didn’t make it to Canzine? Here’s a glimpse at what you missed:

Check out this brief visual history of Riot Grrrl zines!

Did you hear about Molly Norris, Seattle cartoonist who was urged by the FBI to “disappear” after her tongue-in-cheek “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” placed her on an execution hitlist? Yeah, we missed the news, too (as King Wenclas noted).

Will Kindle Singles lead to a new wave of e-zines?

Need contributions for your zine? Looking for a zine to submit your art or writing to? Visit the Compilation Station.

Lots of cool zine events are coming up this summer, and we’ve updated our events page. Check it out!

Here’s a few links we’ve recently discovered:

Overglued is a new blog devoted to promoting zines, comics, and other small press publications. Started by Derek Neuland, the blog  includes interviews, news and reviews.

I Read Zines publishes reviews of zines online. So does Hello Amber. And so does Randy Spaghetti.

Want to learn how to put on a zine workshop? Librarians from Texas have created a guide on how to do it.

And: The Reno Zine Project has a new name and address! It is now called The Zine Scene, and the address is PO Box 6125, Gardnerville NV 89460.

We are in awe of the website for the Zine Collection at Jacksonville Public Library. It’s got details about zines from their collection, interviews with zine publishers, and this great video:

We posted this before, but lost the post when our hosting provider had a server fail. Utne Reader has announced the winners of its 21st annual Independent Press Awards. For the first time in several years, there was no zine category. We wondered why, so we emailed folks at Utne to ask. Utne Librarian Danielle Maestretti said the magazine has been receiving fewer zine submissions than they used to, and that it’s not necessarily a permanent change. What do you think about it? Do you care?

And: Jen Angel (former publisher of the zine Fucktooth and Clamor magazine) shares advice on How to Promote Your Own Book. Worth a read.

What do you think about print-on-demand services such as MagCloud or Newspaper Club for printing zines? Have any of you used a service like this? We’d love to share your comments in the next issue of ZW.

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