Stolen Sharpie Revolution

Ok, I had to mention this. In the last post I wrote that the Robert’s Street Social Center is moving, but they have also welcomed a new photocopier into the world! I wonder if it has a name yet? In celebration they are hosting a copier launch party.  I saw this post on We Make Zines asking for songs about copiers. Do you have one to share?

In the We Make Zines post the  joke/niche band all about zines, The Copy Scams, was mentioned.

Here’s the story about that: In 2010 Steve Larder (of Rum Lad zine) was staying in my basement for a few months and decided he wanted to start a band. Then he tricked me, my housemate Marc of (Zine Thug) and my partner, Paul (who won’t make zine anymore for some reason) into starting a band with him. We decided it would be a zine themed band and in 3 weeks we wrote, rehearsed, and recorded 4 lo-fi pop punk songs all about zines including a song about apologizing for the zine being late, a song about the ubiquitous likes/dislikes list, a song about stealing photocopies, and a song about the 24 hour zine challenge. If that wasn’t ridiculous enough, we performed a show that closed out the 2010 Portland Zine Symposium. It was a lot of fun.

Well, looks like we are going to top that. In November of 2012 The Copy Scams are touring the UK with a pack of North American zine friends!  We are looking for zine fests to attend as well! Let me know if you are planing a zine fest in England during the first two weeks of November. Stay tuned for more details and in the mean time you can get a cassette tape (yes, only cassette tape!) of the songs here, or listen live and download for free on last.fm, our Reverbnation site, or right here:


 

stI keep finding more awesome zine things to share with you!

- Atomic books, one of the sponsors the 2011 Revenge of Print, has tallied over 2,000 titles printed last year! Over 1,000 people signed up on the facebook page and over 2,000 zines have been made! Take that, people say print is dead! Read more about it here.

-Another sponsor of Revenge of Print is Quimby’s, and they mentioned this site in the quimblog this week. thanks!

-Portland, Oregon zinester, author, and illustrator Nicole Georges is working with IFC to illustrate THE MOST PORTLAND THING EVER. It’s a bit like a contest where you leave a comment about the most Portland Thing Ever that you have seen and Nicole will illustrate the winner. Check it out!

-Also in Portland: The 12th annual Portland Zine Symposium will be 11-12 August 2012.  The website  has not yet been updated because there is no new artwork yet (and tabling is not open either, FYI)! The Portland Zine Symposium is looking for your artwork to grace the website, t-shirts, posters, stickers and more. The theme this year is “Sea of Zines”  So there should be lots of cephalopods reading zines, pirates with zine booty, or a shark trying to eat a zine reader on a surf board. Deadline for artwork is 25 February and details can be found on the website.

-And another thing in Portland: The Independent Publishing Resource Center is moving across the river to the east side! Since 1996 the IPRC has been located in an office building in Downtown Portland. After shuffling around the building and expanding into other offices there over the years, it has just grown too big. The move across the river to 1001 SE Division quadruples the space for more ziney goodness! Stay tuned for more news about the move!

Canada Corner! (I couldn’t help myself, sorry)

-Speaking of moving: The Robert’s Street Social Center in Halifax ,Nova Scotia, Canada has lost their lease  on Robert’s Street. They are looking for a new space in the North End. I’m particularly sad about this because I had the opportunity to be a resident with the Anchor Archive zine residency program in 2009. I know they will end up on their feet and I wish them well!

-Amber, of Fight Boredom zine distro and Culture Slut zine, was interviewed in this Montreal article about Fighting Boredom. I really dig the thought that “only boring people are boring”.

-I was contacted by the people from XSPACE Cultural Center in Toronto that they are having a BINGO fundraiser on 17 February and that they are accepting zine submissions for their zine library!

Zine Events this weekend:

12 – Festival of the Photocopier Zine Fair (Melbourne, Australia)

12 – Bristol Radical Zine Fest (Bristol, UK)

Do you have zine related news? Drop me a comment to the right and I’ll try to get it posted!  —————>

We have been live for a week now and in that time I have added a few new distros and some new shops that sell zines.  Hooray!

I thought I would use this space to mention a few things in zine land that have come across my desk.

-Spill The Zines, a UK based zine blog, posted a great article by Lizzy of Marching Stars Zine Distro. The article is about how to approach working with a zine distro and it has a lot of good information in it. Check it out.

-The Denver Zine Library has launched a fundraising campaign. Check it out here and donate. They are also launching a really cute ad campaign by zinesters to talk about the zine library. Check out some of the videos here
 or read about them in Denver’s Westwood.  Also, I was asked to do one but I don’t know what to do!

-The L.A. Zine Fest made an awesome video. Check it out . And if you are going to the L.A on February 19 stop by and say hello, I’ll be there.

-We are considering adding a messageboard to StolenSharpieRevolution.org. Would that be of interest to you? It would be a space that we hope would be used for more than just promotion and that it would be a bit more of a community to talk about zine things and also non zine related things with a core group of moderators to help keep things respectful.

And, last but not least, if you make zines you need to see this video!

In Zines We Trust, Alex Wrekk

Welcome to StolenSharpieRevolution.org! This website is a work in progress, and I think it always should be. Please consider it a companion to the book, Stolen Sharpie Revolution: a DIY Zine Resource. I have always known that the zine community is in constant flux and realized after the very first printing of the book, Stolen Sharpie Revolution, that dedicating ink and paper to fleeting projects might not be the best use of resources. The internet has unlimited 1s and 0s for us and can be updated a lot more easily than sending a a book to press.

2012 is the 10th anniversary of the very first version of Stolen Sharpie Revolution. In addition to the creation of this website there will be a reprint of the book later in the year. Along with that will be a Kickstarter campaign where pre-orders will be available as well as a bunch of fun rewards that are in the works. Stay tuned!

So, feel free to take a look around and make some suggestions. I’ll soon be adding a Google calendar of zine events that you can add to your own Google calendar. I’m also looking for distros that slipped through the cracks and more stores that sell zines. Let me know about them alexATsmallworldbuttonsDOTcom

in zines we trust,

Alex  Wrekk

Want to include your distro in the overhauled Stolen Sharpie Revolution website?

I’m working on creating a continuously update listing of zine distros and zine events at www.StolenSharpieRevolution.org and I would like your project to be a part of it. but first…

Hello! My name is Alex Wrekk. In 2002 I put together the book Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY Zine Resource. In the past 10 years there have been 3 updated printings and a complete overhaul in 2009 when I renamed the book Stolen Sharpie Revolution 2: A DIY resource for zines and zine culture. With over 21,000 copies in print, Stolen Sharpie Revolution has served as a resource for zine culture providing info on the how and why to make zines as well as resources for distribution, zine events, using zines in education, and more.

Keeping tabs on the rise and fall of zine distros, zine events, and zine resources has always been tough, especially as SSR has grown into the age of the internet. There were always a few distros that had become defunct between my research and the printing of the book. I’m looking to start the work on the next printing of Stolen Sharpie Revolution for a 10th anniversary edition and I have come to the conclusion that including the ever changing listings of distros and events might not be the best use of paper.

I’ve owned the Stolensharpierevolution.com domain for a long time but I haven’t had the time, energy or desire to do much with it. I have been working with Derek Neuland to overhaul the site to make it something useful. I plant to actually use it as an online zine resource with updated listings for zine distros, events and more!

I have been maintaining a zine event calendar on my personal blog but I will be posting that to the Stolen Sharpie Revolution website with the relaunch. Currently the zine event listings are organized into 3 catagories: Events with dates, events that don’t have dates but happen regularly, and events that are gone but not forgotten. Within each section I have organized the events geographically. This has been pretty easy for me to figure out events on my own so far but getting in touch by posting a reply to this page or e-mailing me would be really helpful.

I plan on doing something similar for zine distros but I want to expect more from distros and will need more input directly from distros to keep the listings alive and will be expecting distros to take responsibility in updating me to their status. I will be updating distro listings quarterly on the first of February, May, August, and November. If you would like your distro or zine event to be listed on the new website please get your info to me.

Being included in Stolen Sharpie Revolution website distro listing will increase your visibility and you will get to write your own description to portray your distro in the way you would like. I will also offer a “hiatus” section for people who take breaks from their distro from time to time.

I’d like to include your project but this is going require some work on your part. I’ll need to you to to get me some information about your project AND respond to my quarterly request for an update to maintain on the list. So, here’s what I need from you:

Name of Distro:
*Name of person/s who maintains distro:
*e-mail address:
Web address:
*mailing address:
mail order, tabling or both:
Short description:
Accepts submissions:
Kinds of zines your distro is interested in:

*optional

Thanks so much for your support! Stolen Sharpie Revolution is only as great as the community input it gets.
Alex Wrekk