General information about zines, Factsheet Five and FactSheet Five - Electric. Updated 3 November, 1993. [And it's about friggin' time!] This file is Shareright 1993 by Jerod Pore; you may (and please do) copy, reproduce, replicate and distribute this information however, whereever and in whatever format, and as often as you wish, as long as this sentence is included. From jerod23@well.sf.ca.us Answers to Frequently Asked Questions. What are zines? Zines are small press publications with a press run of 15 - 5,000. They often deal with obscure or controversial subjects, or they're about the life of the publisher, or they're about the latest underground muzak sensation. How does one find out about zines? The best place to start is with Factsheet Five or Factsheet Five - Electric. We review 1,000 - 1,500 zines every three months (more or less). We provide ordering information, size, quality of reproduction, contents and what we think about a zine. Once you get a few zines that sound interesting, you'll notice other zines referred to. Pretty soon you'll have more reading material then you know what to do with. How does one produce a zine? That's beyond the scope of this document. But my stock answer is go to lunch at 11:30 am, get back by 12:15 and you should have plenty of time to use the equipment at school or at work. Write down your thoughts (I suggest doing artwork on your own time), photocopy 40 or 50 copies, send one to us and to a few zines you think would be interested in yours. You may want to get the Zine Publishers' Resource guide, either $3.00 from Seth at the address below, or the prior version is available from the ftp and gopher sites. How does one get the zines? When ordering zines, cash is the best medium of exchange. Forget what your mother told you about evil thieves stealing one dollar bills out of mail boxes. If you absolutely must send a check or money order (and a money order is preferred over a check), then make it out to the name in %Info: which may or may not be the name of the publisher or the zine. Many zines, especially personal zines, science fiction fanzines and anarchist zines are available for what is quaintly known as "The Usual." "The Usual" is your zine or tape or record or calendar in trade, or a well-written Letter of Comment on the subject of the zine, or $2 - $3. Be warned about a few things. There are no guarantees. Checks are likely to be thrown away. Some zine names with especially offensive titles have often had their mail thrown away by self-righteous born- again postal workers, I kid you not! If the name of the zine is apt to offend your third-grade teacher, don't put it on the envelope. Some zines published in rather provincial parts of the world won't get their mail if the publisher's name isn't on the envelope, so whatever the name is in %Info:, that's the name that should go on the envelope. I can work only with what information is provided me. I'll post any special requirements that are conveyed to me. If a zine is free, you may want to help out with some stamps. Free often translates as "The Usual," and many anarchists will accept food stamps. How to contact us with questions, etc. regarding F5 - either the paper or electronic versions. The email address for Factsheet Five and Factsheet Five - Electric is: jerod23@well.sf.ca.us Once upon a time, Seth had an email address. It may be reactivated in the future. The phone number for Factsheet Five (paper only) is +1-415-668-1781 Where should stuff be sent? For anything that can't be sent electronically, which is most of the stuff we deal with; comments, questions, feedback, donations, zines and other contributions to the defense of free expression rights around the world should be sent to either of these addresses: Factsheet Five Jerod Pore 1800 Market St. San Francisco CA 94102-6297 (This address is good for items that can't be sent to a PO Box) Factsheet Five Seth Friedman PO Box 170099 San Francisco CA 94117-0099 (This is the *only* address for subscriptions to the paper version) If you have a preference of reviewers, then send your zine to either of the above addresses as you see fit. Please, though, send your zine to just *ONE* address. Multiple copies just slow us down. I do most of the Fringe, SubGenius, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, B-Movie and Libertarian zines. Seth does most of the rest. We have a couple of long-time reviewers for two niches. They publish their own review zines so you get twice the coverage. We must stress that you send poetry to Luigi-Bob, because poetry sent to San Francisco won't be reviewed for a couple of issues. Send your queer, bi or especially prurient zines to: Larry-bob Queer Zine Explosion PO Box 591275 San Francisco CA 94159-1275 Send all poetry or prose/poetry zines with lots of poetry to: Luigi-Bob Drake Burning Press PO Box 585 Lakewood OH 44107 How does one obtain the reviews of zines? The files that comprise Factsheet Five - Electric are available for online reading or downloading from WELL or with a gopher client with gopher gopher.well.sf.ca.us The files are also available via anonymous ftp from etext.archive.umich.edu in /pub/Factsheet.Five You may subscribe to Factsheet Five - Electric by emailing me with "subscribe" in the subject line and no text. The files are sent out as they become available. F5-E is available from other ftp and gopher sites, as well as BBS's around the world, but I don't track other locations. What is the best method of receiving the review files? The WELL is the "best" place. Not only is The WELL the greatest BBS in CyberSpace (no, I don't get a kickback; I pay $30-50 a month to be on WELL) it's the homebase for F5 - Electric. The most recent files are there. Online zines that are sent to me are there. News, gossip and rumours about zines and other underground media are there. Mondo 2000, 2600, Full Disclosure, bOING-bOING and other zinesters are there. The WELL is, however, somewhat expensive at $15.00 a month and $2.00 an hour. After WELL, ftp or gopher are the next best ways of getting the files. Our ftp sites accept anonymous as a login and your return address as a password. For some people, especially those of you on FidoNet, Compu$erve and other services with email-only gateways to The Internet, email is the *only* way to get the files. Unfornuately, the large file sizes (files range from 8 - 100k) prevent many locations from receiving them through email, especially uunet and uucp sites. How do ftp and gopher users know when new or updated files are available? For now, updates to F5-E will be announced in the newsgroups that attract people interested in zines: alt.zines and rec.mag An excellent suggestion was made about having an email service that announces just the names of the new or updated files to ftp users. I've juggled two email subscription lists, so this idea will be too much of a hassle to implement. I don't know if the zines-list is still active. If it is, I might send announcements out that way. May the files be reprinted or posted elsewhere? All files (just like this one) are shareright. You may reproduce the information contained within them freely as long as others may reproduce that same information. In other words, you may use but not copyright these files. Shareright does not prevent you from charging money (or whatever your preferred medium of exchange is) for distribution. Including pertinent parts of this file, and giving credit to the reviewers is especially good for your karma, but not absolutely required to use what you wish of the review files. We're more interested in the widespread dissemination of the information. BBS operators are especially encouraged to make whatever files you deem appropriate available to your users. How does one submit reviews? For now, email the reviews to me. This could be subject to change, once we work out everything. Each file will have reviews of one or more zines that are somehow categorized together by subject matter or by reviewer. Also feel free to post to alt.zines reviews of zines you have come across or to hype your own zines. I have this nerdy format that is used in a windows-based browser program. While sticking to the format is nice, it is not necessary, as long as all pertinent information is included. However if the reviews are to be accessible by the browser, then you had better do them this way. Please keep all reviews in vanilla ASCII format. Also keep them shareright. We are especially in need of reviews ezines and of zines that are published outside of North America. Now, I get zines from Australia and, since I used to live there, I understand the dialect and cultural references. I sort of understand the zines from Britain. But the zines I get from other parts of the world....it's all I can do to list the title, the address and take a guess at the subject matter. We'd love to get Flemish reviews of Flemish zines. After all, if somebody wants to read a zine then they have to be able to read the language. F5-Electic should not be an English only publication! If you want to get zines for review, post your name to alt.zines and tell the world what interests you. *I* take no responsibility for the opinions or honesty of people who volunteer to be zine reviewers. I'll say from whom I do get some reviews. We are carrying a listing of ezines, thanks to johnl@netcom.com, but we would like to get reviews of ezines, too. Reviews I do are in the following format: %Title: The name of the zine with issue number(s). %Descr: A description of the contents of the zine. As long or short as needed. %Info: Price, address, number of pages and size of the page, email. What's this Zine Exchange stuff? Now we don't have a hell of a lot of room for zines, so here's the deal: along with your zine sent to us for review, send an SASE, the bigger and more postage-packed the better. And we'll send you some of the zines we get. That's right, not only will we review them, but we're doing a zine exchange. Don't ask for specific titles, as you won't get them. Types of zines can be requested, but are subject to availability and what has been reviewed when we get your envelope and what is on the top of the pile of zines that have been reviewed. So it's pretty random. How much you get depends upon such factors as how big the envelope is, how much postage is on it, what we have available and what we're feeling like at the time. Some people, who are either greedy or stupid, have sent the postage-paid envelopes, BUT NO ZINES. I know all of us computer types aren't stupid, so don't be greedy. You have to send *zines* (not catalogs, not ads, not long whining letters about being in jail, or how you just don't produce a zine, not free local campus papers) to participate in the zine exchange. As we require an SASE, this offer is pretty much limited to people in the U.S. We can't do a zine exchange with IRC's or cash or whatever else. Occassionally, when the stack of zines gets overwhelming large, we *do* send out zines for just the price of the SASE, but we've had to do this only once. I'll announce it in alt.zines if we ever do that again. Anyone who subscribes to the printed version of F5 AT THE FRIEND RATE of $40 for 6 issues can get 2 pounds of zines for the costs of postage. Send those requests to Seth. Gary Pattillo is running the Zine Exchange Network. Send zines and an envelope, get zines back. What you get depends upon what you send. Send your zines to: Gary Pattillo PO Box 7052 Austin TX 78713 Are multiple copies of zines required for inclusion in both versions of Factsheet Five and/or the zine exchange? Nope. Multiple copies have become a real pain in the ass. Send your zines to just *one* of the above addresses. Don't send us more than four or five copies, and only send more than two copies if you're doing the zine exchange. What are the subscription rates and/or sample copy prices for the print version of Factsheet Five? Single issues: US Newsstand Cover Price: $3.95 (Marketing sucks!) US 1st Class: $6.00 Canada, Mexico: $6.00 Elsewhere in the world: $9.00 Six issue Subscription: US 3rd Class: $20.00 Friend Rate* $40.00 * First class, in an envelope, with the publisher's eternal gratitude AND the occassional subscriber goodie, like the Zine Publisher's Guide, or 2 pounds of zines for $3.00. Canada, Mexico: $35.00 UK, Europe, Latin America $45.00 Asia, Africa, Pacific $55.00 We accept for payment cash (US or otherwise), check or money order drawn in US funds (payable to Factsheet Five), or IRCs (at the rate of $0.50 each). Prisoners may get single issues by paying in stamps. "Please no checks or money orders drawn in foreign currency. I am happy to accept bank notes from any country at the current rate of exchange (especially if it looks really cool with lots of color)." Please foward orders to: R. Seth Friedman P.O. Box 170099 San Francisco, CA 94117-0099 Will the subscription list (for the paper version) be sold? Seth plans making the list available to lots of cool companies like Archie McPhee, Blue Ryder, Co-Op America, and Kitchen Sink Press. If you have an aversion to receiving cool catalogs and other neat stuff in the mail, just mention it with your order. We'll be sure to keep your address private. Finally, I asked about metric paper sizes. Here's an explanation. a friend sent me some zine reviews from a database you have designed. you ask why A4..A5 paper size gets larger as the paper gets smaller. it is because the number stands for the number of golden sections used in cutting the paper down from larger metric sizes. here is an explanation recently on _the humanist_. stan stankuli@UWF.bitnet . === we all help each other get a little further down the road, : : or be damned for the fools that we are. --- -- the motorcycle modificationist's motto ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1993 12:42:53 EST Reply-To: Elaine Brennan Sender: "HUMANIST: Humanities Computing" From: Elaine Brennan Subject: 6.0635 Rs: A4 Paper (the final words) (2/64) To: Stan Kulikowski II Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0635. Thursday, 1 Apr 1993. (2) Date: Thu, 01 Apr 93 17:30 WES (43 lines) From: H.R.vanderLaan@RC.TUDelft.NL Subject: Re: 6.0630 Rs: A4 Paper Redux (2) --------------------------------------------------------------54---- Date: Thu, 01 Apr 93 17:30 WES From: H.R.vanderLaan@RC.TUDelft.NL Subject: Re: 6.0630 Rs: A4 Paper Redux (6/115) > Norman Hinton asks: why A4? The answer is that you start with the largest > sheet of paper, which is A0. If you divide such a sheet half-way down the > long side you get two sheets of A1, which have (obviously) half the area of > an A0 sheet, and (less obviously) exactly the same proportions, and so on > down through A4 to at least A7. This is done by having height and breadth > in golden section to each other. There are corresponding sizes for Yes, and a sheet A0 is exactly one square meter. One square meter in golden section has sides of 841 x 1189 millimeters. This leads to the following A-formats: A0 841 x 1189 A1 594 x 841 A2 420 x 594 A3 279 x 420 A4 210 x 279 A5 148 x 210 A6 105 x 148 etcetera > envelopes in B and C forms (though I must confess I've never managed to > work out the differences - I think they cope with different ways of folding > the paper). One side of a sheet of B0 has a length of exactly 1000 millimeters. This leads to the following A-formats: B0 1000 x 1414 B1 707 x 1000 B2 500 x 707 B3 353 x 500 B4 250 x 353 B5 176 x 250 B6 125 x 176 etcetera Hans van der Laan (H.R.vanderLaan@RC.TUDelft.NL)