The World of ZINEs That's Actually Hard to Explain

I finished writing an article that had been commissioned for a trade magazine. At around 10,000 characters, it has a respectable amount of content. The brief was simply “discuss ZINEs.” The theme is broad, but because you can take whatever position you want within it, it’s easier to write than being given narrowly defined areas. That said, it’s been a year and a little since I started developing Zindies. I’m aware that I don’t understand the world of ZINEs from end to end. If that’s the case, rather than taking a grand, sweeping stance, I decided to write about what I do know. With Zindies as the core, I described how the world of ZINEs looks from that vantage point. Because this will be seen not by the general public but by library professionals, the piece is based on archival- and database-style descriptions. However, using that as a starting point is insufficient to define the activities that are currently spreading in the ZINE world. Things are happening that we haven’t seen before, and I wrote with the stance of supporting explanations with data as evidence rather than relying on feelings as much as possible. I only knew the deadline and don’t really know when it will be published, but I hope I can share it again once it’s released.