sheer spite press

Search results for: “Making Friends With Zines”

  • sheer spite press: the first year

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    Lee

    I consider the moment of Sheer Spite Press’ birth (or… conception??) to have been on September 6, 2023. I had been looking into arts grants, and realizing how differently self-published works are treated in comparison to work that’s put out via a press. I was frustrated about this: I love self-publishing, and I think that…

  • A hand holds a sheaf of gorgeous multicoloured linoprint bookmarks, which say "Sheer Spite" with an abstract-patterned background.

    spooky october news

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    Lee

    Hello! It’s October. Almost November, even. We are in COZY SEASON (at least in the part of the world I live in), and I think it’s time to make soup and maybe read a zine? In Sheer Spite news, I’ve rejigged the website a bit. The site is all built by me, someone with no…

  • “Towards A Self Sustaining Publishing Model” A ten-minute lesson/rant/manifesto: Some things I have learned in over 30 years of publishing since my teenage days as a zine maker, administrating my project Public Collectors, and from working in the group Temporary Services and our publishing imprint Half Letter Press:  I have just ten minutes to speak. If only one or two things that I share are useful, that’s plenty! It took me decades to understand some of this stuff.  Use every exhibition invitation with a budget to print something. Use the whole budget to print something. Make something in a large enough print run so that you have something to give away and surplus that you can sell. Your publication can be a folded sheet of paper, a booklet, a newspaper, a poster, a book, or anything in between. Be able to print at least something at home. Buy a cheap laser printer or inkjet printer, find a used copy machine, buy a RISO or some other duplicator, carve something into a potato or a piece of foam and print it. Being able to do at least some of the printing and production at home—even if it’s on a tiny scale—will compel you to print things that you might have convinced yourself not to send out or bring to a professional printer. Hopefully the ability to print impulsively and compulsively will result in good work. Figure out how to keep making things on every scale. Look for cheap used printing equipment on Craigslist. Team up with friends and buy equipment together that you can share. Start a printing collective in your basement.  Ideally your publication should cost 1/5th or 1/6th of the retail price to make. If you sell a $10.00 publication through a store, you are probably only going to make $6.00 or less after the store takes its cut. So ideally your $10.00 book costs $2.00 or less to make. Don’t aim to just break even. Aim to make a profit so you can keep making more publications and pay for your life. Publishing will probably never be your sole income but don’t lose money on purpose. Make things that are priced fairly and look like they justify what they cost to buy. The fact that you didn’t find a more affordable way to print something is not an excuse to sell something that feels cheap and shitty for a ridiculous sum of money. Good cheap printing is easier to find than ever before. Do your homework. 

    Towards A Self Sustaining Publishing Model – Marc Fischer Public Collectors

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    “A new version of this text that was previously printed as an 11X17 RISO poster/brochure. Now it exists through the Public Collectors imprint as a heavy stock greeting card-format piece with sharp offset printing. This text was written in one coffee-fueled blast of energy the morning of the program Towards A Self Sustaining Publishing Model, organized by…