sheer spite press

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 knowing how to do all parts of a process, from writing to editing to design and layout to production to getting the thing in stores and mailbox, is cool, actually! And I have so many friends who are brilliant and make wonderful work that will never get put out through a traditional publisher, but who I want to be eligible for arts grants, because they are invariably also broke as hell.

“I might have to start a small press out of sheer spite,” I told a friend I was texting with about this, followed immediately by, “Hmmm, Sheer Spite Press is a good name, actually.”

As someone who had been making zines for over a decade, I’m generally strongly oriented towards DIY, and away from institutions. I’ve also been, pretty informally, helping other people get their work out for a long time. I’ve co-organized a zine fair, run zine launches, run an in-person zine distro with locations at three small businesses in Ottawa when I lived there, talked tons of people through the process of making zines, hyped them up that they can and should do so, laid out other people’s zines for them, and paid for people’s printing when they didn’t have the up-front cash to produce them. I realized, in short, that I’d been casually and on and off acting as a small press in everything but the name, for a long time. And being a small press in name doesn’t really matter to me, but it does matter to institutions like arts granting organizations.

Having thought of a good name, and motivated by spite and the desire to launder legitimacy for my friends’ art, I was on my way.

Why a press AND a zine distro?

I decided on a hybrid small press/zine distro model for a couple of reasons.

First, I am only one person, with limited time and money. I had the press’ first book lined up, but I knew it would probably be a while before the press had more than one book out, and it seemed sad to have a website with only one thing for sale. So I decided that Sheer Spite Press, in addition to publishing original work, would also distribute my zines, and zines I like by other people. Secondly, I’d already run a zine distro before, and it’s something I enjoyed and knew how to do. And thirdly, there are infinitely many great zines out there that I want to support!

I registered sheerspite.ca on January 6, 2023. I am profoundly unpatriotic, but .ca domains are cheaper than .com, and I figured it would be useful to signal where orders would ship from. On January 21, I made a “coming soon” post on Instagram. On January 25, I placed my first wholesale order of zines to distribute, from my kind and brilliant friends at Half Letter Press.

I got my first order on February 6. I had showed the in-progress website to my friend Aysha, and they wanted to know if the site would allow them to only order gift wrapping and nothing else. It does, and I dutifully mailed them an envelope of wrapping paper. My first REAL order came in a week later on February 12.

Meanwhile, I was hard at work getting the press’ first book ready.

Kat’s half of the book had already been published as a zine in 2019, which I’d done the layout for. I had been badgering Imogen for many years to write about her Mormon past, trying to convince her that it’s extremely interesting, actually! We worked on her half of the book together over a series of long Zoom calls where she told me wild stories about her life and Mormon lore.

Imogen and Kat are my family; two of my closest and most cherished people, and I am so happy that I was able to introduce them to each other and see them build a strong, loving friendship too. When I got Imogen to agree to putting out a book with me, I asked her and Kat if they’d be willing to have it be a double feature, and was thrilled when they agreed.

I ordered proofs of the laid-out book on February 14, and ordered the first run of 200 copies on April 1. It went on sale April 9, 2024, and it only took until July for that first run to sell out, and I ordered another. We held launches for the book in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, and they were (mostly, lol) very wonderful.

Let’s talk about the practicalities of running a press/distro.

First, the money. As a freelancer, I already used Wave to track my expenses and income, so I’ve used that to track the press’ money as well. At the end of its first year, Sheer Spite has spent $3,700 more than it’s earned.

I feel like this is OK, because I have a LOT of zines and books in stock. In this first year, I went kind of bananas on ordering stock for the distro, and I really need to ease back on that, which is hard because there are soooo many good zines in the world. Here’s what that looks like:

I’m also really torn about to what extent I should make money on the press. For the first book, I’m paying Imogen and Kat everything that we make, minus the cost of printing, and not paying myself back for my time or expenses. This is not what I’ll be doing going for future titles (because it’s kind of insane), but since it was the press’ first book and I was figuring everything out as I went along, it was what felt right to me. Figuring out how to feel OK about paying myself for my work will be a journey, and I welcome insight from anyone who has thought more about it than I have.

In the meantime, I’m proud that in its first year, Sheer Spite has already paid out about $5,700 to authors and zine-makers.

You could start a press/distro with a much smaller outlay of cash. I just got really excited, and I feel lucky to have had steady freelance work that has sustained Sheer Spite in its expensive first year.

And, the most exciting news:

I mentioned at the beginning of this extremely long post that the impetus for this project was to help make writers I admire eligible for grants.

Kat Rogue, author of the Crossdresser half of Crossdresser // Accept Yourself Or Die, recently got a Canada Council grant for $25,000 to write her next book.

Without wanting to take any credit for this– she got the grant because she’s GREAT– I’m so thrilled that The Plan Is Working!

Some of the people who’ve helped:

• A whole bunch of people have trusted me to share their work! As I write this, Sheer Spite has 90 titles available, which is crazy!
• I benefitted soooo much from help from YES Montreal, who offer workshops and business coaching to anglophone entrepreneurs and/or artists. I could not have figured out business things like registration, incorporation, and ??taxes?? without their help, and I also really loved tabling at their What the Pop event this summer.
• I am grateful to the organizers of all the other events I tabled at this year: Sappyfest, the Virtual Bay Area Queer Zine Fest, Spill Ur Gutz, Hallowzine, Expozine, the Turning Tables Art Book / Publication Fair + Show, l’Incroyable Salon du Zine, Montreal Makers Market, and one of Left Wing Books’ pop-ups. Whew!
• A bunch of stores sell Sheer Spite titles!
• Charissa of Wasted Ink Zine Distro runs periodic get-togethers for other zine distro people. I had the pleasure of catching one of them and it was so great! I look forward to future ones.
• I’ve started to try and chat with other people who run small presses, and everyone is unfailingly generous with their time and wisdom. I recently really enjoyed sitting down with Ashley and Oliver of Metonymy Press, and with Judith of Coop Agenda and Antoine of Mes pants de queer. I only do art stuff to trick cool people into talking to me but it keeps working?
• Thank you to everyone who has bought a zine, I love you.
• Thank you to my roommate Corie for putting up with the big piles of zines on every surface and for generally being the best.

Looking forward

Some thoughts I have about the future of this project:

• Another participant in the last Distro Talks with Charissa, mentioned above, said something to the effect of “Do less than you want to so you can stay around longer.” I always go way too hard on everything I do, including Sheer Spite, and this is advice I badly need to take to heart. There is so much I want to do! I cannot do all of it! I will get to, ultimately, do more things if I pace myself than if I don’t! >:(
• I went really hard on the zine distro side of things this year, and picked up the aforementioned 90+ titles (it’s actually more than that, since I’ve already run out of a few things, probably over 100?). In 2025, I want to ease back on that, both for financial sustainability, and also because I want to be able to do the press side of things justice, since that was supposed to be the main thing. At time of writing, there are four people currently writing things that they’ve offered to put out through Sheer Spite Press, and all of them promise to be bangers. I can’t wait to share them with you, and I want to be able to do all of them justice.
• I’m hoping to do some BIG travel in 2025. I’ve applied to a lot of zine and book fairs, including several in Europe. I’m crossing my fingers that I 1) get into them and 2) can get arts grants to help with the cost. Pray for me!