I’m sharing this post by Charissa (Wasted Ink Distro) from Facebook to Latine folks selling zines and zine librarians and others buying zines. Zine librarians might want to avoid buying items from collectors anyway, but this one in particular…

Please be on the lookout for Alfonso Vijil from Libros Latinos at your zine fests. We’ve recently learned he’s been buying zines, specifically from BIPOC creators and then turns around and sells them for 3-5x the original cost to libraries without telling the zine maker or paying them the profit. He was at LA Zine Fest buying zines and was seen as recently as this past weekend at an event buying zines.

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Cristina Favretto, Head of Special Collections at the University of Miami Libraries, gave a great presentation on the history of zines on October 21: “All You Need is Paper and Passion: How Zines Can Help You Document Social Justice Movements.” The presentation also had suggestions for building relevant and responsive zine collections.

The session recording and the slides are now available.

Dummy Zine Invoice.

You can adapt this form for your institution. I bring it to zinefests and the like, fill out titles and prices of zines as I buy them. I then bring the form back to work and trade it for a petty cash reimbursement.

Timberland Regional LIbrary zine invoice

This is the invoice that I created with the assistance of one of our business office staff. (kelsey)

I was disappointed that we didn’t get around to discussing this at the collection develpment session at the Zine Librarians (un)Conference: what are the factors that help you determine that a publication is not a zine?

Of course there are zines that meet one or more of the following criteria, but this list is a place to start. Please add yours in the comments.

• has an ISBN or ISSN
• has a masthead
• not self-distributed
• has a third person bio
• not self-published (!)
• motivated by desire for fame or fortune
• makes a distinct profit
• price ends in .95
• has a spine
• has any paid staff
• reads like the author is auditioning for a book deal