Short fiction markets getting sketchy, or closing, or only opening for an hour under winter’s first full moon. Payment processors going full Puritan. POD sites somehow getting worse than they’ve ever been. Pretty soon I’ll have to sell my writing cash-only from the trunk of my car.
I've definitely been contemplating trying to make some of my stories into physical zine things and see if I can sell them at zine fairs. Might be a cool way to get a bit more value out of one's reprints, I'm thinking.
I was doing zines back in the oughts. It was fun! Lately I’ve been considering it as a way to distribute my reprints like you said.
It makes sense! I feel like there are people who want more handmade-by-humans physical media these days. I figure if I do some fun linocut cover art for them they might have a certain appeal.
That sounds amazing. I’d love to get into linocut!
It's surprisingly easy to get into! You need such a tiny investment in tools and supplies to start.
As with anything new, I need to battle my inner perfectionist and the desire to give up if I’m not instantly adept. But it would be worth it.
I struggle with that too! With printmaking I tell myself that part of the point is that it looks like a small individual flawed human person made it, not a perfect machine. It mostly works!
I admire that attitude. And I would take a million flawed works by humans before I would even glance at anything procedurally generated.
You thinkin like "rent a parking space at a farmers market" or just straight to "CVS lot after midnight, lets mainline some literature"?
The latter. No cops.