Tuesday, June 14, 2016

My Paperless Zine


Back in October 2015 I wrote a post, Paper Cut,  announcing the end of the Ray X X-Rayer paperzine.  No more dead tree format sent via snail mail.

I lied.

Actually I didn't lie, I decided to not to give up.  I managed to get my computer printer back to more-or-less normal operation.  But the same problems remained beyond the printer.  For over 20 years with my paperzine I've printed, collated, stapled, and folded  copies followed by addressing envelopes, stuffing envelopes, sealing envelopes, stamping envelopes and then dealing with the US Postal Service by dropping my zines off at the main post office since home service on my street sucks.

With my infernal printer I sometimes waste five sheets of paper to get one good copy.  I don't have auto-duplexing and I'm tired of doing double-sided copies manually.  The printer is still shit: it likes to jam or suddenly decide to print out 100 copies I never requested.

With the last mailing I spent over an hour getting it out, time I could have spent researching and writing.  That doesn't include the time spent formatting my zine to fit a paper format and also handling details like adjusting the images so they didn't look like grayscale crap.

I don't make one cent from my writing.  I lose money.  I can't afford to also lose time.

Enough.  With the last paper editions of RX XR I mailed yesterday I included a note saying no more paper.

My zine is still available online at two different sites:

http://efanzines.com/RXXR/index.htm - PDF format

http://www.tinyletter.com/RayX  -  You can subscribe via email or read archived issues.

Sorry to all the paper-loving Luddites out there in meat space.  The stress isn't worth it.  I have enough crap with my online versions.



Comments?  Click on the time stamp/permanent link below or email me: raypalmxAT gmailDOTcom.