During International Zine Month, we are encouraged to learn about and order zines from zine distros*. Stolen Sharpie Revolution invented three prompts to participate in throughout the month including one today:
- on July 7th: “educate yourself about zine distros”
- on July 19th: “zine distro appreciation day”
- on July 23rd: “check out a zine distro you’ve never ordered from before”
*A distro is a DIY distribution project. They distribute zines (and/or music, patches, postcards, buttons, etc) made by other people so these DIY creations can reach a different or larger audience. Isn’t that great? Some distros sell their stuff at events (zine fests, punk shows, etc), a lot of them have an online shop, and some even a brick-and-mortar store!
I love these prompts – new zines! new zines! – and in the past years I have used them as an excuse to buy zines from American zine distros. The postage to Europe is so expensive and usually doubles the price, so I could’t do this often, but I allowed myself some luxury during International Zine Month. Now that the EU has introduced expensive and annoying VAT to pay on incoming mail from non-EU webshops I’m trying to focus my zine orders and trades inside the EU for a while (until I figure out how to avoid these fees…) but luckily there are zine distros everywhere, including in the EU.
There exist a lot of amazing zine distros and there might be some nearby where you live too. Here is a list of zine distros that I’ve heard of and that I encourage you to check out:
(If there are any distros that I didn’t include in the list, please mention them in the comments!)
Continue reading “International Zine Month 2021 – zine distros”