ZINEMONGER ZINE DISTRO

Zines currently in stock.

2009-07-13T21:00:00.073+01:00

Please note, the distro is now closed. All remaining stock has been distributed to good homes. Thanks to all the zine makers and readers for your support.

Poor But Happy # 1

2008-08-26T21:16:00.018+01:00

Contents.
Vulgar, me?
The boring old basics; bills and tax.
Getting the shopping in.
Low-budget homemaking.
Dress for less.
Notes for the cut-price bonviveur; staying in.
Notes for the cut-price bonviveur; going out.
Away days and holidays.
Putting it about a bit.
Result happiness.
Links and resources.

Publish and Be Published

2008-08-17T21:33:00.004+01:00

What.
Why.
How; writing it.
How; designing it.
How; making it.
How; distributing it.
How; promoting it.
Adding it up.
Dictionary corner.
Resources and links.
© Eddie Willson 2005

Poor But Happy; result happiness

2008-06-26T21:36:00.008+01:00

The final figures surprised even me. My total economies work out to £121.24 per week, so in practice I’d otherwise need to work a 40 hour week to have the lifestyle I’ve currently got working 25 hours. Even if I stopped writing tomorrow I don’t think I’d go back to full time work. I live comfortably on what’s coming in and I have a good time. I’ve become a bit of a thrift nerd and have to remind myself not to keep boring the arse off friends about my latest bargain find, but I’d rather this life than the more obvious alternatives on offer. Besides, what would I want with a lot of money? I’d probably only end up frittering it away on hiring contract killers.
Doing the project’s made me rethink a lot of things. I’ve got much more into recycling and related issues, which I used to see as other people’s business. As I’ve got older I’ve become more cynical and selfish, but this last year or so has made me realise how lucky I am. Just lately I’ve started to get involved again in the housing co-op where I live and I’m on the look-out for other ways that I can commit again to the things I care about.
Up to now I’ve done one shot zines but I want to keep this one going. Future issues will be different, but still related to low-budget life. I’d be really pleased to hear from you about this zine, or anything really. Email me; thriftnerd (at) yahoo dot co dot uk.
Cheers,
Eddie xxx
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Index.

Poor But Happy; links and resources

2008-06-26T21:36:00.007+01:00

Websites. Here’s some sites that didn’t fit elsewhere.
www.moneysavingexpert.com a site run by a bloke off the telly. You can sign up for a regular email newsletter of tips. Mainstream but excellent.
www.frugal.org.uk ;loads of commonsense stuff on frugal living.
www.livejournal.com an online community covering a wide range of interests, but with plenty of stuff on life on the cheap. Favourites are http://community.livejournal.com/uk_cheapskates/
http://community.livejournal.com/uk_frugal/
Books worth a look.
1)Growth Fetish; Clive Hamilton
2)A Good Life; Leo Hickman
3)Downshift; Jonquil Lowe
4)Not on the Label; Felicity Lawrence (Penguin)
5)Do The Right Things; Pushpinder Khaneka (New Internationalist)
6)Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping. Duncan Clark (Rough Guides)
7)Go Make A Difference 2; ed Jo Bourne.
8)The Overspent American; Juliet Schor (Basic Books)
9)How We Can Save the Planet; Mayer Hillman (Penguin)
All this was written by Eddie Willson 2006. Wonky drawings provided by National Gallery of Poundland. Get in touch if you want to reproduce any bits of the zine. Cheers!
Index.

Poor But Happy; putting it about a bit.

2008-06-26T21:35:00.003+01:00

Now you’ve saved all this money, and maybe cut the hours of paid work you do, you might be feeling generous with your money and time. All the way through the zine there’s ways of giving money to charity that don’t actually cost you anything directly. If you’re in paid work and want to donate to charity in a way that makes your money go further ask about payroll giving. This is a tax break scheme that effectively means if you’re on basic rate tax each £1 the charity receives only costs you 78p. If your employer isn’t part of the scheme, direct them to www.payrollgiving.co.uk to find out more. If you’re weighing up which charity to give to, check out http://guidestar.org.uk which has info on all UK charities.
If you fancy doing something new with the extra time you’ve gained check out your local LETS scheme. LETS are networks of people who exchange skills in their area using local tokens as an alternative to real money. You register any skills you have and any services you need on a database for the area. Find out more at www.letslinkuk.net . If you fancy giving some time to projects you believe in, have a look at www.volunteering.org.uk .
Next.
Index.

Poor But Happy; awaydays and holidays

2008-06-26T21:32:00.005+01:00

I travelled more this year than I have for ages, all on the cheap.
Getting there. In the UK going by coach is the cheapest option. Megabus, the Kwiksave of intercity travel (http://www.megabus.com/), cover most major UK cities and prices start at £1 each way plus 50p booking fee. National Express (http://www.nationalexpress.com/) have introduced Funfares which start at £1 each way, with no booking fee. They cover a few places that Megabus don’t, there’s no booking fee, and at some destinations they drop you in a more central location than Megabus do. The knack with both services is to book early. In 2005 Megabus had a ‘sale’ from September to December where travel was free and you just paid the 50p booking fee. Hopefully they’ll repeat this. I had one short holiday (4 nights in Manchester – Glasgow - Aberdeen – Perth) and four weekends away (Liverpool – Newcastle – Bristol –Leeds). Travelling by coach instead of train I saved around £104 or £2 per week (15 minutes). For UK destinations not on the cheap routes of the firms above, check local coach firms. I visit relatives in Somerset about 3 times a year and use Berry’s coaches (http://www.berryscoaches.co.uk/). They do a period return for £18 while the train is about £40, a saving of £66 a year, or £1.27 per week (10minutes).
As a bit of a stop press, just in time to head off my incipient piles, Megabus have started running trains on some routes, £1 each way plus booking fee. See http://www.megatrain.com/.
Outside the UK, coaches still work out cheap. Eurolines, (http://www.eurolines.com/) are worth a try for shorter individual trips in Europe, especially if you book late. They also do 15 and 30 day passes that let you travel between many European cities, from about £135 in low season, or less if you’re under 26, but it’s actually a shit deal because they don’t let you book the different legs of your trip before you leave, so it’s hard to plan your holiday or sort accommodation.
I’ve never flown. I’m not scared of flying, I’m just scared of crashing (© Jim Bowen 1979). For those who do fly, these sites have been recommended to me for cheap flights; www.easyjet.com , www.cheapflights.co.uk, www.ryanair.com . Mile for mile, air travel creates about 25% more CO2 emissions per person than car travel (6). You can get the info you need to feel suitably guilty at this site; http://www.chooseclimate.org/ . You’re always going to need travel insurance abroad but if you’re a Brit and you travel inside the EU make sure you fill out form EHIC from the Post Office so you can use the State health service where you’re going.
Staying there. Hostels are good if you don’t mind roughing it a bit. Try www.hostelbookers.com which doesn’t charge a booking fee or www.hostels.com. A reliable bet is the Youth Hostel Association (http://www.yha.org.uk/ ). It’s £15 a year to join and you’ll easily save that on a few nights’ stay. Life membership is only £200, which is a bargain providing you don’t get hit by a tram tomorrow. There’s no age restriction despite the name and membership entitles you to discounts on hostels worldwide. Accommodation is mostly in dormitories so bring earplugs if you want a good night’s sleep. YHA prices in rural areas and Scotland (http://www.syha.org.uk/) come out at about £12 - £14 per night. In big English cities prices are closer to those of cheap B & Bs so I often stay in those instead. You can find B& Bs for about £20 - £25 per night. Try http://www.findmeabnb.co.uk/ , http://www.bedandbreakfast-directory.co.uk/ , or best of all http://www.a1tourism.com/ . On my holidays I stayed at a mix of B and Bs and hostels and saved about £120 or £2.30 per week (17 minutes) against the price of pukka hotels. If you fancy camping http://camping.uk-directory.com/ lists sites in Britain.
Daytrips. The Megabus timetable can be a bit limited, sometimes making it impossible to fit a trip to a particular city within a single day, but if you mix and match with National Express Funfares you can usually still manage it e.g. travel there on Megabus and back on a Funfare. Check your local library for a copy of the AA’s Days Out Guide. For a DIY guide to most towns in the UK try http://www.knowhere.co.uk/ , although it can be a bit out of date. Contact the local tourist office in advance for free maps and guides. Take sandwiches. This year I made the most of the Megabus sale and had daytrips to Swindon, Brighton, Winchester, Cardiff, and Birmingham for a total of £4. I also had days in Coventry, Bath, Cheltenham, Cambridge for a total of £8 with National Express. At a rough estimate the same journeys by train would have cost an average £15 each, a total of £135 against £12 saving £123 or £2.37 pr week (18 minutes).
Festivals. Music festivals are great for a weekend away but the big ones have got really expensive, so investigate some smaller festivals. The last few years I’ve gone to the Truck festival outside Oxford (www.truckfestival.org/index.php) . It cost around £30 for the weekend compared to £110 for Glastonbury, saving £80 or £1.54 per week (12 minutes). The bands weren’t that well known but that doesn’t bother me – I had a better time than I probably would have at Glasto. Other good small festivals are TMF (http://www.tmfonline.co.uk/ £16 for 1 day) and Endorse it in Dorset (http://www.lgofestivals.com/ 3 days for £55). Find out more at www.efestivals.co.uk .
Next.
Index.

Poor But Happy; leisure and pleasure - going out.

2008-06-26T21:31:00.004+01:00

With some planning and research you can go out as much as you like even if you’re skint. Sign up for email lists run by venues, bands and galleries that you like. Now and then they’ll send out updates of forthcoming gigs and happenings – you can then use your software’s edit and find feature to cherry pick stuff, looking for the word ‘free’ or the admission price you can afford. See the Free Money page of my website; www.eddiewillson.cjb.net for a list of free and cheap nights out. Also see the excellent www.londonfreelist.com for free stuff to do. To avoid duplicating too much info from my site, here’s just a selection to suggest the sort of places offering affordable entertainment. Most are London based, but I’d love to hear your suggestions for others, in London or elsewhere. For research for a future edition of Poor But Happy I hope to go out every night for a month for free. I’d have done it for this issue but I was too knackered.
Films. If you’re flexible about when you go to the cinema you can save tons. Mondays and daytimes are cheapest. My fave’s the Prince Charles cinema; weekday daytimes £3, Fridays are £1 per film (www.princecharlescinema.com). Evening and weekend shows are £4, or cheaper if you take out membership at £7.50 a year. Brixton Ritzy has morning screenings for £3.75 and world cinema matinees for £3; (www.picturehouses.co.uk/site/cinemas/ritzy/local.htm). Based on seeing 2 films a month for £4 rather than a typical £8.50 at other cinemas I save at least £2.07 a week (16 minutes). Take your own popcorn from the corner shop for about 50p rather than pay £3 plus for the cinema’s own. Local film societies often work out cheap and the films are well chosen. There’s a list of societies at www.filmsocs.org.uk. Galleries and museums often show films free or cheap; check both London Tates (www.tate.org.uk), the Imperial War Museum (www.iwm.org.uk), and the National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Portobello Film Festival shows ace short films for free (www.portobellofilmfestival.com).
TV and radio recordings. TV and radio shows often need a live audience. Get free tickets at www.bbc.co.uk/tickets or www.applausestore.co.uk .
Live music. Here’s a selection of free London gigs. Artrocker, membership required, available free at www.artrocker.com . Rota and Death Disco (only free before 8pm) both at Notting Hill Arts Club (www.nottinghillartsclub.com). Late at Tate Britain, first Friday of the month from 6 to 10pm. 93 Feet East, free Mondays ( www.93feeteast.co.uk ). The Spitz, often free Sunday and Monday (www.spitz.co.uk). I regularly go to two free gigs a week, saving about £10 per week (77 minutes).
Classical music. Music colleges do free concerts. See Trinity College of Music (www.tcm.ac.uk), Royal Academy of Music (www.ram.ac.uk), and Guildhall School of Music and Drama (www.gsmd.ac.uk). Guildhall also put on free drama.
Galleries and museums. Besides the above, these are great for free days out. Find out what’s on in UK museums at www.24hourmuseum.org.uk . Independent galleries have openings for art shows that you could blag your way into, often with free beer! Check out www.newexhibitions.com .
Education. If you want to try a new subject without committing to a complete course of classes, try a free taster session during Adult Learners’ Week in May (www.niace.org.uk ). Galleries often run free talks and classes too.
Drinking. A big cost of a night out for me is drinking, especially when venues with free entertainment make their money back on inflated bar prices. You can hit the off-licence and drink before you leave, but when I try this I always end up too pissed too early. A safer option is to meet friends at a cheap pub before the main event of the evening. Obvious choices are Wetherspoon’s (www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk) or Yates’s (www.yatesbars.co.uk). I favour Wetherspoon’s, because they at least pay lipservice to the need for recycling – they recycle 2000 tonnes of stuff a week and recently quadrupled the amount they recycle. I’d take those figures with a pinch of salt though, seeing as they came out of Wetherspoon’s own magazine where they also claim to recycle used cooking oil and turn it into coal, which is either (a) untrue, (b) a neat trick if you can do it and/or (c) fucking pointless. They stock beers from small breweries which is a good thing since 83% of beer bought in the UK comes from 4 multinationals(7). Ingredients in beer produced at small local breweries travel an average of 600 miles while the ingredients used by large breweries sometimes travel up to 24,000 miles – that’s a lot of CO2(7). Wetherspoon’s are about 80p per pint cheaper. Based on two nights out a week, drinking three pints a night that’s a saving of £4.80 per week (37 minutes).
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Index.

Poor But Happy; leisure and pleasure - staying in

2008-06-26T21:29:00.004+01:00

Part of the idea of all this is to have as good a time as possible, not to live like a hermit. It’s easy to cut the cost of leisure and pleasure, with a bit of imagination.
Staying in.
DVDs; Just now there’s a real growth in online DVD rental services. You visit the website, choose a wish list of films, and the DVDs are sent by post with a free post-paid return envelope. The flat monthly fee can work out as low as 85p per film, depending how many films you watch. As this system’s quite new, many companies are offering free trial periods of up to 4 weeks. Check www.uk-dvd-rental-guide.com for a list of free trials available, but read terms and conditions about cancellation and return of DVDs as late returns can mean paying a full month’s rental. Currently there’s about 5 months’ worth of free trial going begging that I’ve happily worked my way through. Averaged over the year that’s a saving of £1.44 per week (11mins). I suggest starting with the smaller companies as they’ll probably have more obvious titles that you might choose first. Some companies do DVD rentals but their service is ‘powered’ by either Screenselect or Lovefilm. As you can’t sign up twice for a service run by these two big firms, select whichever option is most advantageous; e.g. Sainsbury’s offer a 28 day free trial, but Lovefilm, who run Sainsbury’s service, only does a 14 day trial so it’s better to start with Sainsbury’s. Alternatively, borrow DVDs from the local library; charges are about the same as a video shop but you may get a longer loan period and the money made supports other library services that aren’t charged for. Public libraries might be run by smug, paternalistic fossils but they still provide pretty cool stuff.
CDs. Libraries have got a far better selection of music to borrow than they used to. Charges are about 50p per week. Industry watchdog, the BPI, rules that new CDs mustn’t be available for loan in the first two months after release, because apparently a lot of people borrow them and copy them. Hey. I decided I wanted to divert money away from major labels, so assuming I might have bought 3 albums over the year for £45, instead I spent the money with tiny CDR and tape labels I’d come across. To investigate the world of tiny labels, visit http://asaurus.org . My £45 got me the equivalent of 17 albums; that’s an average of £2.65 each, including postage, from every corner of the globe. Bargain! At those prices I felt comfortable taking a punt on stuff I’d never heard before – I was only disappointed occasionally and I came across some right gems – all hail the Capstan Shafts!
Books. I like reading but I’m not bothered about owning books, so I stopped buying them last year. Instead I borrowed books from the library, and where they didn’t have what I wanted, I requested it, which is a handy way to influence what books get stocked. At a guess I’d probably buy three new books in an average year at £7 each. Instead, I spent the £21 on a total of 18 zines from UK distros Cause & Effect, (www.causeandeffectdistro.com), All That Glitters (http://www.allthatglittersdistro.co.uk/), and Shoebox (http://www.shoeboxdistro.co.uk/ ). If you need to own books try Oxfam. As well as their shops they’re Europe’s biggest online second-hand bookseller. Do a book search at www.oxfam.org.uk/what_you_can_do/shop/ . Also see www.greenmetropolis.com where you can buy and sell used books, or www.readitswapit.co.uk , a free service letting people swap books they’ve read. Libraries often sell off withdrawn books at prices like 10p - 20p. If you only need a book for a short time, buy it at Borders and keep your receipt. If you return it in ‘as new’ condition within 28 days they give you a refund - the mugs. Fuck them – this offer seems generous, but nearly all their stock’s held on sale or return from suppliers so it costs Borders nothing.
Newspapers and magazines. Read them for free at your local library. Libraries often bin newspapers at the end of the day, so you may be able to rescue them at closing time, but ask first as staff might want to read them on the bus home! If you fancy saving a few trees, as well as some money, you can subscribe to a free daily email digest of the Guardian, delivered to your inbox each day at 9am. Sign up at www.guardian.co.uk. If you want a different take on the news try www.schnews.org.uk which does a weekly email digest. If there’s a magazine you always read regularly, you may save a bit by subscribing; I get Time Out delivered for £1.50 per week when the cover price is £2.50, a saving of £1 per week (7mins).
Television. I felt alienated by the shite on telly so I stopped watching and cancelled my licence. If, like me, you only watch pre-recorded DVDs or videos, you don’t need a licence – just unplug the aerial, detune the stations if possible, and tell the licensing people. They’ll send a reminder which you should return to their policy group. They might visit to check up on you but they’ve got no right of entry unless you invite them in. Weekly saving, £2.42 (19 minutes). Technically this saving’s outside the terms of the zine as it involves giving something up, but (a) fuck it, it’s my zine, (b) it’s worth encouraging people to turn off their TVs. In the 1960s the average person watched 13 hours of TV a week, now they watch 26 hours; which makes you wonder at all the cock that gets talked about people being cash rich and time poor.
Computers. Two million working PCs get dumped in the UK every year, so try repairing or upgrading your existing machine, and if replacing it, buy a refurbished model. One of the cheaper suppliers of refurbed PCs I found was www.studentcomputers.co.uk who do one for £297.28 including vat and delivery with an 80gb hard drive, DVD and CD rewriter and Windows XP. More expensive are these people, connected to Oxfam; www.1st4recycledcomputers.com . If you’re ditching an unrepairable PC, see www.reuze.co.uk/WEEE.shtml for recycling advice and info on charities who collect old PCs for reuse. If you want to save on software, visit www.openoffice.org to download a decent freeware package that does most of what Microsoft Office can do. For the more techy, try www.linux.org . Drop for drop, printer ink costs more than vintage champagne but you can save by buying recycled printer cartridges from these charities; www.actionaidrecycling.org.uk and www.cartridges4charity.co.uk . Only print when you need to. Cut the amount of ink you use by selecting ‘draft’ from the properties dialogue box; the results are fine for most uses. If you print something with email or website addresses in it, either change the font colour to black or choose ‘print colour images in black’ in the options box – this stops you using up your colour cartridge unnecessarily. If using new blank paper, print double sided.
Stationery. You can use scrap paper from work or elsewhere for most things; 86% of paper used in offices ends up in landfill(2). Every tonne of recycled paper saves 17 trees, and 5 cubic metres of landfill space (5). Reuse envelopes. Open them carefully and use sticky address labels; Friends of the Earth, Amnesty International and other charities sell these cheap. A big empty washing powder box makes a handy holder for old envelopes. It’ll also work as a zine rack.
Condoms. These are available free from family planning clinics.
Booze. If you regularly drink at home the supermarket’s cheaper than the local offy. Based on drinking 8 cans of supermarket lager a week at home I save £2.40 (18 minutes). Homebrewing is even cheaper, and better environmentally as you can reuse the same bottles over and over. There’s some initial outlay for the basic equipment but the process is easy, and beer works out as cheap as 20p a pint.
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Index.

Poor But Happy; dress for less

2008-06-26T21:26:00.004+01:00

In my Mr Byrite days I hated shopping for clothes but since I’ve rediscovered charity shops it’s become such a pleasure I have to stop myself buying too much. They’re everywhere, but if you want help tracking one down, www.charityshops.org.uk lists 6477 shops, searchable by postcode or area. Aside from the savings involved, charity shopping makes sense politically. About 100,000 tons of clothes pass through UK charity shops each year - 30% of all textile recycling. Any extension of the life of clothes has to be good given the exploitation ofteninvolved in their manufacture; Walmart, the world’s biggest clothing retailer routinely use Chinese factories paying workers 13 cents an hour(2). The other bonus with charity shops is that if you make a duff purchase that doesn’t suit you, you can always re-donate it. It’s worth remembering seeing as 80% of people only wear 20% of the clothes they own.
Other options for clothes shopping are car boot sales (I bought a great pair of boots for £1.50 at one this year), and second-hand markets (my favourite coat was £12 on Deptford market).
New boots and panties? I used to be wary of buying shoes second-hand but since I’ve tried it I haven’t experienced the expected crop of verruccas (or is it verrucae?). Check the inside of shoes for signs of wear and have a good sniff. Many shoes get discarded in a nearly new state. Alternatively, search slightly trendier street markets for stalls selling new shoes that are seconds with minor cosmetic flaws. A stall on Camden market does Doctor Martens like this for about £20 per pair rather than the usual £45. I draw the line at wearing somebody’s cast off undies. Peacocks and Primark are cheapest for these.
Clothing budget.
On past experience the following outfit should last 3 years.
1 black Crombie coat, 2ndhand from Deptford market; £12 vs £40 new. Saves £28.
2 charity shop jean jackets; total £4 vs £40 new. Saves £36.
6 pairs charity shop jeans; total £12 vs £180 new. Saves £168.
4 tee-shirts (slight seconds from market); £4 total vs £20 chainstore price, saves £16.
10 charity shop shirts; total £15 vs £150 new, saves £135
2 pairs shoes; 1 seconds @ £20, 1 second-hand @ £1.50 vs £90 new, saves £68.50.
2 charity shop jumpers; total £4 vs £20 new, saves £16.
10 pairs Peacock’s socks; total £6 vs £10 M&S, saves £4.
9 pairs Peacock’s briefs; total £9 vs £18 M&S, saves £6.
Total savings £477.50 ÷ 156 weeks = £3.06 per week (23mins)
Haircuts. While I’m on about grooming issues, shop round for haircuts. I get mine cut for £5 locally, when most places charge £7. At four haircuts a year I save 15p per week (1 minute!). Hairdressing schools like Vidal Sassoon (0207 836 0606) in London or Toni and Guy (0207 491 0030 in London, but also branches across the UK) offer cheap or free haircuts by supervised students. If you only ever get a really short cut like a number 2 crop, buy a set of hair clippers. Prices start around £10 in Argos, which you’ll save back after two cuts.
Specs. This didn’t fit elsewhere. If you’ve do a day job involving work with VDUs or PCs you could be entitled to glasses paid for by your employer, although you might want to play down the fact you’d need specs regardless of your job, if that’s the case. Check out the regulations on your right to glasses here www.eyecarevouchers.co.uk . If you’ve got old specs to ditch, hand them in for recycling at Dollond and Aitchison or donate them to the charity Vision Aid Overseas (www.vao.org.uk) through branches of Vision Express.
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Index.

Poor But Happy; low-budget home-making

2008-06-26T21:25:00.004+01:00

Furniture.
DIY furnishings. Moving into an unfurnished place can be an expensive time. Look out for (clean) furniture and useful materials discarded in the street or in skips. I found the chair I’m sat on by the bins in 1986 and it’s still going strong. While you’re raising the money for ‘proper’ furniture, here’s alternatives you can make with minimal skills from cheap or found materials.

Breadbasket chest of drawers. Discarded Sunblest baskets can be stacked on top of each other to store clothes.

Brick bookcase. Put planks of wood/ chipboard on stacks of old bricks to make a bookcase. Paint or varnish the bricks to stop damp seeping into your books.

Breadbasket desk. Stand two Sunblest baskets on their edge. Fix a piece of board on top by screwing through the edge of the baskets into the board. The small plastic joint blocks sold in DIY shops add strength. Use old interior doors for a bigger version.

Pallet futon. Wooden pallets laid on the floor work well as a makeshift futon base.
Alcove wardrobe. If there’s an alcove in your place about the right size, fix a length of 1 inch diameter dowelling between the two walls using a couple of wardrobe rail brackets to hang clothes on.
Door clothes hanger. Fix a strong hook on the back of a door. Tie knots in a long piece of string so there are small loops at regular intervals. Hang the string on the hook, then hang coat hangers in the loops to hang clothes on. Coathangers often get dumped after street markets— collect some at the end of trading.

Paint tin coffee table. Make a low coffee table by screwing an empty 5 litre paint tin to each corner of an old piece of board, in an upright position. Old paint tins also work as wastepaperbaskets. Cover them in old wrapping paper.
Emergency curtains. Buy a big enough bit of material. Old bedspreads from charity shops are ideal - old sheets or blankets will do. Fold the material at what will be the top of the curtain like you’re going to sew a wide hem. Secure the fold with staples or safety pins – safety pins are best as they can be removed if you ever wash the curtains. Instead of curtain rail, screw two hooks just above the window at each end. Hang your curtains on curtain wire between these two hooks, or substitute string if you’re really broke.
Unless you plan to do loads of DIY it’s best to borrow tools if possible - the average electric drill gets 15 minutes of use in its lifetime(2). Ask friends or join a LETS scheme (see later).
Second-hand furniture. Street markets and car-boot sales sell second-hand furniture but rarely deliver, and I’d avoid buying anything electrical there. Luckily, many charities now sell second-hand furniture. My local British Heart Foundation shop has all types of furniture including TVs, and white goods. I bought a TV there last year when my old one packed up for £60 including delivery — the cheapest equivalent in Argos was £112. If it lasts four years I’ll save 25p per week (2mins).
For charity shops selling used furniture, visit www.bhf.org.uk , http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ and http://www.frn.org.uk/ . When buying furniture etc new, visit www.ciao.co.uk to compare prices. If you buy from major chains online, visit their sites via www.ushopugive.com and the stores will donate 2-3% of what you spend to charity.
Utensils and odds and sods. Those same car boot sales, markets and charity shops are good for utensils like saucepans etc. For cutlery, cups etc try poundshops – they’re almost certainly horribly unethical but I can’t walk past a poundshop like some people can’t walk past a pub.
Low energy light bulbs are often available free; power companies, local councils and government bodies promoting energy saving sometimes give them away. I mostly got mine for free at local environmental events. Use rechargeable batteries where possible. They last for up to 1000 rechargings. You can buy solar powered chargers for about £10 from www.selectsolar.co.uk or from branches of Maplin’s (www.maplin.co.uk) .
Decluttering. Obviously it’s best not to buy things you don’t want in the first place, but if you’ve got stuff you want shot of, you may as well get a bit of money back on it, or at least make sure it doesn’t go to waste. You can sell your stuff at www.loot.com , www.ebay.co.uk , www.gumtree.com . If you want to give it away, charity shops are the obvious choice, but for anything that won’t find a home there, try www.freecycle.org which lets you give away a whole range of items.

Next.

Index.

Poor But Happy; getting the shopping in.

2008-06-26T21:21:00.004+01:00

You can save loads if you’re canny about what you buy, where you buy it and what you do with it.
Where you get it.
Markets. Supermarkets are, on average, 30% more expensive for fruit and veg than small greengrocers(5). I find that apart from a few things like spuds, cheapest of all are street markets. Stalls selling stuff at £1 a scoop are best. This year I’ve had £1 scoops containing; 7 heads of celery, 23 satsumas, 7lb carrots, 5lb bananas, 17 avocadoes, 5lb apples, 3 marrows, 5lb courgettes, 3 ½ lb pears, 2lb peppers. Have a look at this site; www.nmtf.co.uk ; it’s aimed at traders but has a useful searchable list of markets.
Allotments. It involves some time and effort, but growing your own veg will save you money. You can rent an allotment from your local council. There are also some independently run allotments and Railtrack has a limited number of plots for rent. Council-run allotments cost about £30 per year for a plot the size of two living rooms, more than big enough to grow all the food for one person. Waiting lists are terrible, especially in London. I’m on a 3 ½ year waiting list with Lewisham. Sometimes neighbouring councils let you rent from them if they’ve got surplus plots, or you can offer to share a plot, which might mean a shorter wait. See www.nsalg.org.uk , or www.allotments-uk.com which has info on allotments and gardening tips.

If you’ve only got a windowsill you can still grow a few herbs. Use old margarine tubs or make your own plant pots by cutting old washing-up liquid bottles to size.

Herbs like parsley will freeze well if you put them in water and pour the liquid into ice cube trays.

Supermarkets. Like lots of people, I’m uncomfortable about the power and impact of supermarkets on local economies and the environment. Read Not on the Label by Felicity Lawrence (4) to find out more. I’m not together enough to boycott supermarkets completely, but I try to give them as little money as I can. These tips for how you shop at supermarkets will save you money and mean you give them a minimum of your cash.
Make a list. Know what you need before you go so you aren’t tempted to buy expensive extras. You’ll also avoid buying more than you need of the essentials, which is a good move seeing as many UK households throw away 40% of the food they buy, contributing to a total of £16 billion worth of food that’s thrown away in Britain each year.
Shop at the right time. Don’t go when you’re tired, hungry or depressed - you’ll buy more stuff to comfort yourself. A survey by Somerfields showed people spent 20% more when hungry.
Bulk buy. Buy as much as possible of stuff you know you need, in one trip. The fewer trips you make, the less you’ll spend on fares and unplanned extras. I tend to stock up on tinned tomatoes, jumbo boxes of washing powder, and toiletries - stuff I know I’ll use, that won’t go off. If you can face the shame, it’s worth getting one of those trolleys that pensioners drag round, because they let you do a bigger shop. On the way to the shop I carry mine to make it look like it’s a present for somebody that I haven’t bothered to wrap.
Pay cash. You’ll be more conscious of what you’re spending. If you know how much the stuff on your list should cost you can take the right amount to avoid temptation. This also hits the supermarkets in the pocket because it’s expensive for them to handle cash – that’s why they offer you cash back at the tills.
Avoid meat. I occasionally eat fish, and meat in rare moments of weakness, but a veggie diet is miles cheaper and better for the environment.
Avoid mineral water. 40% of all mineral water is processed tap water.
Compare prices online. It’s now dead easy to compare prices. Asda and Tesco both have this facility on their websites; www.tesco.com/pricecheck or www.asda.com/asda_shop . Which brings me on to…
What you get. Only 20% of supermarket shoppers are really price sensitive in their choices. Supermarkets’ big profits depend on the other non-thrifty 80%. The easiest way to save in supermarkets is buying the stores’ own value brands. These are often ‘loss leaders’, sold at little or no profit to lure people into stores. Although supermarkets are cagey about how many of their products sell at a loss, if you only buy value brands, you’ll at least limit the amount you’re adding to their profits. You’ll also be putting two fingers up to the advertising pricks who make millions persuading people to buy name brands.
I’ve bought value brands for almost everything during and since the year of the experiment and rarely noticed a difference in quality. An exception was Tesco’s value deodorant, which left me stinking like a stoat by mid-afternoon, so I switched to their ordinary own brand, which was still £1.90 less than Sure.
Weekly shopping budget.
Buying supermarket value brands and buying fruit and veg on the market, my weekly shop averaged out at £7.98. If I’d bought fruit and veg at normal supermarket prices and bought name brand products for everything else it would have cost £18.47, a saving of £10.49 per week (1 hour 20 minutes). That takes no account of savings from home cooking against the cost of ready meals detailed below.
What you do with it.
Packed lunch and a flask. If you work at a job, getting lunch can be pricy. On the two long days I work I now take sandwiches and a flask instead of eating at the canteen or buying sarnies in a shop. This saves £5.30 a week (40 minutes).
Learn to cook.. Ready meals are a rip-off which waste resources used in refrigeration, production and transportation before they even reach you, the punter. Home-cooking is tons cheaper. You don’t need to buy cookery books as there’s loads of websites with recipes. Check the food section of Kitty Chronic’s site; http://uk.geocities.com/kittychronic/svs01.htm. Other favourites are http://vegweb.com , www.vegsoc.org , www.veganfamily.co.uk , and www.veganline.com . People think cooking’s time-consuming but if you’ve got access to a freezer it actually saves you time. Once a month I do a big veg shop on the pound a scoop stalls, cook enough meals for a month, bag and freeze them. Then when I’m ready, I just microwave them and cook any accompanying veg. When freezing your own cooking, let it cool first so your fridge doesn’t waste power working harder than necessary. Don’t defrost meals in the microwave - save electricity by taking them out of the freezer in the morning. I find this also lessens the temptation to get a takeaway after work as I know the food’s already defrosted waiting for me indoors. You can rinse out any used freezer bags and use them for rubbish to save buying bin bags. If you’re cooking veg for one use a small milk saucepan – it’ll hold just the right amount. Here’s a few not very original recipes for the sake of comparison.

Veggie chilli. (6 portions)
2 onions, chopped (10p)
2 red biggish red peppers, chopped (65p)
3 big carrots, grated (24p)
3 410g cans kidney beans @ 17p each (51p)
3 410g cans chopped tomatoes @ 17p each (51p)
About 2 ½ tsp chilli powder (4p?)
2 tbsp oil. (1p)
= £2.07 ÷ 6 = 35p per portion vs Linda McCartney veg chilli £1 per portion. Saves 65p.
In a big saucepan, gently fry the carrot, peppers and onion with a lid on for 10-12 minutes until the veg have started to soften. Add beans and tomatoes. Bring to the boil and cook for 15 minutes until it doesn’t look too runny. Add the chilli gradually to your taste, stir well and cook for another 3-4 minutes.
Tomato pasta sauce. (4 portions)
1 onion, chopped. (5p)
1 squeeze garlic puree. (1p)
2 tbsp tomato puree (3p)
2 410g cans chopped tomatoes (34p)
1 tsp dried basil or oregano (2p)
½ tsp sugar
2 tbsp oil. (1p)
= 46p ÷ 4 = 12p per portion, vs Ragu pasta sauce 25p per portion. Saves 13p.
In the usual big saucepan, fry the onion until it’s soft. Add the tomato and garlic puree and cook for about 2 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, sugar and herbs. Simmer uncovered for about 20-25 minutes until the sauce has thickened.
Vegetable curry. (8 portions)
3 green peppers (99p)
4 courgettes, sliced (1.00)
1 ½ lb carrots, chopped (30p)
2 410g cans chickpeas (40p)
1 large onion (10p)
1 410g can of chopped tomatoes (17p)
2 tbsp oil (1p)
2 tsp curry powder, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, ½ tsp chilli powder. (3p)
=£3 ÷ 8 = 38p per portion vs Linda McCartney Veg balti £1 per portion. Saves 62p.
Big saucepan blah, blah, blah. Fry the onion and peppers until soft (about 5mins). Stir in all the spices and cook gently for 5 minutesmore, stirring constantly so it doesn’t burn. Stir in all the veg and tomatoes and simmer with a lid on for 40 minutes. Stir in the chickpeas and heat for another ten minutes.
Averaging out those sort of savings over a year, home cooking saves me £3.27 per week (25 minutes) which if anything is an underestimation.

Next.

Index.

Poor But Happy; the boring old basics. Bills & tax.

2008-06-26T21:18:00.004+01:00

Tax. If you cut the hours you work, the UK tax system operates in your favour because your take-home pay goes down slightly less than your gross pay does. As a rough guide, if your full time gross is £15K and you halve your hours, your take home only goes down by 42%. If you cut your hours by 33%, take home reduces by 28% (3).
Switch utility suppliers. I was against privatisation, but now it’s happened you may as well shop around. You can save by changing suppliers of gas, electricity and phone. Several websites let you compare suppliers; www.uswitch.com is good, while www.switchandgive.com donates to charity if you switch using their site. According to Ofgem, 35% of gas and electricity customers have already switched, saving an average £60 a year. Check www.greenelectricity.org if you want to get your leccy from renewable sources. I switched to Powergen for gas and electric, saving about £2 per week (15mins). Their treatment of punters is famously shite but their Greenplan tariff draws your electricity from renewable sources at no extra cost. For my home phone I stayed with BT for line rental but changed to www.projectoscar.org.uk for calls. They cost the same as BT but donate the net profits (around 13%) from your calls to a charity you select, so each month Oxfam receive about £2.50 indirectly from me.
You can’t change water suppliers but it’s free to get a water meter fitted free. Check if this will save you money at www.buy.co.uk . Thames Water reckon a ‘low user’ living alone will pay £148 a year on a meter, instead of the £228.79 I used to pay. In fact, now I’m metered, I’m on course to pay £114 a year, saving £2.21 per week (17mins).
Reduce consumption.
Reducing the amount of energy and water you use saves money, and damage to the environment.
Water. Water purification adds massively to CO2 emissions, so save water if you can. Fix dripping taps; just one can lose up to 100,000 litres a year, that’s £200 if you’re metered. Use the economy setting on the washing machine and only wash full loads. Put a filled plastic water bottle in the toilet cistern to cut the amount used for flushing. Toilet flushing accounts for 35% of domestic water use – about 100 litres per person daily. You only really need to flush when you’ve had a shit, although on hot days pee that’s been hanging about can hum after a while. Try reusing water from showers and washing to flush the loo – instead of pulling the plug out, use an old jug to scoop the used water into a bucket for later use. Tip it down the bog instead of flushing in the usual way. Don’t reuse water from washing up dishes – it quickly gets smelly. If you’ve got an old plastic dustbin or fliptop bin that you’re not using, you can hook up the outlet hose from your washing machine to feed into it, and use this water for flushing. Be sure to keep an eye on it while the washing’s doing or you’ll flood the kitchen. Have showers instead of baths; a 10 minute shower uses 30% less water than a bath. Ofwat estimate a shower costs 14p while a bath costs 31p, including the cost of heating the water. Argos do bath/shower mixers for about £10. Get they type that stay on the taps and let you switch from bath to shower mode, rather than the cheapest push-on type with the suction cups as they perish quickly.
Electricity. Household energy use produces 28% of the UK’s CO2 emissions so it’s good to cut down. Switch off appliances on standby like TVs, DVD players, mobile phone chargers. This saves about £11 a year or 21p per week (1 ½ minutes!). As a guide, if the plug’s hot when an appliance isn’t in use then it’s using power on standby. If you’ve got a microwave with an electronic clock display, turn it off at the mains – powering the clock uses as much electricity over a year as cooking does. About 85% of electricity used by a VCR is used while it’s on standby (2). Do laundry at lower temperatures – washing clothes at 60º C uses 30% more electricity than washing at 40º C(2). Keep a lid on saucepans and cut veg up small; food will cook quicker. Buy a kitchen timer from the pound shop – mine’s really helped me not to waste energy overcooking stuff – especially useful given that my early experience of cooking was putting the tea on in time for my mum getting back from work. It’s taken me years to break the habit of boiling the living bollocks out of everything for thirty minutes. Move your fridge away from heat sources like cookers and radiators - it uses 15% more energy battling the additional heat. Dust the condenser coils on the back of the fridge – dusty coils can increase fuel use by 30%. Lighting accounts for about 20% of an average electricity bill so get low energy light bulbs - they use about 25% of the power of standard bulbs and can last for 10 years. The Energy Saving Trust (www.est.org.uk) reckons each low energy bulb saves around £5 a year. I’ve now got five in my flat, all picked up for free, so I save 48p per week (3 minutes 40 seconds!). Turn off lights when you leave a room. If you replace any big appliances check the energy efficiency rating of the new item – A is the most efficient. My washing machine packed up in December so I bought an A rated replacement which should save 10p per week (46 seconds). Fridges are the biggest users of power among appliances— an energy efficient fridge can save about £35 p.a. If your old fridge has a crap efficiency rating but it looks like lasting a while yet it’s worth getting a Savaplug. You substitute it for the fridge’s existing plug and it saves about 20% of running costs ( £12 p.a.). It’s easy to fit, and’ll pay for itself in about 2 years. See www.savawatt.com . Portable electric heaters are expensive to run but can work out economical if you only want to heat one room and the alternative is to put on central heating.

Gas. Turning the thermostat down on central heating by 1º saves around £30 a year. Set the hot water thermostat to 60ºC – any hotter than that, you’ll only need to add lots of cold water to cool it. Put a jumper on. Open your curtains in the morning and close them at dusk to get some free heat from sunlight. Close internal doors. Sus out the timer controls for your heating and hot water and make sure it’s only on for as long as you need it. I find 30 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening gives enough hot water for one person.
Insulate your place if you can. There’s some cheapo DIY ways to do this. It’s easy to fit makeshift double-glazing. It won’t be quite as good as the real thing, but still effective enough to make it worth doing. Buy some narrow double-sided tape and a builders’ clear polythene dustsheet (usually about 12ft by 12ft) from a DIY shop. If they sell the sheets in a choice of thickness then don’t choose the thinnest they’ve got. Measure the panels of your windows. Mark and cut the polythene sheet to fit the frames, allowing for any handles etc. Cut the double-sided tape to the length of the sides, top and bottom of the frame. Start by fitting the tape along the top of the frame, then stick the polythene sheet to this. Then tape it in place along the sides and the bottom. Try to pull the sheet reasonably tight, but don’t rip it. You might need a friend to help with this job.
You can make a portable draught excluder to put at the base of doors by filling old tights with rags or shredded newspaper.

Alternatively, tightly roll old newspapers to work the same way. To get the size right you’ll have to tape them in the middle. You can make your own draught excluder to fit round doorframes by cutting corrugated cardboard into strips. Cut the cardboard along the length of the corrugation to a width of about 2 centimetres and either glue or tape it in place. If the cardboard is particularly thick and it makes the door hard to close, try flattening it a bit by pressing it with your thumb. DIY shops sell a brush strip draught excluder that you fit at the bottom of a door. You can bodge an alternative. Take a strip of old carpet, lino, corrugated cardboard, foam rubber or thin polystyrene packing, which is as long as the width of the door. Tape or glue this at the bottom of the door so it blocks any gap, but is just clear of the floor. If you’ve got the sort of landlord who’s going to get the arsehole if you leave any trace of your existence, you can fix it so as to cause no damage. Make a small hole at each end of the insulating strip. Get a length of knicker elastic, just long enough to fit tightly around the door. Tie the elastic to the hole at each end of your chosen material and loop this around the bottom of the door to hold it in position.

The gaps around an average door are equivalent to having a brick missing from an outside wall. The energy saving trust estimate draught proofing doors and windows saves about 26p per week (2 minutes). You can find more ways to save at the Friends of the Earth site www.foe.co.uk/living/poundsavers/save_energy.html or http://www.est.org.uk/

Phone. Once you’ve changed phone suppliers you can still cut costs. If you pay a flat fee for unmetered internet access, consider cancelling. I was on Freeserve Hometime. The last two quarterly phone bills before cancellation were £103.65 and £90.96. The first bill after cancellation was £51.19. Switching to pay-as-you-go saved me roughly £3.50 per week (27mins). If you use the internet at home less than 3 or 4 hours a week, pay-as-you-go is cheaper. If you’re surfing sites with a lot of text-based info, cut and paste the relevant text into a document on your desktop to read later when you’re logged off. A similar trick works for stuff like blogging – instead of writing your post online, type it up and save it beforehand, then cut and paste it once you’re logged on. With lots of email accounts you only really need to be online to actually send and receive – read and write messages offline. Remember, internet access is free in all UK public libraries, so you may not need to go online at home at all.
Make phone calls at times that make the most of your supplier’s tariff e.g. evenings and weekends. Avoid phoning companies on 0870 numbers; these cost more than ordinary local numbers and the companies get a cut of the call fee, which is taking the piss a bit if you’re ringing them to complain. You can find alternative cheaper numbers for these companies at www.saynoto0870.com . Sometimes you can sidestep the list of options offered by automated call centres – try pressing zero quickly 3 times to get to a human sooner. More tips are available at www.paulenglish.com/ivr/uk .
Mobile phone. In 1992 only 1% of the population had use of a mobile – now there’s 50 million of them in the UK (2). Do we really need them that much?. On average a mobile gets thrown away after 18 months; every hour 1712 mobiles are upgraded in the UK alone. A typical monthly contract works out at £44.18 while the average pay as you go user spends £24 a month (2), so consider changing tariff, and think twice before replacing your phone. If you do decide to replace a mobile, Oxfam (www.oxfam.org.uk ) will recycle the old one.
Banking. Banks shaft people rotten and very few have got any sort of ethical policy worth the name. You can compare accounts at www.uswitch.com. At the start of the experiment I was still with the Woolwich from when they were a building society, and they now give really low interest. I switched to Smile, the internet bank run by the Co-operative Bank (www.smile.co.uk). They’re ace. The staff are dead helpful on the phone, they’ve got a strong ethical policy and they give 3.00% interest on their current account with a £500 free overdraft. That interest works out at about 39p per week (3 minutes) more than I would have got with the Woolwich.
Housing and transport.
Housing. I’m lucky enough to live in a housing co-op, although I’m ashamed to say I’ve been really rubbish at doing my share of helping run the place lately. Housing co-ops are run by the people who live there, so they’re cheaper than privately rented accommodation. My rent’s £57 a week. If I didn’t live here there’s no way I’d be able to rent a flat so I did a comparison with the cost of rented double rooms which is probably the sort of place I’d be living otherwise. The average double room advertised in Time Out when I checked worked out at £95 per week, so I save £48 per week (6 hours 15 minutes). Find out general info about housing co-ops at www.cch.coop .There’s a detailed directory of co-ops in London and the regions at www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/iane/coops/coopsdirlondon.html . Housing associations are another option. The National Federation of Housing Associations has a site at www.housing.org.uk and you can find general housing advice at www.shelter.org.uk .
Transport. I used to buy a monthly travelcard for tube, train and bus which came to £16.46 per week. Now I get an annual bus pass that at £8.50 a week saving £7.96 per week (1 hour 2mins). The bus is slower but I just allow extra time for journeys and get some reading done. Buses aren’t perfect environmentally, but of every 1000 units of pollution in urban areas 560 is from cars and 7 is from buses and coaches (2).
Next.
Index.

Poor But Happy; Vulgar, me?

2008-06-26T21:17:00.002+01:00

I’ve been working about twenty five hours a week for the last nine years, so I’m used to not having that much money coming in. Going part-time let me do more stuff that I care about, like writing fiction, which is time-consuming and doesn’t bring in any money. But about a year ago I started doubting the choice I’d made. I felt a bit of a loser, and that I was sacrificing too much for doing the things I wanted.
So, to cheer myself up, I decided on the experiment that eventually resulted inthis zine. The idea was that I’d put into practice all my hard-earned frugal living skills in a structured way over the course of one year (2005). Assuming a pound saved is as good as a pound earned I tried to show myself I’m no worse off than if I was working full-time and living the sort of life that advertisers and the media present as normal.
My take-home pay’s about £7.69 an hour. If a typical working week’s 37 hours then, in cash terms, my economical ways would have to compensate for 12 hours @ £7.69, i.e. £92.28 per week. Where I give a figure for what I’ve saved I also put the amount of time I didn’t need to work as a result. The savings included are open to pretty much everyone. They might involve changing a few habits but aren’t based on going without things I like, but having cheaper equivalents instead. By the way, I’m not getting a bung off any of the companies I mention. It’s a lovely thought though.
There’s a trend lately for books on so-called ‘downshifting’, and I wouldn’t be wildly pleased to be lumped in with that trend. The underlying message of a lot of those writers is, ‘I’m actually quite posh and successful you know – I’m not just some wanker who doesn’t earn much.’ Me, I really am just some wanker who doesn’t earn much. For all that, I recommend a few of the better books covering related areas at the back of the zine. I’ve put a number in brackets when I’ve sourced facts from them, except where I can’t remember how I found something out.
It’s not just about me being a sad, penny-pinching tight-arse, although obviously that’s a big part of it. The environmental and social impact of a culture based on pissing money up the wall is huge. I’ve tried to include info relevant to that too.
Anyway, that’s enough explanation – let’s save some money!
Edxx
Next.
Index.

Publish and Be Published. Resources and links.

2008-06-17T21:25:00.001+01:00

The Author-Publisher Network, 6 Kelvinbrook, West Molesey, Surrey, KT8 1RS . This organisation supports self-publishers in various ways. They run courses and publish a newsletter. Membership is around £15.
Notes From Underground; Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. Stephen Duncombe. Publisher; Verso. An indispensable intro to the world of zines. Combines spot-on analysis and a clear overview of the zine scene. Duncombe’s in-depth knowledge really shines through.
Below Critical Radar; Fanzines and Alternative Comics from 1976 to now. Eds; Roger Sabin and Teal Triggs. Publisher; Slab-o-Concrete. A bit worthy, but a genuine enthusiasm carries the book.
Stolen Sharpie Revolution. Ed; Alex Wrekk. Publisher; http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/ Available from most distros. A brilliant how-to zine. Stuff on making zines, putting out records, running a distro, etc.
http://www.bookmouth.com/ Useful advice on self-publishing, and 30 tips for promoting a DIY project. Also lists places to get your work reviewed.
http://www.factsheet5.org/ Soon to relaunch (December 2005), this huge site is set to feature more reviews of zines than you can shake a stick at.
http://www.zinestreet.com/ A humungous database of zine distros around the world.
http://www.zinebook.com/ A great collection of info on every aspect of zines and zine production.
Zineworld. Endless happy hours of reading for anybody into zines and the DIY world. http://www.undergroundpress.org/
Peter Finch. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/peter.finch/howpub.htm Read a sample chapter from Peter Finch’s solid and useful how-to book, How to Publish Yourself .
http://nomediakings.com/ Jim Munroe is a novelist who baled out of the mainstream to go DIY. Huge amounts of useful info, inluding detailed stuff on the financial side of self-publishing.
http://www.markwagstaff.com/index.html Mark Wagstaff self-published a novel, After Work. I wrote to him for advice before publishing BCL and he kindly sent me a helpful letter sharing experiences and knowledge. Cheers Mark!
http://www.literaryrevolution.com/ Home of the US based Underground Literary Alliance; challenging the mainstream book world by doing it themselves.
http://www.wredfright.com/ Top man!
www.leekinginc.com/resources.htm A useful list of places that review zines.
http://www.mpawson.demon.co.uk/ Home of Mark Pawson, one-man DIY cottage industry, artist, maker of art books, badges, teeshirts.
http://www.thefwwcp.org.uk/ The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers lists affiliated writers’ groups.
Back to index.

Publish and Be Published. Dictionary corner.

2008-06-17T21:22:00.002+01:00

Zine. A publication produced independently by an individual (or sometimes a group). The emphasis is on self-expression. Profit is rarely an intention and even more rarely a reality. Usually photocopied in smallish numbers. Content varies, although fiction is relatively rare.
Distro. A distributor of zines. Mostly run by zine enthusiasts on a not-for-profit basis. Most operate by mail order, and via the Net.
Zine-fairs. Gatherings of zine-makers and distros, with zine stalls and sometimes related events and workshops.
Sale or return. Arrangement where a shop/distro stocks your novel on the basis that you get paid once they’re sold. You take back any that don’t sell, even if they’re mashed to bits! Known elsewhere as consignment.
Flats. The flat, uncollated, unstapled source pages for your novel. There. I managed to avoid saying master copy. Doh!
A5. AKA half-size.
A4. Full-size.
Pagination. The way to make the pages come out so they read in the correct sequence when the novel’s assembled.
Back to index.
Next.

Publish and Be Published. Adding it up.

2008-06-17T21:19:00.003+01:00

Commercially sensitive, my arse. Here’s the figures;
I had 200 copies of BCL produced. Cost £324 ie £1.62 each.
23 of these sold through shops. Wholesale price was £1.50 to £1.60; ‘profit’ on copies sold direct could subsidise the tiny loss I made on these. The shops then sold BCL for between £2.50 and £3. Hey ho.
I sold about 6 copies through my website at £2.
The rest were sold direct for between £2, £1.50 and £1 depending how desperate I felt. I wrote off 10 copies as losses; sale or returns that were too tatty to sell, or review copies sent to zines. I threw 5 copies in Deptford Creek in despair.
A reasonable guess at how that breaks down is; £324.00 cost of novels minus £90.00 = 45 sold at £2, £192 = 120 sold at £1.60, £20 = 20 sold at £1. Balance = £22 loss.
No profit made, but it was at least a sustainable loss. But the real gains and losses weren’t financial. The satisfaction of being undefeated means far more than money.
Losses. The process of selling the novel was often painful, particularly selling to strangers at gigs. Experiencing first-hand the often arbitrary, casual dismissal of my work really got to me. Lots of this was avoidable. I could’ve done a smaller print run and reduced the pressure not to lose money and lose face. I’d’ve been no less happy selling 100 copies. I could’ve done better at marketing and got the novel into more shops. In hindsight it would have been good to produce the novel in two formats – a full length one for shops and a serialised version for zine distros.
Gains. Grim as some memories are, I gained a lot from the process. It feels like a triumph of bloody-mindedness over experience, but only just. Partly I’m putting a brave face on things, but hey, making a virtue of necessity is the mother of invention. Flawed as BCL may be, I’m glad I didn’t let it rot in a drawer. I sold 200 copies. That’s 20% of the sales of a typical first novel, without a big publisher’s marketing clout.
In the time between completing BCL and self-publishing, I was on course to become yet another would-be writer bleating about the nepotistic and market-driven book world. That perception of publishing may be correct, but now I don’t feel bitter because it doesn’t stop me doing what I want. I can continue writing and being read for as long as I want.
Best of all, I got amazing support from people. Lots of shops were helpful, particularly Wordsworth Books of Camberwell. When Wred Fright read on my blog that I’d chucked five copies of BCL into Deptford Creek, he offered to sell any copies I sent him at gigs in Ohio. In his capacity as a college professor he even discussed BCL in a paper he gave on the zine novel to a national conference of the American Culture Association. Other people took the time to email and say they’d enjoyed the novel. One even sent a copy to her author father in Australia. Someone who bought the novel on Brick Lane gave the police a bollocking for moving me on. I experienced more kindness like this than I ever would have if I’d been published like a ‘proper’ writer. So, finally, thanks are due to all those people who supported me in any way. Ta very much.

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Publish and Be Published. How? Promoting it.

2008-06-17T21:12:00.010+01:00

If you build a better mousetrap, people won’t beat a path to your door, especially if they haven’t got mice. Most people don’t read; 40% of adult UK males have never read a novel. In 2004, over 161,000 books got published in the UK, so to get your novel noticed you’ll have to apply some imagination to publicising it, embarrassing as this might feel.
Free advertising. 62% of people buy books on the recommendation of a friend, so exploit word-of-mouth. Don’t hassle friends to buy your novel, but do mention it to them. Add a signature to your outgoing emails plugging your novel.
Zineworld (see links list ) allows a free 50 word advert for DIY projects. I think fliers are only worth doing if you’ve got access to free photocopying and you target them cannily. Some distros will include your fliers when mailing orders.
The Internet’s great for free advertising. Give your novel a tactful plug on relevant online communities and message boards, but don’t abuse the opportunity. These sites are really good as sources of support and skill-sharing. There’s a useful list on http://www.zinebook.com/ . Also, http://www.livejournal.com/ has several zine-related communities good for sharing news with other zinesters.
Other sites exist primarily to promote your stuff. You can post news of your project on the huge database at http://www.diysearch.com/ . Similarly, www.published.com lets you plug your work, and is a fantastic source of info on self publishing. Free listings are available for small presses and DIY publishers at www.indigogroup.co.uk/llpp/ .
Your own website. There’s plenty of info out there already on setting up a website, so I’ll just suggest reading Build Your Own Website, by David Karlins, (Osborne McGraw Hill), which covers all you need to know, and most software. My favourite related how-to site’s http://www.weballey.net/ . If the site’s intended to promote your novel, you need to include a few extracts from it, and a ‘shop’ page detailing how to buy a copy. Submit your site to search engines, but remember that swapping links with related sites will attract more useful traffic.
I don’t think having a ‘professional’ sounding site address matters- most people’ll find your site via links or a content based search. There’s plenty of decent free web-hosting services. I use http://www.cjb.net/ – they’re basic but easy to use.
Over 12000 people visited my old website, but only a handful bought BCL. I think you have to see running your site as an end in itself. Mine’s been a platform for mail art, gig and record reviews, and tips on having a good time on a budget, things I mightn’t have got involved in otherwise. People are more likely to visit your site if it offers them something beyond your attempts at self-promotion.
Press. 42% of readers buy books based on reviews they’ve read. Editorial coverage of a project is reckoned to be worth seven times as much as advertising, so try getting some free publicity this way. This needn’t be anything fancy. Plenty of zines review other DIY publications – there’s a list of ones that do on the Zineworld website. Check the online catalogues of distros for details of zines with review sections. Here's a couple of clippings of mine;

When sending review copies, include a covering letter saying you’d like your novel reviewed and asking the zinester to email you if and when they publish a review. Keep it friendly polite and personal. As putting out a truly DIY novel is still relatively rare, it might help to send a basic info sheet explaining what you’re up to.
When approaching local press and arts mags for reviews or other coverage it’s wise to send a press release. I’ve never written one and have no clue, but do a search on Google; lots of sites give how-to tips on this. Apparently around 75% of what we read in print media is taken directly from press releases. When I rang round shops to sell BCL, some that turned me down said they’d have been more interested if I’d had some local press interest.
Readings and open mics. Most towns have at least one open mic night where people can read out their writing. Most feature poetry but they’re still worth checking out. Slots are generally around five minutes. Select pieces that give a flavour of your novel but which stand up as interesting in their own right; poetry crowds are used to listening to short performance pieces. Rehearse, and time yourself. As a guide, most people read at about 200 words per minute. Tell the MC you’re reading prose so they can give you an appropriate intro. Make sure you plug your novel at the mic, and invite people to buy a copy. You’ll still need to approach people afterwards to make sales, but they’ll be more receptive than if you’d approached them cold. A few performance nights specialize in fiction; Plum Fiction, ( http://www.plumlive.co.uk/ ) and Tales of the Decongested, (http://www.decongested.com/) but you have to book a gig with them in advance. Check out open mic nights in your area here; http://www.poetrykit.org.uk/ .
Publication elsewhere. 55% of people buy novel’s based on familiarity with an author’s previous work. You might think that means you’re stuffed, but not necessarily. I found having stories published in small magazines helped sell BCL. Some people bought it having read my stories in mags, and so did two editors who’d published my stories. Most small mags print a short biog alongside your story, which is a good opportunity to plug your novel. Some mags will publish excerpts from novels. Potential stockists of BCL seemed reassured that I’d had stories published. Many mags have their own websites giving submission guidelines. Note these carefully. Search for small mags on these two excellent sites; http://www.laurahird.com/ and http://www.thunderburst.co.uk/

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Publish and Be Published. How? Distributing it.

2008-06-17T21:04:00.004+01:00

This is sooo hard. Use every means available to get your novel out there. I was totally naïve about this, and so sold 20 copies in the first 18 months from June 2002 onwards.
Mail order. In publicity, be crystal clear about postal charges and the information punters should supply; eg their name and address, contact email, quantities and titles if you sell more than one thing. If you’re worried about disclosing your home address, get a PO box (about £52 per year), or ask people to contact by email first. It’s good to offer a choice of postal options. Say how long each will take. Surface mail is lots cheaper than airmail, and sometimes arrives abroad in a week or two rather than the 6-8 weeks it’s supposed to take. The Royal Mail’s leaflet, Pricing Made Easy lists postage prices for the whole world. Check out http://www.royalmail.com/ . Printed papers (your novel), qualify for a lower rate of postage. You must mark the envelope ‘printed papers only’. For destinations outside the EU, attach a customs declaration CN22 saying what’s inside the package. Always say the contents are a gift, or the recipient might get stiffed for import duty. Most of my mail order sales came from the USA, possibly because there’s a vibrant zine scene there.

There’s several ways to take payment. If you’ve got a website, http://www.paypal.com/ or http://www.ccnow.com/ are worth considering. If you take cheques, make clear who the payee should be. Cheques from foreign banks incur charges so avoid them. Well concealed cash works well as you can change foreign currency commission-free at main Post Offices, but make clear that any cash sent is the sender’s responsibility until it arrives safely. You could try selling your novel on ebay; http://www.ebay.co.uk/ . I haven’t tried this but Greg Holden’s book, How to Do Everything with Ebay, is useful.
In person. In practice, I sold most copies of BCL this way, mostly at free gigs around London. It was depressing – like being a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman who’d been mug enough to write the encyclopedia himself. I now know how those poor sods feel who sell pirate DVDs round pubs .
Gigs. Until about fifteen years ago you couldn’t go to a gig without someone trying to sell you their zine, but that’s over, except at gigs with clear connections to DIY culture. People’s resistance to buying the novel surprised me. I’d get comments like, ‘If it’s any good, why’s it so cheap?’ or, on a good night, ‘It’s probably shit, but I’ll give it a go.’ I’d generalised from my own curiosity and assumed people would leap at the chance to buy it, even if it turned out to be ninety closely-typed pages of all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But then, people are used to what they know; when was the last time someone came up to you in a pub and tried to sell you a novel? I had a success rate of about 40%, so for the 160 odd copies I sold this way I probably approached 400 strangers and was rejected by 240 of them. This really bruised my confidence; over the nine months where I did most of the intensive direct selling I hardly completed any new writing. By the end of that period I was exhausted from going out night after night, and a stone overweight from all the lager I’d necked to get up the nerve to approach people.
Zine fairs* etc. Sadly, these are rare in the UK, but if you can get involved in anything similar, do it. An artists’space near me held a fair where people could sell their creative work. I took a stall and had a brilliant day. I sold six copies, met nice people, and attracted lots of interest. It was so nice not needing to make the first move with people. The same goes for the times I fly-pitched on Brick Lane market alongside street-drinkers selling their old trousers. We got moved on by the police but it was pleasant while it lasted.
Shops. Despite the chainstores’ onslaught, independent bookshops still exist that might stock your novel. Check Yellow Pages or visit http://www.booksellers.org.uk/ .Try other types of shop as well, especially those that might ordinarily stock a zine. BCL sold well in record shops like Rough Trade etc.
Some shops are wary of stocking self-published work so it helps a lot if you seem really together. Phone the shop to see if they’re interested; don’t just turn up. Be ready to tell them useful stuff about the novel; plot summary, any press response you’ve had, publicity you’ve done etc. Mention any local connection you have to the shop. Nice as many booksellers are, finally, they want to know if the novel’s going to sell. If they’re interested take a contact name and arrange a time to visit. When phoning or visiting always avoid busy times like lunch-hours and weekends.
Shops will inevitably expect to stock your novel on sale or return*. You leave an agreed number of copies, then collect the money once they’re sold. Delivery has to be paid for by you so aim to do it yourself – get a bus pass! Issue some form of invoice or receipt for the novels you deliver and get a signature. It sounds bureaucratic but it saves queries later.
Shops will expect to make about 40-50% of the retail price as profit. This may seem a lot but given that they could more easily stock a blockbuster with big marketing behind it, they’re probably still doing you a favour. Be guided by the shop on how many to put into stock. It’s pointless pushing a shop to take more novels than they can sell, then having them lying around on the shelves getting tatty. Similarly, accept their lead on when to check back on sales progress. Don’t expect them to ring you to order more copies, but resist the temptation to constantly chase them for sales updates. Give it at least 6 weeks before checking. You’re responsible for collecting any unsold copies. You’ll just have to write off any that have become shop-soiled beyond use.
Zine distros. The UK never had many distros before, but happily that’s changing. The best worldwide list of distros is www.zinestreet.com . Here are the UK zine distros I know;
Cause and Effect. www.causeandeffectdistro.com
Active Distribution. http://www.activedistribution.org/
All That Glitters. http://www.allthatglittersdistro.co.uk/
Slender means. http://www.slendermeans.org.uk/
Ricochet. http://www.ricochet.freeuk.com/shop.htm
Dead Trees and Dye. http://www.deadtreesanddye.com/
Fingerbang. http://www.geocities.com/fingerbangdistro/
Truthfairy. http://www.truthfairy.co.uk/
Shoebox. www.shoeboxdistro.co.uk
Most distros list their terms, preferences and submissions guidelines on their websites. Respect these, particularly as distros are always volunteer run. Distros usually operate on a profit share of about 50/50 or 60/40 of cover price. Some pay upfront, some work on sale or return.
Working with distros raises some issues if you’re publishing a novel on a zine basis. Will your novel be regarded as a zine? To me, what’s decisive is the organization of the means of production, if it’s a DIY self-published project that’s low-budget and not-for-profit, it’s a zine in all but name. But not many zines focus on fiction, and your novel probably won’t have the trad cut-and-paste layout, so some distros won’t see it as a zine.
Weight is a more concrete problem. BCL weighed 250g, and cost 70p to post second class in the UK. Once you’ve mailed something that size to a distro, who then add on the postage from them to the reader, the price starts mounting. One answer is to serialize your novel into chunks around the length, size and weight of an average zine. Wred Fright serialised his novel Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus, as a seven part zine and it worked for him. This way, the total price of your novel won’t be much lower but readers may be more inclined to try your stuff if they’re making less of an initial outlay on the first instalment. Be sure to complete the novel before taking this route, and brace yourself for the possibility of tons of people buying part one and no bugger buying later sections.
Alternatively, you could try negotiating with distros to see if they fancy working from flats*, ie you supply a flat copy of your novel, the distro runs off copies when orders come in and you decide a profit split between you. Many distros don’t work this way as it’s yet more unpaid labour for them, but it can halve postage costs and may save the distro some risk if they normally pay upfront.

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Publish and Be Published. How? Making it.

2008-06-17T20:59:00.003+01:00

Free photocopying. Ideally, aim to do your copying for free, which for most people means doing it on the sly at work. You’ll save financially and you can copy just the number of novels you need. If you’re really jittery about getting caught copying at work try coming in early or staying late. My big fear is paperjams I can’t clear. An answer is to use a pseudonym that can’t be connected to you, or keep your name off everything but the cover, then copy that elsewhere. Alternatively, be upfront with your workplace and negotiate. I’ve known people to get 1p copies this way.
Copying for free means doing your own collation and assembly. With A4 this is straightforward. With A5, measure and mark where the staples should go. Lay the novel face down on some polystyrene or thick cardboard, then staple through into the soft material below. Lift the novel and bend the staples over by rolling over the prongs with a round pencil. Fold the novel along its spine by hand. For a crisp edge, use a thick stemmed marker pen like a rolling pin along the fold. You can also stack your novels, put a phone book or similar on top, and leave overnight.
Commercial photocopying. Obscurity costs, and right here’s where you start paying. It’s essential you think hard about how many copies of your novel to produce. The more you have produced, the lower the production cost per novel. But that’s no good if they just end up sat in boxes in front room. Aim to produce as few copies as seems viable. I chose to do 200 copies of BCL for no better reason than that I’d read this as a sensible minimum in Peter Finch’s self-publishing guide. Weigh up the choices by getting quotes for different size print runs from each copyshop you contact.
When getting prices for copying get recommendations from friends and, above all, shop around as prices vary wildly. I was quoted up to £1800 for BCL, which ended up costing £324.
When getting quotes and actually placing the order for the work, go out of your way to be clear. Spell out exactly what you want, even if it feels like you’re insulting someone’s intelligence. Specify number of copies, number of originals, whether stapling and collation are included, where on the novel the stapling should be done, and whether delivery is included. Ask what margin is needed to allow for stapling. To give a sense of how this stuff is expressed, the invoice for BCL states; 200 sets of 90sides copied on white 80gsm, double sided, finishing= 2 x staples @ left. The work should be zero rated for VAT. Get confirmation of quotations and orders in writing, even if only by email. I used a Peckham firm called Clearaprint. They were ace; cheap, friendly and quick, they delivered the novels neatly boxed in less than two days.
Around this point in the process is a good time to consider what to charge for your novel. I aimed to keep the ‘retail’ price as low as possible, while covering costs, including stuff like postage, review copies, damaged returns from shops, etc. I found the lower the price, the more likely people were to take a chance on my writing.
Digital options. If you’re skint or want to save trees, some electronic options are either free, cheap or lessen the slog of distribution. One option is to put your novel on a blog. I’ve now done this at http://theblackcarleaving.blogspot.com/ . See http://www.blogger.com/ for tips on blogging your novel in a readable format.
Alternatively you could turn your novel into a PDF file and let people download it from your website. There’s free PDF conversion software available at http://www.pdf995.com/ . More simply, you could offer to email your novel to interested people as an attachment. This way you still get the sense of an exchange happening as you would selling a paper version of your novel one to one. Or you could set up an email list, and email your novel to people serialized in instalments. It’s easy to set up an email list for free. See http://www.notifylist.com/ .
You could sell your novel mail-order on 3 ½ inch floppy disc. A novel easily fits on one disc, which will pop neatly into one of those little wage packet envelopes available in stationers, although you need to put some extra padding inside. Bought in bulk from places like Office World, 3 ½” floppies cost about 25p each.
You could be really adventurous and do your novel as a spoken word project. You’ll need some way of recording sound, but it’s easy (ahem) to get recording software for a PC now. A CDR holds 74 minutes of sound (about 14800 words) so a 74,000 word novel will fit on 5 CDs. Spindles of 50 blank CDRs are £10 in pound shops, so if you burn the discs and do the packaging yourself, you’re looking at a cost of about £1 per novel. Some people worry that certain digital options offer no protection from plagiarism, but I think that finally the methods of production and distribution won’t stop someone determined to rip you off.
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Publish and Be Published. How? Designing it.

2008-06-17T20:49:00.003+01:00

Design matters. It affects how you distribute and promote your novel. For now, I’ll assume you’re publishing your novel on paper. Later I’ll discuss digital options.
Size. The fewer pages your novel has, the less it’ll cost to produce, and to post if you sell it mail order. Layout and font style/size can help minimise pages and weight but don’t sacrifice readability. Ten point is a minimum comfortable font size. While you may see yourself as working in the zine tradition, I don’t think the cut and paste layout works for a novel-length text. The two obvious choices of paper size are A4 and A5*. Each have pros and cons.
A4 advantages. Stapling is simple – twice down one side works. You’ll need use of a fairly hefty stapler, unless the copyshop does this for you. Formatting text can be done with ordinary word processing software, without worries about page sequence. Whenever formatting, leave a margin around the text of between ¼” to ½” to allow for copying and stapling. Check with whoever’s doing the photocopying. Some shops found an A4 novel awkward to display, but the format may have attracted more attention from customers than a standard novel because it was inevitably displayed face on.
A4 disadvantages. When the novel was in shops the covers often got tatty. As I don’t have a heavy-duty stapler, covers were hard to replace. Some shops disliked the A4 size. One refused to stock BCL mainly on the strength of this.
A5 advantages. This is closer to the size of a conventional novel so it may be easier to sell through shops. It’s also a popular size for zines, so may appeal more to zine distros*.
A5 disadvantages. Pagination* is tricky. In theory you can work out the correct sequence of pages for a novel without software, but I wouldn’t fancy it. I’ve just put together an A5 short-story collection using Microsoft Publisher. Publisher is crap. In future I’ll use some open source desktop publishing software I’ve seen at http://www.openoffice.org/. It can’t possibly be any worse.
A5 presents problems around thickness and number of pages. BCL was about 70,000 words long. On A4 it came out at 90 pages, ie 45 sheets of paper. You can fit less text in A5 format, and folding along the spine becomes hard with more than about 26 sheets, so an average novel would have to be done as 2 or more A5 booklets of 26 sheets each. This effectively makes it a serialised novel. Later I’ll discuss the pros and cons of serialization. Production costs will certainly be higher. A4 worked out at £1.62 per complete novel, an A5 2 part novel would’ve come out at £1.87. .
Paper. 80gsm paper is ok for the body of the novel, but use heavier paper e,g 100 gsm, for the cover. This saves wear and tear from browsers in shops and ham-fisted posties. A coloured paper cover is eyecatching and will show the dirt less when the novel’s been in a bookshop for weeks.
Cover design and content. Even fans of DIY culture are influenced by conventions of mainstream publishing in the way they decide about buying your novel. Selling BCL in person I was struck by the importance people attached to what was on the cover.
Artwork. Aim for a design that’ll make people curious about the story. It needn’t be slick, but if you’ve got mates with arty leanings, make the most of them. Believing that I’d sell most copies through my website I didn’t give the cover much thought. I bodged together a punked up version of Munch’s ‘The Scream’. It related to the narrative, but that would’ve only been apparent to people after they’d read BCL. Duh.
The Blurb. People expect to see some sort of blurb indicating what the story’s about. Fact fans, fill your boots; average bookshop browsers spend 8 seconds reading the front of a book and 15 seconds reading the back. The average back cover blurb is 75 words long. Up to 73% of bookshop browsers cited jacket blurb as a major influence on book purchasing. Try to give a sense of the story in a way that’ll hook the reader. Roadtest the blurb on friends who haven’t read the novel.
Quotations. If possible, include quotes from reviews on the novel’s cover. To most people you’ll be an unknown quantity as a writer, and they seem reassured by evidence that somebody, however obscure, has read your stuff and liked it. I’ll discuss getting your novel reviewed in the ‘Promoting it,’ section, but think about it at this stage as you’ll have to send dummy advance copies out to reviewers if you’re getting the novel copied commercially in a one-off run. I didn’t do this, but I laminated highlights of a review of BCL by Wred Fright of the Underground Literary Alliance, showed this to potential punters, and it sold the novel far better than my usual gabbled, tongue-tied sales-pitch.
Practical info. You’ll probably include some of the following.
Contact info; an email or postal address, or website. Publishing DIY style, you get more reader contact than with conventional publication. The easier you make this, the better it’ll be for your morale. People only make contact with good stuff to say, unless you’ve really pissed them off.
Copyright notice. A sentence saying the contents are copyright, your name, and the date they were written is enough. Legally even this isn’t necessary. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a pseudonym. If plagiarism worries you, send a copy of the manuscript to yourself by registered post. When it arrives, file it away unopened, in case of disputes. If you’re interested in a more flexible approach to copyright check out the idea of creative commons at http://www.creativecommons.org/ .

Price. Don’t put the ‘retail’ price on the cover. Shops and distros* may want to set their own price rather than using yours. You may need to cut the price you originally set, when you realize that you aren’t going to have to beat off potential readers with a stick. An altered price on the cover makes your novel look like damaged goods.
ISBN. There’s a numbering system publishers use to identify books and help bookshops and libraries to trace particular titles. Don’t bother with this. It costs around £60 to register with the ISBN agency and you have to take a minimum set of ten numbers. It’s wasted money. Wholesalers and libraries probably won’t stock your novel, and most shops will be buying direct from you. If you must ignore me, contact theISBN Agency (01252 742590). Strictly speaking, if you publish a novel in the UK, you should deposit a copy with the Legal Deposit Office at The British Library, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire, LS23 7BY, and supply 5 copies to the Agent for the Copyright (Legal Deposit) Libraries, Copyright Libraries Agency, 100 Euston St, London, NW1 2HQ. Legal penalties apply if you don’t do this, but if they ever caught and fined somebody, I’d eat my hat.
Company name. Don’t laugh. You might decide to present yourself as a company, although you’re publishing yourself. Some shops refuse outright to stock self-published titles, but might be persuaded if you convince them you’re a small press. To me, there’s something a bit hypocritical about evading the stigma of self-publishing by posing as a company. Any stigma only diminishes when people front up to who they are and what they do. If it’ll convince you, a recent survey found 97% of book-buying punters neither knew nor gave a toss what company published the book they’d just bought. In the end I compromised because I like naming stuff. So BCL was published by Self, Self, Self Publishing. The board of directors consisted of me, me, me. I never tire of that joke. Hmm. If you choose to name your publishing empire, Google it to make sure nobody’s got there first. You needn’t register as a company or any of that boring toss.
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Publish and Be Published. How? Writing it.

2008-06-17T15:31:00.003+01:00

This isn’t a zine on how to write. Still, here’s some things that help me.
Attitude. Robert Wyatt once said, The job of any artist is to find his or her own voice. You can’t do what you do better or worse than what anyone else does. I agree. If you aim to write as much like yourself as possible, you’ll be better at it than anyone else, because no-one else is trying to do exactly that.
Routine. I procrastinate like mad. I delay writing so it hangs over me like unfinished homework. My answer is to have a set routine with times set aside for writing. Even if nothing readable comes out of those slices of time, at least I’ve put in the hours. Knowing that I’ll be sat at a desk doing nothing else for a set period wears down my resistance. Soon I decide I might as well just get on and write.
If you’re time-poor, consider reducing your working week and finding ways to live cheaper. More on that in my next zine. Try ditching your telly. Average Brits spend nine years of their life watching TV. Or get up earlier. I know someone who writes for an hour each day before work.
Writers’ groups. If you can find a group you like, these are great for feedback and support. Novels don’t always fit too well with some groups which have really fluid memberships, as a novel needs sustained attention. I didn’t workshop BCL much. It’d be a far better novel if I had.
Feedback is mostly well meant. Remember, people’s opinions are there to steer through, not steer by. Groups often run on a voluntary basis, so a commitment may be expected regarding input and attendance. Check these sites to find a writers’ group; http://www.writers-circles.com/ , http://www.nawg.co.uk/, and http://www.author.co.uk/ . Adult education writing classes rely on bums on seats so tutor feedback can be too kind to be useful. Where possible, sit in on a class before committing.
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Publish and Be Published. Why?

2008-06-17T15:28:00.003+01:00

Why did I do it? I was desperate, of course. Naturally, I’ve invented more interesting motives since, to make myself seem clever.
I was 14 in 1977. The 70s punk scene’s DIY ethic affected me loads. It showed me culture wasn’t just something you consumed. You could have ideas yourself, and get them out there. You didn’t have to be superhuman or wealthy. I left school at a peak period in UK zine culture. According to Simon Jenkins’ book Rip It Up and Start Again, in 1980, London’s Rough Trade shop received an average of twelve new zines weekly. Publishing a DIY novel seemed a logical progression from the beliefs I picked up as a spotty young herbert.
It was Hobson’s choice, but DIY publishing gave me creative control mainstream publishing can’t offer. According to Dan Poynter’s Self Publishing Manual, 60% of publishers don’t give authors final say on copy editing and 25% don’t even let the author choose a book’s title. Acquaintances signed to ‘proper’ publishers tell horror stories of providing endless rewrites, only to have their novel ditched when editorial staff move on.
I’m pragmatic. I like my writing, but know I work slowly and couldn’t churn out novel after novel. And I know that, partly because of the people I write about, my writing isn’t that marketable. I’ve never had a career in my life, and don’t intend to start now, but given the above, it seems the chance of me having a conventional literary career is negligible. The facts of the publishing world support my hunch.
The average novelist gets 8% of retail price. The Society of Authors recently found that its members’ average income was £16,000. Not starvation wages granted, but hardly encouraging. J.K. Rowling got a £2500 advance for her first novel. Philip Pullman wrote for 20 years before he made enough to go part-time at his day-job. BBC Radio 4 pay £150 for a 15 minute story by a new writer. So to earn the average wage of a typical low-paid UK worker (£6 per hour), you’d need to produce a 3000 word story in 25 hours. Possible at a stretch, but not regularly. Despite the rubbish money, payment is often seen as proof of value in someone’s writing. It’s odd; I wouldn’t think someone was crap in bed because they’d never been paid for sex. My view now is, if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing for nothing.
This is political. There’s clear movement in cultural industries towards centralisation. Figures for 2003/4 (http://www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk/ ), show the big 3 publishers in Britain have 40% market share. The top five have 50% market share, and the top 10, 65%. Similar applies in book retailing. In 2001-2002, 37% of book sales were made via chain bookshops, e.g Waterstones, ( http://www.bookmarketing.co.uk/ ). Bookshop chains, Amazon and supermarkets account for 70% of retail sales. This means cultural industries form a pyramid with a very broad base. You get lots of poorly-rewarded people working at the bottom. I reckon this fosters attitudes similar to ones recognisable in many workplaces. At most jobs you’ll find some workers who are recognised by colleagues and punters as hardworking and skilful, while other staff thrive by making the boss like them. The culture industry’s structure privileges crawling to the boss over the work itself. This discourages efficency and productivity. 30% of books make a profit.
Resistance is possible. Independent record labels have been around for decades. Indie film-making is widely respected. But somehow, self-publishing is still stigmatised. You can change that. If you DIY publish, you’ll be in good company. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Blake did it. Won’t stop some patronising arse from offering you 70p for your novel, though.

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Publish and Be Published. What?

2008-06-17T15:16:00.004+01:00

I’d written fiction for ages but never settled to it - the usual lack of confidence, discipline and time. But I still needed to write my novel. So in 1997 I went part-time at work, removing my main excuse for evading writing. By 1999 I’d completed the black car leaving (BCL) and it seemed ready to send to publishers.
A steady stream of rejection slips indicated that publishers weren’t going to accept my novel. This pole-axed me initially, but I still believed my manuscript was a worthwhile read, even if it was flawed. I considered my motives and, realised I didn’t want to be famous and hang out with Melvin Bragg. I wanted to write as well as possible and be read. I didn’t want to be on Top of the Pops. I wanted to be that band you see in the local pub and really like.
Using ordinary word processing software I formatted BCL into a set of 90 A4* pages. I got 200 copies run off at a Peckham copyshop. The copyshop stapled each novel twice down one side. Between June 2002 and February 2005 I sold all these; via shops, mail order, and in person, mostly at gigs.
I made loads of mistakes. Hopefully you won’t have to. This zine* tells you how and why I did it, and how you could do likewise. It’s for people already into zines who want to branch into fiction, and fiction writers who want to self-publish without ruining their lives. Most stuff I learnt from direct experience, some I taught myself for future reference. I’ve included some facts and figures I researched as food for thought. Any technical terms, marked with an asterisk, are explained in dictionary corner, at the back. I hope you find the zine useful. To misquote the Desperate Bicycles, it was difficult, it was cheap, go and do it.

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