THE problem with being a do-it-yourself (DIY) publisher is that the field of DIY is dominated by Punks. I mean that literally: Punk, as in Punk Rock, ethics make up the vast majority of people who DIY things, or so it seems to me from my lazy and largely inattentive survey of the world outside my windows. This is not a Bad Thing; Punks have a lot of good ideas about how life should be lived, and contrary to popular belief you don't have to have a pierced scrotum and blue hair to be a Punk. As a matter of fact, I think of Punk more as a philosophy than a music or a lifestyle. It's a way of looking at the world, and it's generally a kind, embracing philosophy that also includes a lot of quit-waiting-for-the-assholes-to-notice-you-and-just-fucking-do-it attitude which I share and respect.
    So the problem is, most Punks are musically-involved, and many, many (by no means all, but many) zines are Punk-music related. As a result, I encounter at least one person a month who thinks that The Inner Swine is a music zine, simply because it is a zine. I get sent press releases from bands. I receive the occasional promo CD demo. I get invited to shows where my name will go on some sort of 'list' because I might review them¹.
    At first glance, this might not be so bad, right? Free stuff, even if you end up not liking the band. Invites to shows! And if nothing else it means that the name of the zine is out there, people know it exists. But the problem is it all falls into the category of More Shit I Gotta do because I am honor-bound to respond to everyone who does this and explain why they're not gonna hear from me, which takes time. My feeling of duty here might seem surprising, since it's obvious that most of these people have not read my zine, or even read about my zine, or they would know better than to send me such ridiculous requests and offers. The reason I feel honor-bound to do so, though, is because I added a listing of The Inner Swine to bookyourownfuckinglife (www.byofl.org).
    As I've kvetched about before, promotion is always a concern for a DIY publisher. How in hell do you let people know you exist, so they can read your stuff? The wonders of the DIY community include a healthy interest in helping everyone promote their stuff. I run advertisements for other people's zines, they run ads for me. We link each other's web sites. It's all very warm and fuzzy, and when I note a new opportunity to get TIS listed somewhere, I usually go for it. bookyourownfuckinglife describes itself as "... a resource guide for the punk/hardcore DIY community primarily used for booking tours" which obviously I did not bother to read before adding my listing - my own fucking fault, yes². It's a great idea: if you've got a band struggling to get gigs or distro a self-made album, here's a resource listing of zines, clubs, whatever. Obviously not quite comprehending its purpose, I zipped over one day and added the following listing to byofl.org:
 
 

    Obviously, while I don't mention anything about music, I also don't say specifically that TIS is not a music zine. Since I added this listing I've gotten a lot of contacts from people pushing bands. It actually took me a while to figure out why I was suddenly invited to all these shows (my own charming personality was, as usual, my first guess). At first I was pissed off, because these guys obviously hadn't done much more than read my listing - or maybe just harvest my email address - whereas about five seconds of web time would have revealed to them how inappropriate my zine was for their needs. Now of course I realize that just by listing my zine on byofl.org I was inviting people to do exactly that, so I'm blaming myself.
    Mostly though, people have been cool. I respond to their emails and explain the problem, they generally say, cool, no problem. One fellow contacted me and suggested that I run an ad for his record company in exchange for having flyers handed out at shows, and I agreed, sounded like a cool idea. When he next suggested that he was sending me a free CD to review, I realized that once again I had been pegged as a Punk zine, and emailed back the truth and told him I wouldn't be offended if he wanted to trash the deal, and told him to toss my flyers if he wanted to. But he decided to just leave the deal in place. Why not? He gets his ad run, I get my flyers distributed³, everybody wins. You don't have to be a Punk band to get that.
    So all the byofl.org stuff is my fault. I've removed the listing, though it takes about 2 weeks to update so it's lingering there like a corpse. I get other stuff from people who think that simply because I put out a zine I must be into the Punk music scene - trades in the mail, flyers for shows, etc. I ignore it all. I don't have time to educate the whole world about my zine.
    Oh well. That's it for now. Until then, email me if you want. 

(1) HA! As regular readers of TIS know, the only way a review of some band would get into TIS is if I started a band. TIS doesn't review anything. Ever.

(2) Although, in my defense, byofl.org is connected with maximumrocknroll, a legendary Punk zine that has review TIS many times, so I figured if MMR bothers to review my zine, their audience must have some interest in non-music zines, so why not add a listing?

(3) Or tossed into the garbage while he screams curses - I'll never know.