By Public Collectors

Public Collectors, Chicago, IL, 2026
Pages: 12
Dimensions: 5.5 in x 8.5 in
Cover: Paper
Binding: saddle stitched
Process: Digital printing
Color: Black ink
Edition size: 300
ISBN: none

A reprint of a recently rediscovered text from way back in 1990 when 19 year old Marc Fischer decided to write about zines for a class during his first year in college. 

From the back cover:

This booklet is a reprint of an assignment from the spring semester of my first year in undergrad at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I was an art major and received my BFA from the school in 1993. I believe the class this was written for, Strategies for Writing, was required. I have no memory of the professor, but I suspect it was a grad student or some other young instructor that was determined to be a stickler for proper academic writing form above all else. I’ve reprinted their final comments on page seven.

During this time in college, I was still publishing the zine I started in high school in early 1988, Primary Concern. For the most part, I did not try to make my zine part of my college art or design course work. My zine was a parallel activity until school and having a social life demanded time that I could no longer devote to publishing. I made seven issues of that zine before stopping in around 1991. I no longer share copies of it with anyone. It’s my juvenilia and I find it embarrassing. I rediscovered this college writing assignment in my childhood bedroom while visiting my mom in Philadelphia, and then regretted not bringing it back to Chicago with me. I asked my mom to mail it to me, much as she would always send me my mail when I was in college.

Despite the uncharitable grade this paper received, I don’t find this writing too embarrassing­—perhaps because I’m mainly writing about the work of other publishers, some of whom were my peers. Looking this over again, I was surprised how much I still agree with many of the positions the paper shares. A couple friends suggested that I make this reprint and I decided to go for it, reformatted as a booklet. It’s a compact snapshot of how I remember the self-publishing culture I was part of at the time.

What informs my way of thinking about artist publishing and zine making today is probably the main thing that shaped my thinking about publishing a zine in 1988: great satisfaction comes from being involved in as many aspects of the production and reception of a publication as one can manage. I love it all: writing the content, formatting and designing text, printing it yourself or figuring out how it will be printed by others, collaborating with others to make the publications, spending time with other artists and writers and exploring those friendships through publishing, getting directly involved in the distribution, becoming friends with the shops that sell the publications, meeting other publishers, and finally, developing relationships with the people that buy and read your work. 

The confluence of all these elements makes self-publishing exciting in any period of life. At the time that I wrote this paper, my zine was mostly about underground music—metal and hardcore. Lately I mostly publish about very different things, but in many ways the self-publishing spirit I see in others remains part of the same continuum that I have lived through since 1988. The cost of postage goes up, printing technologies change, the subject matter of zines changes, but the thrill of making publications and sharing them has never left me. My hope is that the many young people who are currently self-publishing will find a similarly rich and sustaining life in this way of making and being. 

— Marc Fischer / Public Collectors