Punk Planet: RIP

Mon 18 Jun 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

In the office for a couple of days (with a KGB visit interstitialed in there on Wednesday) before heading to DC for ALA on Friday (say hi if you’re there). Acronymed to death, anyone?

Punk Planet just pulled the plug on it’s zine, bah fkn humbug. It was a great fun mag with good pieces on all aspects of indie culture. Another death-by-distributor tale. Best of luck with the books!

These are pretty desperate times for indie culture. It’s (somewhat) easy enough to start something—we did it while knowing nothing. Keeping it going while being, er, nibbled to death by ducks? Not always easy.

The usual “clarion” call: if you like a zine, subscribe. Shop the McSweeney’s and Soft Skull sales.

But don’t wait until a press or bookshop you like is desperate. If you buy this $14.95 book from Amazon for 32% off:

The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (Paperback)
by Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant

List Price $14.95
Price $10.17
You Save $4.78 (32%)

That’s great! You only pay $10.71 (Hey, buy 2.) But that 32% you’re saving doesn’t come from Amazon: that cut is from the publisher. The publisher still has to give Amazon a huge discount (so that they can pass it on — and not selling on Amazon, well, let’s suppose that argument is over already) and pay all the other usual people. Hello printer!

How about if you buy that same book at your local book store (which probably has a frequent buyer card of some kind to offer you 10% off)? Then that 22-32% goes back to the bookshop (paying smart people in your town to sell books: how cool is that?) and a slice of it goes back to the publisher, who need every % they can get.

Every dollar is a political act.

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More LCRW stuff:

We will post the Best of LCRW table of contents soon. Promise!

Submissions are running about 1,500 per year. So we are falling further behind and wow are they piling up. Not sure what we can do. Reading periods? Charge to submit? (That is a joke, by the way.) 1500 stories a year (and only going to rise) is a chunk of time. Suggestions appreciated.