I have now self published thirteen publications on Blurb- 11 books, 2 zines. I'm proud (if that's the proper word) of all my children, and all concern various themes (as do most books, duh) except for Learn To Swim, which was simply a conglomeration of various images made to celebrate my first color images made in decades. As I've said countless times before, the reproductions are satisfactory at best and the end products themselves serve basically as dummies of the books one dreams of making. Nevertheless, I went on somewhat of a self publishing bender the second half of last year, and fortunately, as a result, P-A-N-D-E-M-A-N-I-A! was selected for a self publishing exhibit, although I liked Trump Derangement Syndrome (made shortly thereafter) more.
I then went hog wild crazy and made my first two zines; the first, Commitment March (I'm sorry to say) did not pay its subject justice. And the reason is simple, at only fourteen images- it's really on the flimsy side. Still, the potential was duly noted. Say What? comes in at fifty-six images and thirty-two pages, and with the larger zine page dimensions, it gives one more room to play around with the format, placing two nicely sized images on a page here, and slightly larger ones on their lonesome there (you luck out Big Time if you shoot verticals). The reproductions are every bit the same level of mediocrity as per their books, the paper stock is not as thick as their book stock though thicker than most old timey magazines (ie- can't complain) but... the truly great thing about Blurb zines is that unlike the usual $35 soft cover, $50 hard cover (I usually average) which no one is gonna pay- you can make a rather handsome, thirty plus page, 8.5 x 11in publication for under $10 bucks! That at the very least is reasonable, feasible, and what self publishing should be about!
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