Zine Fever My Early Adventures in Self-Publishing by David Boyne copyright 1998 all rights reserved

It was January.

I had done my five mile bicycle commute in a rainstorm, and as I rolled my bike through the doors of where I work, water cascaded from me, soaking the grey carpet.

Patty, a co-worker who is also a successful cartoonist, smirked. "When are you going to learn to take your clothes off before you shower?"

"I feel like a wet dog," I said.

Patty's nose wrinkled. "I hope you don't smell like one."

That's when it hit me. "Patty! That's a great name for a literary magazine!"

"I Hope You Don't Smell Like One?"

"No, Wet Dog!"

Patty kept her distance for the rest of the afternoon, as if I had been infected with a virus.

I had.

Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain: they had all contracted and suffered with the self-publishing virus.

My favorite writer had the fever bad, real bad.

In the 1890s, Will Porter bought a used printing press and proceeded to almost single-handedly write and publish Rolling Stone, a humorous weekly. The magazine lost money even faster than its author-publisher-printer could beg or borrow it from friends and relatives. But Will Porter had a day job: teller in a bank.

A bank teller in the grip of the self-publishing fever is a risky proposition, at best.

Will Porter was arrested for embezzlement. Aboard the train carrying him to his trial, his pockets filled with several hundred dollars given him by friends for his legal expenses, Will Porter made a decision. He got off the train at a station en route. He crossed the tracks. He boarded a train going in the opposite direction.

Abandoning his wife and daughter, Will Porter took it on the lam, hiding out in Honduras for nearly a year. Yet, when word came that his wife was gravely ill, Will Porter went back. His wife died; Will went to jail. In jail, he resumed writing stories. Upon his release from jail, a forty year old penniless convict and reformed self-publisher, Will Porter went to Manhattan.

Desperate to keep the shame of his past a secret, he wrote nearly three hundred stories under a pen name, drank two or more bottles of liquor everyday, and, wisely, left the publishing of his work to others.

Nine years later, Will Porter, alias, O. Henry, was dead.

My fever is less virulent than O. Henry's was. I hope.

While my illness drives me to explore the Byzantine techniques of such wonderfully named processes as kerning, creep and gripper--and causes me to spend every dime of my puny "disposable" income on printing and postage-- it has not caused me to embezzle. Yet.

But then, I don't work in a bank. I work in a copy and printing store: Heaven, for a self-publisher.

Some late nights, alone in the shop, surrounded by a fantastic wealth of Macintosh computers, color laser copiers, high-speed black and white copiers, printing presses, stitchers, binders, laminators, light tables-- all at my semi-competent command-- I feel myself a bona fide Superman of Self-Publishing.

Wet Dog is my Daily Planet.

Although, if I want a photograph taken, I don't have a Jimmy Olsen to holler out the door. I shoot it myself. And there's no Lois or Clark to send scampering after a story. I have to write every one. I also have to come up with the design, set the type, buy the paper, do the layout and pasteup, run the copies, do the folding, stitching, sealing, mailing, and local distribution (on bicycle).

I am Wet Dog. Hear me howl.

Among the rewards of publishing a 'zine is the phenomena of people generously volunteering to minister to your fever.

Jonathan, a co-worker who is also a musician, disc-jockey, and vintage clothier, asked, "Want me to do a web page for you?"

I said, "Huh?"

Within a week, and for no more than the cost of a dozen bagels and innumerable cups of strong coffee, I traveled from the ranks of citizens who think html is a new disease (maybe it is?), to join the ranks of major multinational corporations with "a presence on the Net". (At least, my dog had a presence on the Net, as it was his wet face that was featured prominently in the web page Jon created.)

Patty did a cartoon for me. Zale, Queen of the MacUniverse, repeatedly rescued me, towing me safely back to Earth each time I had blindly gone in PageMaker and PhotoShop where 'no man had gone before'.

The high-point of serendipitous aid was being interviewed by the Assistant Literary Editor of Portland's daily newspaper, The Oregonian.

His article in the Friday Arts section was headlined:
Wet Dog Marks Its Literary Territory

Yes. I had arrived. I was on the map. They were gonna hear from me now.

Assured that my answering machine would be filled with messages from hungry agents eager to represent me-- the Northwest's latest literary phenom-- I hurried home.

There was one message. It was from my landlady. She told me to stop complaining and live with the leaky faucets in my bathroom.

It's been nearly a year since that soggy bike ride in which I caught 'zine fever. I still haven't heard from any agents, but I've no time to wait by the phone.

I now have a score of subscribers, which amazes me. (Who are these people? I sure wouldn't send $16 to some nut who publishes his own stories illustrated with a picture of his drenched golden retriever!)

Portland's behemoth bookstore, Powell's City of Books, carries my 'zine in its Small Press section. (More than once I've taken a dusty copy of Wet Dog and positioned myself in the heavily trafficked aisles, reading it, hoping people will notice how rapt the contents have me and go buy themselves a copy. (That's the extent of my advertising and marketing plan.)

I have correspondents, sort of. (Like the woman who e-mailed me her poem, Drunk In My Jammies. Or the person who read my story about a gravity-defying dog and mailed this four word letter: "Brilliant! Send me more!" But failed to enclose a check, or their name, or their address.)

Some things haven't changed. I still chauffeur myself, on my bicycle. Not one Manhattan publisher has flown me Back East for lunch and negotiations over a multi-book contract. Each morning, I still sit alone with my dog in my room and try to make clear sentences that add up to meaningful stories that say more than, "See Jane run!"

Perhaps the only real change is that now, when I get discouraged by my daily failure to produce anything of transcendent literary value, I grab one of the dozens of copies of Wet Dog lying about my home. I turn the pages, sometimes experiencing acute embarrassment, sometimes feeling dangerously vulnerable, and sometimes feeling a refreshingly immature impulse to shout, "Hey! I did this! I thought it up, wrote it down, typeset it, designed it, printed it. I made this!"

When I'm feeling that way, it doesn't matter that I give away almost every issue I print and never have more than five dollars in my savings account. It doesn't matter that people only look at the photos of dogs and never read the stories I write.

What does matter is, I've produced an entire litter of Wet Dogs. Each issue has hit the streets of Portland and "marked its literary territory".

What matters is, I'm having fun.

What matters is, coming up with ideas and making them real.

For example, I'm working on the photographs to illustrate the stories in the latest issue, if I can just get those eyeglasses with the bushy eyebrows and mustache to stay on my dog's nose long enough to get an in-focus photo.

You see, there is no cure for the self-publishing fever. You have to let it run its course.