Zine Guide

Zine Guide #6 cover

Zine Guide was a review zine published by Brent Ritzel (who also published Tail Spins). Ritzel described it as "Complete contact information for 1500+ zines and assorted independent publications. Complete contents, cost, pages, size, and production quality of all available issues of every zine listed. Indexes of bands, record labels, and all subjects/topics." With glossy covers and it's mammoth size, Zine Guide resembled a magazine in appearance, but it's content was an in-depth, cross-referenced directory of the DIY zine community.

In addition to zine listings, Zine Guide also encouraged readers to "vote" or "rate" their favorite and least favorite zines and included famous zinesters, band members and indie record label owners' lists of their favorite zines. The zine printed rankings from it's readers, including the top ten zines in various categories and the top 100 most popular zines. This practiced caused some contraversy and Zine Guide received (and published) angry letters about this practice. Regardless how one viewed the voting and rankings, for a few years Zine Guide served as an impressive resource and up-to-date directory of zines.

Ritzel announced December 13, 2004 on alt.zines that he had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy because of the personal debt he had accumulated printing the Zine Guide and Tail Spins. Issue #7, for which he and his co-workers had compiled thousands of listing for, never saw the light of day. Ritzel, who had been such a prominant active member in the zine community for years, dropped out from zining completely.