Zine Guide
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 practice caused some controversy and Zine Guide received (and published) angry letters about this practice. Regardless how one viewed the voting and rankings, for six issues between 1997 and 2004 Zine Guide served as an impressive resource and up-to-date directory of zines. Zine Guide's first issue came out in December 1997 and was followed three months later by the last issue #64 of Factsheet 5.
Upon moving out to Colorado's Front Range in early 2006, Brent Ritzel started teaching a course on zines and self-publishing at Naropa University, a Buddhist university located in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A.
Brent relocated back his hometown of Carbondale, Illinois in late 2009. He served a three-year term as President of the Fuller Dome Home Non-Profit, leading the organization in fundraising $262,000 of their $300,000 goal needed to restore the 52 year-old only dome home of Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the architectural structure.
Brent is currently a graduate student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in the Masters of Public Administration Program, is a research assistant in the Political Papers division of Special Collections at SIUC's Morris Library, writes scientific papers for the renewable energy company he is an equity partner in, Equitech International, LLC (http://equitechllc.com) and also publishes the zine "The Bucky Fuller Files" that features rare and obscure writings by and concerning Buckminster Fuller (http://fullerfuture.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/buckminsterfuller-whywomenwillruletheworld-print.pdf).
Contact
Brent Ritzel
810 N. Springer St.
Carbondale, IL 62901
BrentRitzel@yahoo.com
External links
- ZineGuide.net - 2003 archives by Internet Archive Wayback Machine
