Moveable-Type Sort (type component) of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA). Undated, 1876 – Recent.
The roots of the first true Zine network – non-commercial pamphlets printed by (often adolescent) amateurs in tiny editions on personal reproduction devices at home to be traded, rather than sold, through a network that spanned both local and postal communities – was known as Amateur Publishing and lie in the mid-19th Century when the first affordable home-printing systems were marketed to non-professional writers, publishers and adolescents for the first time. By the mid-1870s hundreds of non-commercial, tiny-run periodicals were being printed in dens and basements across the US and England and traded through a growing mail network. Many, and probably the majority, began their involvement in publishing as teenagers. Many of these self-publishers used Hectographs, a kind of modified lithographic process; others used miniature letter-presses that began being marketed around the same time. The Amateur Publishing movement was the incubator not only for micropress and zine networks, but also of marginal literary forms such as horror, science fiction, and fantasy during their formative stages; H.P. Lovecraft was deeply involved with Amateur Publishing throughout his life and was briefly president of the NAPA, and long-time president of the rival United Amateur Press Association. With the "Mimeo Revolution" of the 1960s, the new technology became the vehicle for the anarchist model of micropress and later zine culture, which dispensed with the official organization, hierarchy, and defined community "membership" lists that characterize the NAPA and UAPA. The NAPA still exists today, but it has little or no contact with the radically lo-fi, decentralized zine community, having focused and specialized instead on the older, more expensive letterpress process and the production of meticulously-produced artists' books.
The roots of the first true Zine network – non-commercial pamphlets printed by (often adolescent) amateurs in tiny editions on personal reproduction devices at home to be traded, rather than sold, through a network that spanned both local and postal communities – was known as Amateur Publishing and lie in the mid-19th Century when the first affordable home-printing systems were marketed to non-professional writers, publishers and adolescents for the first time. By the mid-1870s hundreds of non-commercial, tiny-run periodicals were being printed in dens and basements across the US and England and traded through a growing mail network. Many, and probably the majority, began their involvement in publishing as teenagers. Many of these self-publishers used Hectographs, a kind of modified lithographic process; others used miniature letter-presses that began being marketed around the same time. The Amateur Publishing movement was the incubator not only for micropress and zine networks, but also of marginal literary forms such as horror, science fiction, and fantasy during their formative stages; H.P. Lovecraft was deeply involved with Amateur Publishing throughout his life and was briefly president of the NAPA, and long-time president of the rival United Amateur Press Association. With the "Mimeo Revolution" of the 1960s, the new technology became the vehicle for the anarchist model of micropress and later zine culture, which dispensed with the official organization, hierarchy, and defined community "membership" lists that characterize the NAPA and UAPA. The NAPA still exists today, but it has little or no contact with the radically lo-fi, decentralized zine community, having focused and specialized instead on the older, more expensive letterpress process and the production of meticulously-produced artists' books.
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