• Careers in Retail zines and badges, from enigmatic art collective Dexter Fletcher

BACK IN STOCK:

• I am a Camera #14 (Vanessa Berry)
• Disposable Camera (dandelion/fireworks issue) (Vanessa Berry)
• Digging (Emma D)
• Walk So Differently (Lou, Anwyn, Emma D)

UPDATES:

• Description added for Fergus #31
• Cover scans added for If Destroyed Still True #7 and Sex Industry Apologist #2

TAKE CARE PRINT GIVEAWAY:

Some posts ago we mentioned having exciting news which it’s maybe time to reveal: a few months ago we bought a beautiful Adana 8×5″ letterpress. We’ve been working on a few small projects and a couple of weeks ago made this lovely postcard-size print. The text was printed on the Adana by Tim and the picture was drawn and separated into a three layer Gocco print by Emma. The illustration is based on a sketch of Railway Parade with the Marrickville skyline behind it, as viewed from a window at Sydenham station, Sydney. Until the end of May every order over $10 will receive a print for free, after which they’ll be available to buy.

• Sex Industry Apologist #2
• If Destroyed Still True #7

Haven’t added the cover scans or all the info i.e. page counts and weight for OS orders, but people have been asking if we had them so we thought we’d better get em up quick smart!

Also, just a note about the new site. It’s a newer WordPress theme so it looks good on fancy new computers but Emma has just noticed that when you view it on her (older, crappier) computer the framing is different. Ok but different. We’re just concerned that if you have an older and even crappier computer than her you might not be able to see all the menu links on the left hand side. If this is the case please let us know? Email takecarezines(at)gmail.com. Thanks!

More soon, including some new zines…

Plastic Knife #9/YOU (it’s huge and impressive)

Rhetorical #8 + #9 (they’re small and impressive)

They Want To Socialise You (a close, sociological reading of Sleater-Kinney lyrics)

World Without End (a collage zine with a gocco printed cover. OMG that sounds like such a zine cliche. But it’s good)

Fergus #31 (it’s the new Fergus!!!)

A Walk Around Pendle Hill (does what it says on the box, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the Pendle Witch Trials)

Also, back in stock we have Nearly Healthy, Tomorrow’s Machine Today #1, The Book Rehousing Project and Raining in my Room (which was never actually out of stock but we just realised that its ‘buy now’ button wasn’t actually linked to paypal – no wonder no one’s been buying it…)

And we have more zines to come, including reprints of Digging and Walk So Differently…

See you at the Canberra Zine Emporium! 23rd of March 2013…

NEWS TIME!

Again the estimable Sticky Institute, Melbourne, is throwing a zine fest this February. And, again, we’re not able to attend. Damn. See, this year it coincides with the first extended amount of time off work we’ve had in well over a year, and we’ve decided that we’re actually desperately in need of a proper holiday where we just sit around in some idyllic location doing bugger all and reading books, so that’s what we’re doing. Sorry folks.

Anyway, this year the fest is going by the name Paper City, and will presumably encompass all kindsa activities, not least of which will be a zine fair at Melbourne Town Hall, which if accounts of previous years are anything to go by, will be monumental:

And there’ll be a launch party on the 7th of Feb:

It looks like it’ll be great fun indeed, you lucky ‘uns.

We WILL be going to this:

Co-organised by Chiara of the rather excellent Rhetorical zine, this fair looks like it’s gonna be a damn winner. We’ve had good experiences in Canberra where zine fairs are concerned, so we’re looking forward to it.

While we’re on the zine distributing front, we received an email from Red Eye records a little while ago in which they expressed a keen interest in getting more zines on their racks. So if you’re a zinester in Sydney you should definitely think about dropping by some copies of your zine. Here’s their website for out of towners who have questions about stocking with them. I have quite a lot of nostalgia for the days when you could stock and buy zines in record stores (Red Eye was one of the places that I first discovered zines), so it would be pretty cool if it became popular again. Red Eye are located on York St now, in case you haven’t been there in a while…

In terms of what’s new at Take Care, well, we’ve been very busily working on a lot of exciting projects that should see the light of day very, very soon. We’ve both been working on new zines and a new issue of the Take Care annual newsletter. There’s a very good reason for the delay in getting that together (the past two years it’s come out in Dec/Jan, to celebrate our anniversary), but I’m gonna leave that as a surprise. It’s very cool, that’s all I’m saying!

Finally, we have just received some new zines from the aforementioned, Canberra-based creator of Rhetorical, Chiara, which will be up on the site soon, so stay tuned.

Excellent.

x Emma

In line with my new ambition to become a Badge Millionaire, I have been working on the Badges page this morning. You can now order individual badges. I’ve put five new designs up, featuring images appropriated from an old Collins’ Book of Our World. There will be more to come, as well as custom/bulk badge making facilities. Exciting.

I did a bunch of cleaning up on the site last night, adding long neglected descriptions, removing a few things we’ve sold out of without realising, marking zines that we’re down to the last copy of. I also updated the international postage rates (Australia Post have removed one weight category for posting international letters, so letters between 51-250g are now all one weight category, making it pretty expensive for post that is just slightly over 50g. Sorry! Blame Australia Post.)

Also I made a very important update to our submissions page which I will elaborate on here: we are currently not accepting submissions. We don’t know if this will be permanent or not, but we’ve found that we really struggle to cope with the number of submissions we get. Often we wind up feeling guilty about either not replying to people in a timely manner or having to tell people that we don’t think their zine’s what we’re after or caving in and stocking things that we think are good but not really our style. It’s hard to say this stuff without coming off all narky there’s-sooo-many-lame-zines-out-there-man, and that’s not what we think at all. We’re so grateful to everyone who sends us their stuff and to everyone whose zines we’ve stocked. I was looking at our folder of paid invoices/consignments last night and it’s nearly two inches thick! That’s a lot of zines. One day I might actually try to calculate just how many we’ve sold on behalf of how many zinesters. We do honestly believe that all zine making should be encouraged and supported, we just don’t have time and energy to stock every single zine we get sent. So we’ve decided that it would be easier for us to approach the zine makers whose stuff we want to stock rather than wait for them to send us submissions. In fact, that is pretty much how we’ve always run things, anyway. We’re aware that we’ll probably miss out on a lot of real gems by closing submissions, but that’s a sacrifice we’re prepared to make for the sake of having a slightly less action packed PO Box. I never thought I’d reach the day that I’d actually wish for less mail! But really, we still want to get mail but we want real mail, you know, letters from people who’ve read our zines or zines that we stock and want to say hello. We don’t get those kind of letters much any more. Maybe you would like to write us one?

All that said, we have a STACK of great zines ready to add to the site, including a new issue of Jerk Store, a new one from Bertievan (author of Stuffed Turtles and Mum liked her tea…), The Wolves at the Door, Taking Things Too Far and others, so check back over the next couple of weeks for updates!

xEmma

EDIT

I forgot to mention that there’s another really awesome looking distro operating in Australia! They’re called Fox and Owl and they’ve only been around for a couple of months but they already have a really great catalogue of well selected (mostly political/personal) zines, badges, patches, music on cassette and more. They’re run by Tee (Sour Puss) outta Brisbane, to whom we send props and best wishes. Check it out!

I assume that, anyway, because we have decided, after a bit of umming and ahhing that we are going to go to the TINA zine fair this year. Some of you may have been privy to the saga that, finally, resulted in tables at the fair being offered to zinesters for free this year. If not, the gist of things can be found in various threads on the Zines Aus list, but basically, if you want a table get in touch with Eloise Quinlivan (quinlivan.e [at] gmail [dot] com) to reserve a spot.

In addition to having a stall at the fair I’ve got some work in an exhibition at TINA called Secret Newcastle, more details of that will be on my blog when as they come to hand.

Speaking of my blog, I’ve just put a post up about giving away part of my zine collection. I have too many zines to cope with so they’re free to whoever is willing to pay for the postage. Check out my blog for details, and please pass on to anyone that might be interested. Thanks!

xEmma

In other exciting news there’s a new distro in town! Check out the mysterious but excellent Burrows & Co shop for good zines and nicey nice badges. Good luck Burrows & Co! Not sure if they want their real name attached to it…