428

 Issue #428 – May 21st 2018
coverUpcoming Deadlines

NONE – but we’ll be getting Indyfest Magazine AND Self Publisher! back in action soon….
*You can send in news releases to: news@indyfestusa.com!

Re-Start Button… By Ian Shires

So, the last time I actually sent out an Indy Scavenger newsletter was in March 2015…and logic says, dude, even if you want to dust off the name and start rebuilding Indyfest…start with a #1 and make it a real fresh start. Unfortunately, my brain has never worked that way, and I think there is value to the fact that The Self Publisher Association, which became Indyfest in 2012…combines for over 400 weekly newsletters, even with a couple breaks in the schedule.

The question really, is…what are we going to do to make this continuation/fresh start…special enough for you to want to follow it? Basically, I want to do it in a sort of “Ian reads the headlines” mode…so publishers send in news releases that we put up on our news site, or even just links to their latest news in a blog post on their site…however they want to do their news…then I’ll get the links to the most interesting stuff, out to the readers of the newsletter, each week.

So if you’re ready, publishers…Start sending news releases or links to articles about you, to News@indyfestusa.com  – and next Monday, I’ll start that up!

We are working towards the re-start of Indyfest Magazine, AND throwing a new twist into the mix, Self Publisher! Magazine is going to return as well…with a focus more on the publisher – and I plan to experiment a bit with that, and who knows we may add more zines to our mix later, instead of trying to be one zine that covers every need…we’re going to try to be a family of focus points that help bring fans of new and different, into a world designed to encourage checking things out.


Thank you for your time reading this newsletter. We hope you will make it a serious part of your plans for letting people know what you are up to, creatively.

Write us! newsletter@indyfestusa.com

We strongly advocate – know who you work with! Google people before you work with them!

All material (c) 2018 Dimestore Productions – 1546 Yale Ave, Madison, OH 44057

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426

 Issue #426 – Sept 10th 2015
coverUpcoming Deadlines
*Issue #88 Deadline: Sept 21st. <—–!!!!

*Don’t forget: Get your ADS turned in for next issue!
*You can send in news releases to: news@indyfestusa.com!

NEW ISSUES… By Ian Shires

The Weekly Newsletter concept for the SPA started way back in 2003, and is something that changed and evolved with he times. We’re going to be re-launching into the concept in the coming weeks, in a headline-driven “What’s new in our network” format, with little editorial opinion to get in the way. We hope you’ll like it. I’m going to get this started, and in weeks to come, Ellen will be prepping the body of these.

To start our new format off, we’ve got the new issue of Indyfest Magazine, ready for you to DOWNLOAD NOW. We’ve got  Run Downhill’s T.J. Troy, Plus Interviews with Chuck Dixon, Jay Mooers, and S.A. Baker. Sneak Peeks of Sons of Fate, and the novel Winterbourne.

Action Lab has a slew of new titles that just hit stores, welcoming you to their Danger Zone.

Alex Robinson moves back into the limelight with his new Graphic Novel, called Our Expanding Universe…coming to stores everywhere soon!

Oni Press also has a bunch of indy goodness going out to stores right about now, and we encourage our readers to see if their local brick and mortars are carrying this stuff!

And before anyone starts thinking you have to be going out to stores through diamond to get into this newsletter, or be interviewed in our magazine, please remember: we can only cover and promote what YOU send to us. I – Ian Shires – grew up making minicomics and trading in the pre-internet network with other people making small press stuff. We want to be covering EVERYONE on equal footing. If we all get into it, we can make this Indy Scavenger Newsletter a real gateway into Small Press Goodness. Forward this newsletter to friends, make sure they GO HERE to subscribe so they can get this each week.

This week’s FEATURED ADVERTISER

(to sponsor this newsletter for just $5- CLICK HERE)


Thank you for your time reading this newsletter. Don’t forget, we’re already hard at work on the NEXT issue of Indyfest Magazine – #89. And beyond. We hope you will make it a serious part of your plans for letting people know what you are up to, creatively.

Write us! newsletter@indyfestusa.com

We strongly advocate – know who you work with! Google people before you work with them!

All material (c) 2015 Dimestore Productions – P.O. Box 214, Madison, OH 44057

ARCHIVE (Past Issues)

425

 Issue #425 – May 1st 2015
coverUpcoming Deadlines
*Issue #85 Deadline: May 18th. <—–!!!!

*Don’t forget: Get your ADS turned in for next issue!
*News releases from Publishers at NETWORK NEWS. You can send in news releases to: news@indyfestusa.com!

GET INDYEST MAGAZINE #84

Saying Nothing… By Ian Shires

This is going to be the LAST Indy Scavenger Newsletter that I spend any time editorializing. I’ve come to the conclusion that while YES, the information I try to get out is important, I tend to get long-winded, and I have other ways I can get the word out these days. So while the basis of this newsletter for all the versions we’ve gone through since 2001 when the Weekly SPA Newsletter began has been with me saying stuff. It’s truly time to let the work speak for itself. Whose work? Everyone’s. Starting next newsletter, gone will be ME, here will be links to news releases that YOU send in that have been posted on our news site. That, and we want to start listing ALL new publication releases that we can, and how and where to get them. So, I’m going to say one last thing. If you publish something and you don’t let us know about it directly, you will be losing out on literally 1000’s of eyes that follow our newsletter potentially seeing your news and new books. Send us information, we will blast it out in a way people can focus on. That’s all. Good day.

This week’s FEATURED ADVERTISER

(to sponsor this newsletter for just $5- CLICK HERE)


Thank you for your time reading this newsletter. Don’t forget, we’re already hard at work on the NEXT issue of Indyfest Magazine – #81. And beyond. We hope you will make it a serious part of your plans for letting people know what you are up to, creatively.

Write us! newsletter@indyfestusa.com

We strongly advocate – know who you work with! Google people before you work with them!

All material (c) 2014 Dimestore Productions – P.O. Box 214, Madison, OH 44057

ARCHIVE (Past Issues)

427

 Issue #427 – March 21st 2015
coverUpcoming Deadlines
*Issue #95 Deadline: April 15th. <—–!!!!*Don’t forget: Get your ADS turned in for next issue!
*You can send in news releases to: news@indyfestusa.com!

Getting Involved… By Ian Shires

In an effort to start rebuilding the community feeling that the SPA has always striven to build, I am turning back to the newsletter concept to reach out to our website members. We were a tad late releasing Indyfest Magazine #93 due to my ankle surgery, and the deadline for #94 passed with little notice. I wanted to let everyone know, if you wish to get any ads, free, or otherwise, into #94 – it’s not too late. I am going to begin work on the issue this week, so if you want to hit reply to this email and ask about getting an ad in, please do.

We are also in serious need of bringing in new interviewers, people who are interested in being given a lead, and conducting the Q&A that makes Indyfest Magazine fresh and interesting month after month. We are open to ANYONE interested in participating, and offer free advertising, and free membership upgrade in the SPA to help compensate. We will be running a funding campaign soon to try to raise the funds we need to make interviewers a paid position. Your activism and support now will make you a part of the developing action. Again, just reply to this mail and we’ll get you involved!

Final thing – we’re not sure if everyone realizes, that as members of Indyfest, you ALREADY have a full social media set-up where you can post things about what you are up to, add friends to your friends lists, and much more Check out your Profiles when you log in, fill them out! Use them. We’re going to be highlighting and making this aspect of Indyfest more front and center soon. As always, if anyone out there wishes to take a more active role in developing what we’re building with Indyfest, let me know and we’ll get you into the tools you need to accomplish things and help the network be better and have it help you more in return.


Thank you for your time reading this newsletter. Don’t forget, we’re already hard at work on the NEXT issue of Indyfest Magazine – #94. And beyond. We hope you will make it a serious part of your plans for letting people know what you are up to, creatively.

Write us! newsletter@indyfestusa.com

We strongly advocate – know who you work with! Google people before you work with them!

All material (c) 2016 Dimestore Productions – P.O. Box 214, Madison, OH 44057

ARCHIVE (Past Issues)

424

 Issue #424 – January 20th 2015…
coverUpcoming Events/Deadlines
*Next issue Deadline: January 26th. <—–!!!!

*Don’t forget: Get your ADS turned in for next issue!
*Self Publisher #81 (February Cover) is under construction, will be released in MID-FEB.
*News releases from Publishers at NETWORK NEWS. You can send in news releases to: news@indyfestusa.com!

Prepare to Launch… By Ian Shires

Three years ago, we re-launched Self Publisher! Magazine by announcing it in a pamphlet giveaway at the 2012 SPACE show. Since then, the magazine has been steadily growing in strength, featuring a wide variety of talented creators in small press, self publishing, doing comics, books, music and even movies. We are, right now, in a transformation stage from the magazine that we have been, to something much different. The Indyfest experience is going to be much different than anything I’ve ever been able to put together before. It will take some time for the true size and scope of it to really take hold. For it to show how it is different than what we’ve done before, and what others are doing, anywhere else.

We are going to put together a pamphlet giveaway for the 2015 SPACE show. I’m getting ready to write the text parts of it right now. This will be given away to every person we can get a copy into their hands at the show. It will be promoting the reader-side aspects of the news and new publication listings and otherwise enticing people to check out the magazine. Publishers – here’s where you have an opportunity. If you buy an advertisement in this booklet, you will be helping us print the thing AND – you will be getting your add into the hands of people who buy indy publications all the time. The SPACE show is 100% small press creators, it is one of the largest shows of it’s kind. Spider-man will not be walking around to distract people.

Frankly, if you can’t be at the show, this is the absolute best way to still reach the audience, and get people interested in what Indyfest is all about: Being a 24/7 extension of what a show like SPACE does – bringing a spotlight to the indy scene. We’re going to keep it very simple for ads. It’s going to be a digest size booklet, so a full page will cost $40.00. A Half Page will cost $25.00. And we’ll do a banner sized ad (like the one here in the newsletter) for $15.00. We will be continuing to bring ads in until March 16th, at which time we’ll have to cut off and get the book printed with whatever we have raised. This advertising will be a separate thing from regular magazine advertising. We MAY be able to use some of the ads for this in the magazine to fill space on the system we use for free ads in the magazine, but there will be no unpaid ads in the booklet.

This effort is designed specifically to reach the audience. We hope you will support it. The more copies we are able to print, the better. Why? Because we will not leave the convention bringing home copies. If we have given a copy to every person there, and still have copies, guess what, we KNOW there will be publishers and retailers there willing to take copies back to their local areas to give away, so the reach of the booklet won’t just be the show, but indy friendly stores as far and wide as Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland. When we did this with the SP! booklet, we gave away about 300 copies, and it launched SP! Magazine into the monthly presence it has been. We think, and hope, we can do better with the Indyfest booklet, and targeting readers instead of publishers. This is a huge opportunity to grow. It needs YOU. Send an e-mail to Ian@indyfestusa.com to get into this effort.

This week’s FEATURED ADVERTISER

(to sponsor this newsletter for just $5- CLICK HERE)


Thank you for your time reading this newsletter. Don’t forget, we’re already hard at work on the NEXT issue of Indyfest Magazine – #81. And beyond. We hope you will make it a serious part of your plans for letting people know what you are up to, creatively.

Write us! newsletter@indyfestusa.com

We strongly advocate – know who you work with! Google people before you work with them!

All material (c) 2014 Dimestore Productions – P.O. Box 214, Madison, OH 44057

ARCHIVE (Past Issues)

423

 Issue #423  –  Indyfest Begins – January 12th 2015…
coverUpcoming Events/Deadlines
*Next issue Deadline: January 26th. <—–!!!!

*Don’t forget: Get your ADS turned in for next issue!
*Indyfest Magazine #81 (February Cover) is under construction, will be released in MID-FEB.
*News releases from Publishers at NETWORK NEWS. You can send in news releases to: news@indyfestusa.com!

Time for some news… By Ian Shires

Well it’s 2015. And actually, we’re already halfway into January, so this year is already rolling on. It’s time for the Self Publisher Association to do the same. Many of you reading this will remember, we’ve had some form of weekly newsletter going on and off for, well, all the way back to 2002 and the yahoo group. We didn’t start keeping track of issue numbers till just after Christmas 2003. We called it the Kickstart Newsletter back then, there was no Kickstarter site…we changed names years later when it came along and people started getting us confused. I kinda like the name I’ve settled on for the newsletter. But the real judges are YOU. Feel free to let me know.

I’m basing this set up very much on our old one, but we will be making more changes to it. What I want to do is help focus people onto the tools we’ve put in place for the new Indyfest Network. We have Hubs set up, so readers looking for news, know where to go. People looking for events, know where to go. We are working to finish up and have additional Hub spots in the network, that will focus on different aspects of what readers are looking for to make it easier for them to learn about whats going on in this field. This set up will allow creators to come, plug in to the network any bits and peices they use – so no matter what printers, outlets, they have chosen to work with, it will be promote-able in the system. We are going to further work to better integrate with whatever we can moving forward as well. But at this point, we need people to actually start looking at and using what we’ve got going. It is time for us to shift from that Alpha stage we’ve been in, to an active Beta one. And so, this is the first call out to everyone. Let’s get NEWS focus running. You can visit the news hub here:

http://news.indyfestusa.com/

See what people have sent us as news so far, SEND US YOUR NEWS, and use the social media links there to SHARE stories you find interesting! It is those parts of the puzzle that will make this network a POWERHOUSE in getting the word out. Sure you can post your news yourself on social media, and do your best to connect with people…but, the same post, being shared by multiple people because they found it on the indy news site…THAT is how stuff goes viral. If we all work to make a place that focuses interest, we all win. We have been watching as people continue to fall into the trap of facebook diminishing returns, and this is the answer to turning it around. I’ve spent the last almost six months building it, now it’s time for you to make it work, by using it. Absolutely zero cost to post your news, let’s hear from you today.

This week’s FEATURED ADVERTISER (to sponsor this newsletter for just $5- CLICK HERE)


Thank you for your time reading this newsletter. Don’t forget, we’re already hard at work on the NEXT issue of SP! – #78. And beyond. We hope you will make SP! a serious part of your plans for letting people know what you are up to, creatively.

Write us! newsletter@indyfestusa.com

We strongly advocate – know who you work with! Google people before you work with them!

All material (c) 2014 Dimestore Productions – P.O. Box 214, Madison, OH 44057

ARCHIVE (Past Issues)

422

 Issue #422  –  covering Sept. 2014…Get this newsletter every time it comes out, right in your inbox! [enewsletter_subscribe]
coverUpcoming Events/Deadlines
*Next issue Deadline: September 29th. <—–!!!!

*Don’t forget: Get your ADS turned in for next issue!
*Self Publisher #78 (October Cover) is under construction, will be released in MID-late September.
*News releases from Publishers returning to the new Indyfest set up very soon. You can start sending in news releases to: news@indyfestusa.com!

When you Blink… By Ian Shires

Hello again world of creators, publishers, and fans thereof. We put the SPA Newsletter on hold when the websites went wonky back in July, and here we are, all the way into September and just getting our bearings really back in order. So, as we have transformed everything into the Indyfest initiative, and SP! Magazine will become Indyfest Magazine in 2015, it doesn’t make sense to keep the newsletter going as the SPA Newsletter…and so, as you see, it is not the Indyfest Newsletter. However, I have retained the overall numbering we have used since we called it the Kickstart Newsletter (back before there was a Kickstarter funding system and people started confusing us as part of that!) in December 2003. Imagine that…11 years ago I said, well, there’s gotta be a better way to let people know whats going on than e-mailing them all individually each week (Which is what I was doing!)

Anyway, we are still officially in an “Alpha” stage with the software set up we’re building for Indyfest. We hope to be able to open things up to Beta testing soon, and have a line of publishers waiting to do just that. There are still a lot of things for me to configure and move around. It’s important we get it all in place so when we roll it out, it truly changes the game. So really, for right now, this is just a “Don’t Blink!” statement. We’ll get this newsletter back into weekly action later, right now, I’m just testing out the software.

This week’s FEATURED ADVERTISER (to sponsor this newsletter CLICK HERE)


Thank you for your time reading this newsletter. Don’t forget, we’re already hard at work on the NEXT issue of SP! – #78. And beyond. We hope you will make SP! a serious part of your plans for letting people know what you are up to, creatively.

Write us! newsletter@indyfestusa.com

We strongly advocate – know who you work with! Google people before you work with them!

All material (c) 2014 Dimestore Productions – P.O. Box 214, Madison, OH 44057

ARCHIVE (Past Issues)