Nut Hatch Press

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Name: Nut Hatch, Nut Hatch Collective, Nuthatch, Nut Hatch Creative Workshoppe, The Nut Hatch, Nut Hatch-Entropy, Multimedia, Entropy Express, DOAW, NHE
Contact: n/a
Type: fanfic zines, fanzine publisher
Fandoms: Professionals, due South, Starsky & Hutch, Sentinel, multi-media
Status: defunct
Other: slash, gen; also sold authorized reprints for Tanglewebb Press
URL: Final 2003 update via Wayback Machine
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Contents

Nut Hatch was an Australian zine press run by Jane of Australia, who was also the core writer under her various pseuds, although Nut Hatch also published other authors. It began publishing in 1984 and stopped publishing in May 2006. [1]

The press published both novels and anthologies, mostly slash but with a smattering of gen as well. It published under a wide variety of names (Entropy Express and DOAW), however it was best known as "Nut Hatch Press."

Nut Hatch agented for other fanzine publishers. In a 1994 flyer, they advertised that they had "....reprint rights to Tanglewebb Press zines, and we agent for Entropy Express world-wide, and in Australasia for Satyr D'Nite Press and Other Times and Places Press."

Financial Worries

In a long, long personal statement in 1985, Jane said Entropy Express was closing down shop due to zine piracy: '
It's very sad when fans start to prey off one another: It's true that we all prey on the licenced copyright holders, but producers and fans have come to a sort of understanding, and we thought the understanding between fans themselves was very clear: when piracy raises its head, fandom comes unglued, and if we don't have ethics, we've got nothing ... The photocopier and the SLR camera are the fan producer's worse enemies. We at Entropy are trying to market a range of high quality zines and telepix, and it's recently been brought to our notice that the main reason why our sales have been so poor is that our potential customers in the USA are obtaining copies of both our zines and our photos from ... somewhere. It must be understood that any zine's 'next issue' depends on the financial returns of its past and current issues. When the editor has boxes of unsold copies but the customers have all got pirated copies — there isn't going to be_ a next issue. This the state of affairs with SYNDICATED IMAGES. It gets rave review, but we literally can't give it away. We're not even asking who it is who's responsible for sticking our zines on the copier for friends [and] releasing the stories onto the circuit . . . but we'd like to say this to them: Congratulations. SI just closed up shop at #8, and unless we sell the mountain of copies we've got in the boxes (which is to say, if they can be kept off the circuit and interested parties purchase the zines instead of bags full of loose copies from Blackbeard Productions), SI9 will never happen. It was going to be a beauty, like #10 after it, but we know when we're licked. You pirates have killed the zine stone dead; when SI8 is available, in about ten days' time, and you've pirated that, there won't be anything else for you to pirate. To the people who own our zines in their pirated form, we'd like to add the following: we're not blaming you. How were you to know that the stories were not cleared for circulation, and that the publishers have heaps of unsold stock? But if you come across the works of the following authors in circuit-story form from this point on, you know that they are the wares of rip-off merchants: Adam Jenson, Jack Heston, Jane Sterling, Peta Brock, G.W. Conrad, Mike Adamson. These writers appear only in SI, and since all our issues are still in print, none of them are cleared for the circuit. To the people who are copying/selling our telepix: do you really think a photographer can't recognise his/her own work? Imagine the shock when you open a zine and find it illustrated with a Xeroxed enlargement of a photo for which the supposedly unique negative is in your own file! There's nothing we or any other photographer could do about this: copyright is a laughing matter when someone has a 35mm camera and a set of CU filtres... [1]
In an editorial from a 1991 issue of Fantazine, the editor wrote that she was concerned about finances, a common worry for many zines:
We're in real financial strife once more, so if you are ordering direct from the Press in Australia, and if you can pre-order, it would be safest to do so. All orders will definitely be filled, but we won't be able to print 'spare' copies, and batches will have to be restricted to orders-only. This means there may be a delay in sending your zine, and for this we apologize. The difficulty is, we can't carry a mass of spare copies because they'll be boxed in the corner, tying up the finances for the next zine, which is never more than about two months away. Funding has become a real problem once more, and we beg your patience until we can get our difficulties straightened out.

From the editorial in Double or Nothing, Jane of Australia, the editor, also writes of the fundraiser for the new printer and of some of its results:

The words "welcome to a new zine" leap to mind. And also, this issue is a quantum leap, literally, over the previous ones. We never before had the ability to illustrate the zines to the extent which the fiction most certainly deserved; and that situation didn't change until very recently (like, the few weeks prior to the printing of this issue!) when, after a decade and more of faithful service, the old HP LaserJet IIIP decided to go to that great printer workshop in the sky.

Immediate panic gripped NHE (which is of course an amalgam of Nut Hatch and Entropy Express: more about that later). Real, serious panic, folks, because a new printer costs serious bucks and we're on a pretty tight budget! Fortunately, a combination of ingenuity, desperation and a goodly amount of kindness on the part of early-ordering fans came to our rescue. We launched a fund-raiser, and enough people pre-ordered to allow us to go get the printer and get it installed in time to be actually printing this zine in May 2002, as we'd promised. Thank you, thank you, to everyone who was kind enough to do this.

Two pieces of fantastic news come out of this. The first thing is ... the new printer is capable of outputting very nice halftones indeed, and gives us the ability to illustrate the zines properly. This is the first issue where we've been given the chance to indulge ourselves in the artistic side of zines, and ... wow. The second wonderful thing to come out of this story is that the necessity to launch a fund raiser to help pay off the new printer made us look around for something new and delicious. By an astonishing stroke of luck, we'd just had the chance, a couple of months earlier, to get a CD burner at a price you would not believe. And out of the blue an old project, looong on the back burner, was brought out of the drawer. In all probability you're holding the first of the series of disks in your hands even as you read these words!

Nut Hatch-Entropy Multimedia (NHE)

CD25.jpg

In the early '00s, Nut Hatch gained another owner -- Jane's husband Dave -- and expanded into a much broader business, NHE Multimedia. At least some new zines were sold both in paper and CD formats, and the CDs had added material as well:

[W]e're just about to come out with an all-new SENTINEL zine, both on CD-Rom and paper, as a full-on multimedia experience including book! CASCADE VISIONS is about to happen, with video, music, hundreds of color photos, rafts of georgeous digital artwork, animations, sound effects and ... lest we forget! ... a swag of delicious stories. We also produced THE PROFESSIONALS 25th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CD-Rom set, and we just released the DIGITAL DREAMS: THE PROFESSIONALS album from popular artist Jade. And if multimedia tickles your fancy almost as much as the Pros fanzines, don't miss CROSS MY HEART #14 on CD-Rom.[2]
Jane explains in 2003:
NHE" is an amalgam of Nut Hatch and Entropy Express. There's more dovetailing between the two presses as time goes on, we're sharing web space, CD projects and so on, and the dividing line is getting harder to pick. A while ago I made the decision to weld the two into NHE ... Mike may maintain the 'Entropy Express' label for a while to come, but eventually NHE will embrace both. I want to take this moment to make special thanks to an angel without whom none of these projects would be happening. I was rescued ... My darling life-partner, soul-mate and fellow CD-perpetrator, Dave, took over emails and 'customer service' for me. I don't think he knew what he was getting into, but he's been a trooper. [3]

They also expanded out to other physical mediums:

We're currently launching a whole new range: we have glossy photos available now for Pros, Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins, Starsky & Hutch, Highlander and Richard Dean Anderson, with Due South, "classic" Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford, and others available soon ...

But the most exciting news is that we're producing the "Art by Jade" series of "stuff" ... bookmarks, fridge magnets, coasters, art prints ... [...] with SIX subjects available now (LORD OF THE RINGS, HIGHLANDER, S&H, PROS, STARGARTE SG-1 and THE SENTINEL), and several more due soon, including some "by request" items, and various specials for Martin Shaw devotees still in the works.

So at this time NHE is in full-swing with CDs, objects d'art, and so on ... for instance, we have a full-size reproduction of the glorious LADDER OF SWORDS poster in full color, and some amazing goodies are imminent. Stay tuned![2]

Nut Hatch closed down in 2006 when Jane left fandom (details here). Some of the Pros zines have been added to The Circuit Library.

Zines

Due South

The Professionals

Slash anthologies

Slash novels (Bodie/Doyle)

Gen novels

The Sentinel

  • Cascade Visions (slash anthology)[5]
  • Shaman (slash novel by Toshua)[5]

Starsky & Hutch


Star Wars

Xena

Multi-media

Agented zines

Agented for Tanglewebb Press

Notes and References

  1. ↑ from Universal Translator #32
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Nut Hatch Site Index, dated April 2003. Accessed January 10, 2009.
  3. ↑ from Double or Nothing #3
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Flyer on the Cross My Heart Pros zines page, via Wayback Machine, dated 2003. Accessed January 11, 2009.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Sentinel zines page, via Wayback Machine. Accessed January 12, 2009.
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