Nut Hatch Press

Zine Publisher
Name:	Entropy Press, Nut Hatch, Nut Hatch Collective, Nuthatch, Nut Hatch Creative Workshoppe, The Nut Hatch, Nut Hatch-Entropy, Entropy Express, DOAW (Discovered on a Webpage), NHE, Leisuresoft, Discovered on a Website (DOAW), USS Atlantis Productions, Futura Publications
Contact:	J.J. Adamson/Jane of Australia and Mike Adamson
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:	WBM link
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"This press was aptly named 'The Nut Hatch!' Sometimes I wonder how we're not all chained to the wall, never mind shackled to the typewriter."

Nut Hatch Press was an Australian zine press run by Jane of Australia and her brother Mike Adamson (C.W.M. Adamson).

Jane of Australia was also the core writer for the press under her various pseuds.

The press published under a wide variety of names (Entropy Express and DOAW (Discovered on a Website) . It was, however, it was best known as "Nut Hatch Press," and variations on that name.

The press published both novels and anthologies. The material was both gen and slash, though this content did not mix in specific zines or series.

Nut Hatch Press published the Adamsons' fiction and art as well as that of other authors.

The Adamsons also began to create and sell music compilations, wallpaper, photos, and other items on CDs, though these fanworks did not appear to be very popular.

Nut Hatch also 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."

In its early years, "Nut Hatch Press" considered itself an "underground press," but went on to become one of the most intensely advertised fanfiction publishers. From a 1989 statement in Falconhurst:

Not for general sale: get it for a friend, get it from a friend... Which means, please recommend us to your friends, because we do not use open advertising. We are a completely underground press and we rely on your word of mouth.

Nut Hatch Press published zines and other fannish items until May 2006.

Some Press Name History

a flyer for Tanglewebb Press, printed in Hostage to Peace, shows some of the zines agented by "Nut Hatch Press"

a 2003 screenshot for NHE

The press began publishing in 1978 (under the umbrella of "USS Atlantis Productions" and "Futura Productions ). In 1984, it began using the name "Entropy Press." In 1987, the press was renamed "Nut Hatch" and variations of that name.

The Press Goes Online and Expands

"Nut Hatch Press" went online in either 1997 or 1999 with a website and secret passwords.

In 2003, the publisher's website had this announcement: "Welcome to a special 2003 "swarming" issue of DOAW ... We're not one single website now, but a couple of dozen "daughter sites," all of them accessed from your choice of two dead-simple "launchpad" pages"

In later years, the press' website included essays, commentaries, and flyers, all in the very wordy style that was Jane's. For a typically byzantine tour of the website, see FAQ.

Some Wayback Links, Editorials, and Essays

• links to 216 Wayback pages

• copyright statements

• Yes, they're printed in Australia, for some very good reasons.

• Premier Issue Editorial: Nut Hatch and Entropy are probably the last fannish presses in the world to go on-line, and the reasons were many...

• How much do the zines cost in 2001, and why? (1999)

• March 1999 Editorial, "Greetings from the bridge! JJ is in the United States as of March 10th, and for the next two months I, Mike, shall be your editor, publisher and guide to the ins and outs of DOAW."

• May 1999 Editorial: "Right on schedule, JJ is back, and more or less in control! DOAW is due for a major facelift, and I hope that the site will be more easily navigable now. To begin with, it's getting bigger and bigger ... and even I myself am starting to get lost!... If you're interested in the on-going saga that takes place behind the scenes at Nut Hatch, the whooooole story so far is online, compete with a mini-web about The Wedding! Yep, I'm married, happily. It was wonderful."

• July-September 1999 Editorial, much about two topics: 1) spotting predatory fraudulent agents and publishers, 2) a fan named "Lunar" and a crackdown of that fan's Xena fan art site

• November 1999/January 2000 Editorial, "It's JJ again, back from the States after three months of something very close indeed to wedded bliss, and trying to pick up the pieces fast! The trip back was a whirlwind week ... 40 hours in transit from Fairbanks to Adelaide, hit the ground running, buy a new computer and a car, get Nut Hatch into gear, kickstart my business..."
• March-June 2000: "Happy Birthday, DOAW! That's right, this gateway site has just entered its second year on the web, and is still growing, diversifying, maturing (like a good wine!)"

• September 2000: Nut Hatch-Entropy is under some financial duress.

• A Wedding in Fairbanks

• January 2000 Editorial, The New Aussie Web Censorship Laws: "Australia becomes the first country other than Communist China to exercise state-censorship of the Internet."

• Welcome to Nut Hatch ... : the staging base; ABSOLUTELY FINAL WARNING!!; 2004 info, talks about the secret passwords (2000)

• a sample security gate

• April 2003 Update, includes some Mel Keegan info

• May 2003: "The last couple of years have been busy, stressful and traumatic, by turns. We've had every conceivable challenge, from emergency room visits to hundred-hour working weeks. We're frankly amazed that we've managed to get done as much as we have... Okay, enough back-patting. Many of you will still be wondering if NHE (which is Nut Hatch and Entropy Express, in combination ... we changed our name in 2002) is still under financial duress. The answer is yes: it's not quite as bad as it was, but we're still several thousand dollars in the hole, and trying hard to dig our way out!" And "We'd originally conceived the notion of putting zines on CD to keep the price down. Prices are blowing out (cheapest slash-safe copying we can get these days is about 12c), and small-batch reprints ae getting pricey. The CDs would have been the perfect way to keep the price down! But it turns out that NHE is about the cheapest out there these days; in fact, we're a bit too cheap, for the product that's offered. It's no wonder we can't make those ends meet!"

• May 2003 update, "We have a new "doorknocker," and a whole new way of getting into, and getting around, the site. If you've been on our e-newsletter list for the last couple of years, you will already know that DOAW has been "swaming" since late 2000: the main site had become a behemoth..."

• GST SPELLS K.A.O.S. but Entropy Express will ''probably'' survive! ("The Goods & Services Tax is Coming!")

• The Case for Print Media Publishing

• Interview with Jane of Australia

• ...now shopping at DOAW comes with choices!, and Welcome to DOAW Online Ordering!, both include the "fiendishly clever" "Three Email Trick"
• a lot of zine flyers
• September 2000 Editorial, contains much about The Nut Hatch Fundraiser and the cease and desist letter the press received
• The Compleat Shipping info at the fingertips...
• The Nut Hatch Reader, "With the permission and cooperation of The Circuit Archive, it is our enormous pleasure to bring you Jane and Kathy, on-line and very nearly "live" at Nut Hatch!"

Some Self-Description

Here is a major self-description from 2001 or before: The FAQ.

2001

From the publisher's website in about 2001:

The Nut Hatch is another of the oldest fannish presses in the world, not much younger than Entropy Express. This one was born in 1984 as a "circuit library" in the Golden Age of PROS fandom. Ah, those were the days!

Scores of zines and many websites later, Nut Hatch is still alive and kicking and, if not actually "going strong," it's certainly surviving!

A few years ago we branched out into many other fandoms after PROS had been our pivot point for so long that, at one stage, it seemed all of fandom was Bodie and Doyle!

The FULL CIRCLE zines were born right then, and after the five of those came STARSKY & HUTCH, DUE SOUTH, and more.

More recently, Nut Hatch's last mainspring, JJ, mentioned that the rights to print four long in-limbo M/Uncle zines, and a whole new project was born. Read on..."

2002

From its website, likely 2002:

What — or who — in the world is Nut Hatch?!

The short answer is, we're a bunch of people who love fanzines, who have a particular love of print-media zines, and who have been around in this artform for over a quarter of a century!

At this moment, Nut Hatch and its gen-fanfic partner, Entropy Express, is (are?) three core people: Jennifer Adamson-Downes, Dave Downes and Mike Adamson ... and if it sounds like we're family, that's cuz we are! At the hub of the press, being the dog's body, chief-cook-and-bottlewasher, old workhorse, around whom the whole thing revolves, it's Jennifer, long known to most of fandom as "JJ." Aha! Light may have dawned! Think Empire Star and Solo as far back as 1978! Think Syndicated Images and Dead Reckoning in the early 1980s. Or Cross My Heart, Full Circle, Fantazine, The Hunting, Double or Nothing and so on, around 1990!

It's the same JJ, and as some of my now-lost fannish friends and acquaintances may know, I was married in Fairbanks, Alaska, in March 1999...

What you may not have known is that I've loved STARSKY & HUTCH since 1976, and have been publishing zines since '94 ... in between zipping from one side of the world to the other and (ahem) getting married!

From the website in 2002, in the introduction to Jane's republishing of Gerry Downes (Jane's mother-in-law) zines Stardate: Unknown and Alternative: Epilogue to Orion:

What — or who — in the world is Nut Hatch?!

The short answer is, we're a bunch of people who love fanzines, who have a particular love of print-media zines, and who have been around in this artform for over a quarter of a century!

At the present moment in the unfolding of the universe, Nut Hatch and its gen-fanfic partner, Entropy Express, is actually three core people: Jennifer Downes, Mike Adamson, and (when he can find time away from work!) Dave Downes, and at the hub of the press, being the dog's body, chief-cook-and-bottlewasher, old workhorse, around whom the whole thing revolves, it's Jennifer, long known to most of fandom as JJ Adamson.

Aha! Light may dawn with the mention of that name!

From 2002:

NHE has been around, in one of its many incarnations, since 1978! It's had a few name changes, a few facelifts, people jumped on board and later left ... and in 2002 the Press is still going strong with all-new projects and a network of websites. Who are we? We're three people who love "tiny print run, print on demand, off the wall, out in left field" books. They're fun. They're exciting. They're ... different, thank gods! We're Jennifer Adamson-Downes, Mike Adamson and Dave Downes ... and if it sounds like we're family, that's cuz we are. Almost everything you see on our printed- and uploaded pages has been created in-house, right down to the photographs (excluding actors' images, which unavoidably provided the source materials for some of the illustrations). The rest is all down to our brains and hands ... and we're justifiably proud of it! We own DreamCraft, and are very excited about its potential! Among our long, long list of titles from years past are THE HUNTING, LEGENDS, FLESH AND STEEL, THE DREAMING STONE, EMPIRE STAR, SYNDICATED IMAGES, STOP THE PRESSES, THE SUBBEAM STRIKE, CRASHDIVE, FLIGHTPATH, GOBLIN, KNIFE'S EDGE, HELLBURNER, FULL CIRCLE, CZARDAS, FALCONHURST, CROSS MY HEART ... and so many more, space does not permit the list!

2003

A 2003 description from its website:

a 2003 screenshot

ABOUT DOAW (and its "swarmed" daughter sites!)

Discovered On A Webpage is an ezine, an on-line fannish resource ... intended as a fannish portal, a jumping off point for many fandoms. We've been online for about seven years now. In that time we've grown from "just" fanzines, to software, audio and artwork, and at the time of this upload (May 2003) we're about to make the jump into video productions ... vastly more than "just" music vids, or song tapes, though heaven knows, they're difficult enough. There's no "just" about music vides ... but we've gotten into video editing into a big way, and where we hope to go is documentary, feature and eventually edutainment. Gasp!

And now, let us answer the most common questions we've been asked in the last year or so since this site went active. Please consult this FAQ list before emailing ... remember, we're usually "snowed under" to start with, and time is at a premium!

About "Braid Binding" and Other Binding Choices

What do the books actually look like?

Several people have had a difficult time, visualizing the braid binding, and we've solved the problem of trying to describe in words what they look like in your hands ... the digital camera to the rescue.

The photos at left depict four of the eight volumes of THE HUNTING. The set of eight HUNTING books range between 500pp at the largest, down to a 100pp "cameo" issue, which rescued the so-called "missing" or "stray" stories. There are two volume in the 500pp range, two in the 400pp range, and the other three are in the 300pp range. These are a very good example of the kind of books which are braid bound because they're frankly too large to bind any other way!

[...]

ABOUT THE BINDING...

Where zines are over 250pp (125 sheets thickness, printed double-sided), binding can be very difficult indeed. Supply of the large size coils (18mm and up) is not reliable, and when we can get them, often it isn't practical. With five or ten oversize books to bind, the supplier wants to sell no less than 100 coils, and they're upwards of $1 each! Even when we could afford to pay that, and spend a couple of YEARS getting our investment back on zine-sales, the supply was often so patchy, we would put in an order and get the coils WEEKS late, after they had been back-ordered from interstate or, once, overseas. The reason? "There's just no demand for the large coils" in a community this size! And that's a good reason.

So we had to think of a way to get around this a long time ago, and in the last several years we've been using "perfect binding," which is the method where the book is glued down the spine. This was fine till abput June 2000. Then we bought in the new supply of "padding glue" ... opened it up, and instead of smelling the long- familiar "PVA white glue" aroma, which we've been smelling since we started using it to bind in the late 70s, it smelt ... odd.

We went ahead and used it, and we suspected something was just not right. We always check the books before they're sent out, and for the first time we actually had binding problems. One copy fell apart right here; another seemed to be just fine, but after it was shipped and read many times, it also "failed" at the binding.

As always necessity was the mother of invention, and we discovered another means of binding which is 100% effective, will NEVER fail, and is astonishingly pretty!

We call it "braid bound" binding. We punch the huge great stack of paper as if it's going to be hung on a 22mm coil; but since we can't get the coils for love or money, we thread up a mattress needle with braid, or ribbon, and literally weave the whole thing together, leaving the ten-inch-long ends of the ribbon tied off at the top, to form book marks, as you used to see in very old books from another era ... when most books were made by hand, as ours still are!

So, if you're ordering massive, oversize issues (250pp or more), you will receive "braid bound hard cover volumes ... and then you can go ahead, and for the following titles, pick out the cover stock you would like to have your books bound in.

Some 1992 Submission Guidelines

Zines can be ordered by lodging a SASE plus a $10 deposit for each issue desired with Betty Ann. The order is passed to The Nut Hatch in Australia, and a bulk shipment is made when the zine is available. Please include an age statement with your first order. NOTE TO CONTRIBUTORS: If you have a zine-length story, we are interested in 'amateur press association' type publishing. It works this way: we don't chew you up by editing, but you submit best-quality camera-ready copy, and if we enjoy your work, (and we very likely will!), we publish right off your original pages. You receive a free copy in exchange, or two if you supply art in addition to text. We undertake the marketing, advertising, copying and binding, probably the illustrations too. If you don't have access to a good quality printer, if you can send us compatible software we can print out via the Hewlett Packard on which our zines are done. We can use 5.25 or 3.5 disks, IBM compatible; Wordperfect, Works, Wordstar 3.3, First Choice, Deskmate, or ASCII text file preferred, but we can convert almost anything but Apple-Mac. Plus, if sending disks, also enclose a hard copy, as sometimes your italics can turn into squiggles during conversion. We're looking for good, original, meaty stories, 140-160 pp in length, literally any subject. As sexy as you like; naughty, yes...soft bondage, sure, but we're not fond of S&M subjects. If submitting from the USA, remember the shape of Aussie paper when formatting!

Some 2002 Disclaimers

GLOBAL COPYRIGHT STATEMENT This site and the zines it supports are fannish projects, by, for, and to some extent even about fans. No infringement of copyright is intended; no profit is made by Nut Hatch (the press) or the authors/artists (the content providers). Both site and zine are intended as fannish amusements, where the copyright of the studio and individuals legitimately involved is fully acknowledged.

FANNISH COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The rights to these zines lie with The Nut Hatch, insofar as the zines are provisionally copyright, meaning Nut Hatch holds copyright of the original material, on behalf of author(s) and artist(s), until copyrights revert upon publication. Authors/artists control their original content, but they make no attempt to assert rights to materials drawn directly or indirectly from the series. Their copyright extends to their own created characters and/or situations.

WEBPAGE COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The materials uploaded to this website are intended as advertising for the print-media zines, as a service to fandom and promotion for the show. No profit is made; no attempt is made to usurp legal copyright. Photos are used without actual permission, only as a 'service to fandom.'

GENERAL DISCLAIMER

This site and the zines it supports are fannish projects, by, for, and to some extent even about fans. No infringement of copyright is intended; no profit is made by Nut Hatch (the press) or the authors and artists (the content providers). Both site and zines are intended as fannish amusements, where the copyright of the studio and all individuals legitimately involved is fully acknowledged.

Technology, Weight, and Location

The press constantly struggled with the reality of their location: shipping zines from Australia to fans outside of Australia was extremely expensive.

From the editorial of Sword of Damocles:

But as you know, the zine must come in under 5OOg, and we're teetering on the brink of that right now. Once upon a time, Nut Hatch books were 177pp! That was in the days when we used staples and paper covers (ouch). The coils and acetate plastic sheets weigh about 30g — which effectively steals about a dozen sheets of paper from the zine... when you exceed 500g, airmail leaps up by $14 and $15 — no stops along the way to $24 and $25, for the addition of a single extra sheet of paper. To those of you who own and operate computers, a note: if you need a RAM memory kit of about three megs (several chips), drop a line to [B R], [Australian address redacted]. These chips are designed to run with the AT generation of computers, so make sure you have the right kind of machine to run them. (That is, if you have an SX, you'd have problems). Your manual will tell you. And this is a bargain.

From a 1992 ad regarding the postal service and material distribution:

Zines can be ordered by lodging a SASE plus a $10 deposit (or payment in full, adding $2.90 for US postage), for each issue desired to Betty Ann. The order is passed to the Nut Hatch in Australia, and a bulk shipment is made at once, using the SAL mail, half the price of air mail, but takes only four weeks for delivery. Please note that prices reflect the international shipping costs. It isn't cheap!! The box is sent insured to Betty Ann, who when it has been recieved, will use your SASE to inform you that your zines have arrived, and what the balance to pay is, (the post-paid price, less your deposit). Your order is never at risk; orders are always filled very promptly, never using sea mail! All back issues of Nut Hatch zines are available; don't let rip-off artists sell you circuit version. Please include an age statement with first orders.

CONSTANT Financial Worries

According to the always very, very lengthy editorials in the print zines and later on its website, "Nut Hatch Press" was always on the verge of financial collapse, in financial collapse, or climbing back from financial collapse. Reasons cited were the economy, cost of shipping from Australia, zine piracy, equipment failure, cease and desist letters , circuit stories vs. zines, the circuit itself, the GST , and other variables. Jane and Mike Adamson also cited theft by other zine publishers around 1985 and in the early '90s, see Many of you may be aware that considerable problems have revolved about this press in the last year!.

In a long, long personal statement in 1986 that was printed in Universal Translator #32, 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...

In 1988, from the editorial of Unfinished Melody:

This novel is from THE NUT HATCH CREATIVE WORKSHOPPE. Not for general sale: Get it from a friend. Get it for a friend. But no part of this novel may be reproduced in any way or form without permission from the publisher. Please do not photocopy it as a favour for your friend; the result is that she won't know it is/was a zine and not a circuit story, and will copy it for her friends, who copy it for theirs — ad infinitum. Got it?? This is a zine! And unless The Nut Hatch can sell its copies, we'll go broke and won't be able to do any further zines! Many thanks for your attention and your co-operation. This novel is copyright. -- Kathy Keegan, Publisher.

From the 1989 Falconhurst:

Please, under NO circumstances whatever copy the text of this book for the circuit. As you will read on page 3, our sales are failing badly, and soon we may have to shut up shop. Friends returning from the USA tell us our zines are all on the circuit over there — which is why we can't sell the copies we print. We have to stay solvent, and to do this, we need to sell copies. If YOU have a copy of this zine in your hand and are setting off to copy it for your friend, please remember... this could be our last zine, because of what you are about to do. HELP US!! Thanks.

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.

In June 1992, Kathy Keegan had good news. From the editorial to In the Future Tense:

On a positive note, things are looking up for the press, with better sales and some great representation at cons. Also, the 'black marketeering' of our zines, which was such a problem in years gone by, seems to have just about stopped, and that is wonderful. Thanks to all of you who helped fix this. We are still alive and still publishing!

In November 1992 in the editorial to Elvensongs, Jane commented on a turn for the worse and on what she felt shut down Entropy Express:

The year has been a brilliant one for Nut Hatch, with sales that have been better than just 'good.' Things went quiet (read: dead) in the middle of the year, but cruising toward the end of '92 we've gained momentum once more and we're finishing out the year in a better, much stronger position than we were back in January. To begin with, this HP laser printer is a godsend. It works! It doesn't jerk us around! It does 'full professional' quality printing! (Thank Jarrat and Stone for this boon, folks). And then, sales are at an all-time high, which is probably a reflection of two things: one, the great distribution work being done by Betty Ann Brown, and two, the world-wide depression. Make no mistake about a depression. It's depressing. And the more down-hearted you get, the more you need something to lift you out of yourself and make you forget for a while that you are in a mess. For this service, to us here, nothing beats fandom and fantasy. The success of Nut Hatch, while all about us professional businesses are going broke and blaming it on each other, seems to prove this point. At any rate: immeasurable thanks are due to Betty Arm for her help, with out which, we strongly suspect that we would be becalmed utterly. Betty Ann: thank you! Also, a special thanks to Jackie Beeman, who took Nut Hatch books to Virgule in '92, and will have them at Escapade in '93. Again, this is the kind of help that is deeply appreciated, and without which the press would be probably be dwindling rapidly.

The process of atrophy has struck our Aus sister press, Tanglewebb. They are closing, and I wish I could blame it on the global depression, but sadly it's not thai simple. A friend in the US was good enough to let Tanglewebb know that they were being ripped off, their zines were being pirated and sold as facsimile editions in America. Bad enough, but here is the cruncher: the pirate is in Australia, those facsimiles are being shipped o/seas from here and probably bought in all good faith. This kind of news sends shock waves around any press. The same thing happened to the publishers of the Ennarare media lines last year. Same thing happened to Entropy Express in the mists of time, when JJ was at the helm. This sickness kills small presses, and make large ones ill. Nut Hatch is probably being pirated, but thanks to the fact we have such an excellent distributor, and we've been going so long that we have an enormous list of zines available, we can survive. Tanglewebb can't. We grieve to see a press die due to piracy, and there's a cold shudder running through us all. If our sales implode and fall to about 60 or some ridiculous figure, we know what's the cause of it. But what to do about it? That, as Hamlet said, is the question.

In 1992, from Flood Tide, a statement she used on a number of Nut Hatch zines:

THAT OLD PLEA TO READERS: for the umpteenth time we beg you not to duplicate this zine for the circuit. Also, if you discover someone doing this, gently suggest to them that they stop, because The Nut Hatch will get stuck with $1000's worth of unsold copies, and go broke all over again! If you would like to bulk-order for your group, circuit or con, please write to us, we would be delighted to give details in full!

In 1995, Jane admitted that the press had had a bad year, citing miscalculations in fandom zine interest, bad business decisions, the purchase of a photocopier, and much more:

This is the first time I ever did a zine that was about six months late. The reasons for that lateness are mostly down to luck. Ask Dame Fortune why, oh why, I chose this of all years to float a small business with my brother? Nut Hatch was on a bit of a roll, and in my complacency I thought, what the heck, it’s paying for itself these days. I (and I wince as I say this) took my life’s savings and invested almost the lot in the new business. Uh...huh. And Nut Hatch promptly decided to lobotomize itself.

We took a big, big loss at MediaWest. No one is to blame, but we sent around 80 zines, mostly copies of a gen media zine, and they just did not sell. I’d depended on those sales to print the new zine (this one), and the funds just didn’t materialize. With all of my own money invested, I had nothing to fall back on, save for sales of existing shelf stock! And that was the moment where zine sales decided to hit an all- time low.

It gets worse! In a shrewd (?) attempt to get printing costs down, I ‘bought in’ with Karen (hi, Karrie!), a part-share in a copier. It was supposed to enable me to lower our cover prices, and so help to boost sales. The reality was, it broke down around every 5,000 copies, and what with paper, toner and repair bills, the copy cost was up around 13c per page!!

Some of the copying in Batch One of this zine reflects some of the shocking breakdowns we had with the machine, and you will probably see that on page 137, I abandoned ship, and when it broke down yet again, I finished the zine back at the commercial copy shop. I apologise for some of the tackier copying in Batch One: I just can’t afford to reprint, folks! If I try to, you’ll be getting this issue by Christmas!

The next issues are going to be later again, because of the very, very slow rate at which zines sell these days. Yes, yes. I’ll continue to do the zines, but if I’m to fund them, first, my little business has to stop being a money pit, and get into profit. Either that, or folks out there have to start buying zines again ... which, given the current bite of the economy is a tall order.

[...]

So, please bear with me. I really am dancing as fast as I can. More zines are in the works, and if Nut Hatch’s fortunes take an upward turn, no one would be more delighted than me, to get the press back onto an even keel!

Sorry about the delays, and ... “thank you kindly" for your patience!

From a the 1999 editorial, GST SPELLS K.A.O.S. but Entropy Express will probably survive!:

The long-awaited and longer-feared GST is happening, and though Nut Hatch can exist in that environment, it won't be plain-sailing Click on this for the full story of what's going on, but the short version, within the parameters of this editorial is: zinedom exists in a shady zone under copyright law, and in a few months' time, I'm going to have to answer to the Australian Taxation Office for the business that goes through my credit card merchant account, and the stock that goes through my hands, no matter what it is. It's getting scary enough that I know I need to be careful, before a day comes when I find myself trying to explain to the government about zines, and slash.

In September 2000, Mike Adamson and Jane of Australia wrote of cease and desist letters, and of theft in two essays, one Nut Hatch-Entropy is under some financial duress. and the other other The Nut Hatch Fundraiser:

As you can see, it hasn't been all beer and skittles here at the madhouse ... you wondered why we called it Nut Hatch??? Seriously, the stresses involved with running the fannish press are escalating, and the COSTS involved are getting out of all proportion.

Are you aware that DOAW itself — just the website — costs $500 per year ...! While zine sales are swinging along, it's no problem. But when zine sales quit for months on end, it's, uh, quite a problem. So, it's time for an ingenous [sic] solution to this problem, and on that note, we would like to pass you directly to The Fund Raiser!!

From the editorial in Double or Nothing (2002), Jane of Australia, 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!

Open Letters and Essays About Financial Stress

• Many of you may be aware that considerable problems have revolved about this press in the last year! (1991)
• GST SPELLS K.A.O.S. but Entropy Express will ''probably'' survive! (1999)
• GST SPELLS K.A.O.S. but Entropy Express will ''probably'' survive!#The GST is here, but...!: 2000 Follow-Up Essay by JJ (2000)
• The Nut Hatch Fundraiser (2000)
• Nut Hatch-Entropy is under some financial duress. (2000)
• How much do the zines cost in 2001, and why? (2001)

The "Private URL"

from the website, date unknown

from the website, date unknown

In the early to mid 2000s, the press explained their policies for admittance to the Nut Hatch catalog:

Well, at least you're halfway there! This page is a "staging base" on the way, because you're now on the threshold of, and about to enter the "private sector," or "members' area" the site.

As you would expect, the Nut Hatch pages are "by invitation and referral only," which is to say, we need to be sure that visitors are aware of the situation before they walk right in!

This is only good manners, and good sense. Nothing actually uploaded to this server is rated more than PG-15, but we want to be absolutely sure that no offence is given or taken, so —

Because time is at such a premium these days, we've decided to invest a little more trust in our users, and, rather than have everyone pop off an email saying, in effect, "Hi there, I'm on my way into Nut Hatch," (which is actually a private URL), we thought we would inset a real, genuine, Java-scripted "login page" between DOAW and Nut Hatch:

The login page is still a form (as it has been for yeaks), with a pseudo-legal "agreement," where you state your firm understanding of what slash is, and what Nut Hatch publishes, give a valid email address*, and hit the "I Agree" key. However, rather than being automatically redirected, you actually need to receive a proper user name and password from us ... but you can use your user name and password AUTOMATICALLY from them on, no need to pop off any more emails, just log in and go.

It's part of the chain of legality that we must ask you for your valid email address!! In case of come-backs, we need to know that the people wjho "signed the form" agreed to the terms! So please, just one time, "jump through the hoops with us for the sake of legalities. (Also, the first time through the hoop, you'll need to give us a valid emaid addy because otherwise we can't email your user name and password to you ... duh).

So, via this whole login process, you absolve us, in the event that you should be offended by slash; you will be redirected to a second page, where the "secret URL" will be revealed, complete with the on-link to get right into the sealed section ... it's like a pair of shears!

Please don't give away the URL!! Ask your friends to go through the login process. It's simple, it's streamined, it's quick, it's only a one-off, and after that — heck, bookmark the Nut Hatch homepage and go right there!!

Thank you for your patience. Have fun at Nut Hatch!!

The "Three Email Trick"

Online ordering in the early days was new and unexplored territory, and Nut Hatch dived in with its usual byzantine wordiness.

From a 2001 (or earlier) message:

We've streamlined the "three email trick" to make it even easier to see, understand, and use ... still completely secure on-line ordering, but now as simple as just three mouse-clicks!

As you know, it's not safe to email credit card info over an insecure channel but few people realize how hugely expensive it is to set up secure email! This cost is passed on to the client ... you! And yet the "three email trick" is totally secure ... because if you transmit your card info via three or more emails, even the most brilliant hacker in the world couldn't get all three, and without all three, the information is worthless. The system works it's secure, and it costs nothing!

If you have any questions left before placing your order, click right here for all possible info, already on-line!

• 
• 
• 

Nut Hatch-Entropy Multimedia (NHE)

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.

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.

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!

The DreamCraft Connection

Beginning in 1996, Jane's fanfic (as well as many other items) were sold on the site called "DreamCraft." --

DreamCraft was born in 1996 as a multimedia studio, producing CD-Rom, software, art and photography, enter- and edutainment. Twelve years later, we’re working in the new and innovative digital field of ‘POD publishing.’

‘POD’ is an acronym standing for ‘print on demand.’ With the recent upsurgence in desktop technology, it's now very accurate to say that when a copy is ordered, it's printed. And POD publishing is tipped to turn the whole publishing world around in the near future.

[snipped]

We're currently very excited about our move into eBooks. You can now get every Mel Keegan title, formatted for virtually any machine, desk- lap- or palmtop.

[snipped]

Since Mel Keegan joined DreamCraft we’ve published more than a dozen new titles and several reprints ... and there’s plenty more to come!

We now have over 200 megs online at www.melkeegan.com ... and we're also starting to work with some new and exciting GLBTI writers.

The creator of "DreamCraft," the website, is who created Mel Keegan's website. In 2002, from Mel Keegan's website: "The Mel Keegan Online site was built by DreamCraft from fictional text supplied by Mel Keegan and artwork by Jade. The site design and function are copyright by DreamCraft. All parts of the site are strictly copyright. Keegan purchased DreamCraft "for a peppercorn" from Jade and Dave in 2014. See much more at Mel Keegan.

The Press Shuts Down: 2006

Jane left fandom in a classic swan-song flounce on May 17, 2006, in a message to Zinelist (and other lists?) in which she expressed her unhappiness with complaints over unfilled zine orders and attributed them to malice and fandom's unwillingness to stand up to negative elements.

"[The Nut Hatch] was closed, and its website removed from the internet, following an apparent misunderstanding on one of the discussion lists in April/May 2006. Jane declared that she was leaving Pros fandom, and would not be giving permission for anyone else to reprint her stories or zines. This means that stories printed by the Nut Hatch Collective, unless they had been previously archived online, or unless writers other than Jane give permission for their work to be printed elsewhere (and it is suspected that Jane wrote under many pseudonyms), will only be available via secondhand zines."

Some of her Pros fiction is at The Circuit Library.

Zines

As:

• USS Atlantis Productions
• Futura Productions
• Entropy Press, Entropy Express
• Nut Hatch (and variations of that name)
• as agented for Tanglewebb Press and others

Airwolf

Hellfire

Due South

Terms of Surrender | Chicago Beat | Heaven and Hell | Paisano | Terms of Surrender

Multi-media

Bed and Bored | Fantazine | Full Circle | Red Alert | Space Happy | Syndicated Images

The Professionals

Affairs of the Heart | Book of Strife | Bound to Please | The Cassidy Legacy | Clan of the White Fox | Cleopatra's Nose | Cross My Heart | Czardas | Dead Reckoning | Deep Fire | Diamyien | Doubletalk | Echoes of Elfland Horns | Elvensongs | Encore! | Eternal Wind | Fair Blows the Wind | Falconhurst | Fancy Dancing | Fantazine | Flesh and Steel | Flood Tide | For Auld Lang Syne | Goblin | Knife's Edge| | Gentle on My Mind | Hellburner | Hostage London | Hostage to Peace | The Hunting | The Hunting: The Lost Stories | The Hunting Companion | In the Future Tense | Killing Orders | The Kingdom of Summer | Legends | Long Shot | A Madrigal | Magickal | Magickal Collected | Miguel | No Vanity | Operation Assegai | Out of This World | Perfect Gentlemen | Power and Magick | Professionals 2000 Gambit | Rainbow Chasers | Rainy Days | Soul and Storm | Sparrow Through the Hall | Stop the Presses | Strangers on the Shore | Sword of Damocles | The Swordsman | Taemon's Cuckoos | Time and Motion | A Throw of the Dice | Worlds Apart | Unfinished Melody

The Sentinel

Cascade Visions | Ménage a Enterprise | Shaman

Starsky & Hutch

Double or Nothing | Firesigns and Other Stories | Flashpoint | A Gift from the Past

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Hell's Forge | Ménage a Enterprise | The Sunbeam Strike

Star Trek: The Original Series

Federation

Star Wars

Blaster | Burning Skies | Empire Star | Empire Star Monthly News | Solo | Tales from AAgan's Rim | Vendetta

UFO

Doubletalk | Flightpath

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Crashdive! | Operation Sea Dragon | Skyfall | White Gold Highway

Xena

The Xeniad