Episode 13

BizCast 13: La Crosse Publishers Aubrey, McFarland release new series to help engage local government

About BizCast Greater La Crosse

We bring you news from the business community. From startups to experienced problem solvers, you’ll get in-depth insight on the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Greater La Crosse. Our show is a collaboration between WIZMNews.com and BizNews Greater La Crosse ( GreaterLaCrosse.media ).

Full Transcript [ generated by AI]

[00:00:02] Roxanne: People don’t know what’s going on here and people don’t know what this city has to offer, and it has a lot to offer, but nobody really knows how to access it.

[00:00:13] Vicki Markussen: welcome to Biz Cast Greater La Crosse. I am your host, Vicki Markussen. We’re bringing you news out of the business community and joining me today is Roxanne Aubrey and Rachel McFarland. You are, co-owners, of OPE Publishing and you produce a zine.

[00:00:33] Vicki Markussen: Explain what a zine is.

[00:00:35] Roxanne: Zines have been around for a long time. They’ve always been subversive. They started out what with like science fiction letters at some point, and then it just grew from there. But then it died a bit, like in the nineties cuz you had geo cities and blogs and stuff.

[00:00:49] Roxanne: So kind of fell by the wayside. But then the sub countercultures did it. So punk trans and, all of that stuff started doing their own zines and now, Become another huge thing cuz we’ve got some really crappy gatekeepers out there and people wanna get their messages out and zines is perfect.

[00:01:06] Roxanne: Perfectly good way to

[00:01:07] Vicki Markussen: do it. Is it a playoff of like magazine? The Z I N E?

[00:01:10] Roxanne:  Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s more of a magaziney, that’s where the word comes from, but yeah, like

[00:01:16] Rachel: small press. . Yeah. Artistic do it yourself. A lot of DIY culture. Yeah. A lot of ’em are collage art or, there’s no limit to it really.

[00:01:25] Rachel: That’s part of what’s awesome. Yeah. There’s

[00:01:27] Roxanne: no definition for the form. Yeah.

[00:01:29] Rachel: And the, yeah, like the stitching the actual design of the. Object is

[00:01:34] Roxanne: cool. Yeah.

[00:01:35] Vicki Markussen: Fun. Yeah. It’s part art and part voice. Right. Right. What made you wanna get started

[00:01:40] Roxanne: we were bored. ?

[00:01:43] Rachel: Not really. You went to New York and you went to a bookstore

[00:01:46] Roxanne: you knew in New York, right?

[00:01:47] Roxanne: Yeah, it’s Blue Stocking Bookstore. It was in the, on the Bowery, down on the Lower East Side. I’m from New York or, or I lived there for 25 years. And. There was a zine section and I texted Rachel. I was like, this is so cool. . . And I was just, I came back and I couldn’t shut up about it. It was just a wall of really creative stuff.

[00:02:03] Roxanne: Some of it, graphic novelist kind of stuff, like eight pages, just real clever stories, not very expensive. And she’s a writer. Really beautiful writer. She, yeah,

[00:02:12] Rachel: it sent some of my work. And she had laid, did you, I don’t remember if you did that before. Laid out my, that piece. The, oh, first one that we did,

[00:02:20] Roxanne: the India piece.

[00:02:22] Roxanne: Yeah. And yeah, she gave it to me and she’s like, cause she doesn’t really give her stuff out. She’d so kind of shy about it. And so she sent it to me and I’m like, oh, that’s so good. I know what’s exactly the way this looks. And so I laid it out like really fast. What? I gave it to you like in a day or something.

[00:02:34] Roxanne: Yeah. And she was, So excited and it was just, alright, we can do this. This is not hard to do. We can do this. And since I’ve been in the print industry for 30 years, in New York and here now I’m an independent contractor for graphic design stuff. And so I know how to get things printed and done and designed and she knows how to make ’em sound good.

[00:02:56] Roxanne: And. That’s just kind of how it happened. So it just started that

[00:03:01] Vicki Markussen: way. What was your first one and what have been some of the topics

[00:03:05] Rachel: the first one was a piece I had written. I took a trip to India a couple years ago. I was there for two months, and I had written this. Just an essay, travel blog sort of thing.

[00:03:16] Rachel: And then I’d done some artwork. So she put all of that into one. And then yeah, we stitched that. That was our first one. Then we opened it up for submissions. We had a couple writers from the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. They both did poetry. And then we had a local woman. She created some artwork based on reading their poetry.

[00:03:36] Rachel: Tatiana, just really,

[00:03:36] Roxanne: what’s your name? Yeah. I’m not gonna

[00:03:38] Rachel: remember, remember off, off the top of my head. But yeah, for a while it was pairing kind of local writer or semi-local writers and local artists, and then it just started branching out. We were playing with a lot of different concepts.

[00:03:51] Rachel: When we started, we had a whole nother subset. The four eyes thing that we tried to do that kind of fell by the wayside. And then this. You always had the idea for the, this sort of city development thing. I’m in the, on the back burner

[00:04:06] Roxanne: itself. Yeah. It was sitting there for at least a year before I knew what I was gonna do with it.

[00:04:10] Roxanne: But yeah, it’s sometimes it’s na nature stuff like, But it’s also graduated from art stuff to more community oriented stuff. Mm-hmm. , I really, really, really, really, really think that this city is a desert for local news. And we used to have a website lacrosse independent. Yes. Oh my god. It was so good.

[00:04:31] Roxanne: and we needed it and people were hungry for it. But for reasons it doesn’t really do much right now, but. We need stuff like that. People don’t know what’s going on here and people don’t know what this city has to offer, and it has a lot to offer, but nobody really knows how to access it. So that’s part of what this demystifying city government series is about, is how to access city government, how to make the people in government less terrifying more approachable, and let people know that this is their.

[00:05:04] Roxanne: This, they wield the power and they need to wield the power, and they don’t because they don’t really know where to start. So that’s what this these books are about. The first one’s getting a proposal in front of council. and everybody can do it. You can do whatever you want. It doesn’t mean it’s gonna get voted in, but you know, if you can get the support for it in your neighborhood and you can get some people and council behind it, you have a pretty good shot.

[00:05:30] Roxanne: It’s a small town. We have very little institutional lethargy here, we can turn this ship around before it hits the iceberg. So let’s do it. And that’s what this is about. The second one’s on direct legislation nah, that one’s a tricky one. It’s a, it’s very complicated and has a lot of,

[00:05:47] Rachel: because yeah, it’s stretching from local to national level in different, based on who we

[00:05:53] Roxanne: talk to.

[00:05:54] Roxanne: So Right. There are local applications as well. Mm-hmm. , of course. We’ll talk about some of that in, in the zine as well. And then this, the third one is getting elected to office, because frankly, I think we need a renter on council. We have one kind of, I think it’s the student one. Yeah. But, I don’t know that we need an honest to god, hardcore long-term rental person who’s never gonna be able to buy a house and just understands the rental situation from a renter’s perspective.

[00:06:20] Roxanne: we don’t have that on council, I don’t And. Yes, I’m putting that out there. We really need to get a renter on council, so anybody who gets the third zine and is inspired, I will help you with your graphics.

[00:06:30] Vicki Markussen: Everybody needs help. Honestly, running for office, you don’t get elected by just your own

[00:06:36] Roxanne: vote.

[00:06:36] Vicki Markussen: No, exactly. Yeah. So where is the business model for this? So of course people have amazing, amazing passion, right? Amazing talent. How do you monetize?

[00:06:48] Roxanne: We don’t know. We don’t know. This has been our big stumbling bot because Absolutely.

[00:06:52] Roxanne: I’m a terrible capitalist and she’s a terrible capitalist. Maybe worse. Maybe worse. Yeah. She’s an artist. . No, I, and that’s a real problem. I don’t monetizing. This has been hard. We do sell, all of our zines have sold into at least break even in a little above. If we work with authors, we do get a buyback agreement.

[00:07:11] Roxanne: So basically it’s just double the cost of the produce, which is not very much. And then the markup is like four or five times. It’s not very much we don’t really make an insane profit on any of this stuff. But it gets out there. The artists gets something they can hold in their hands and that they can sell and promote their work and it’s, that works.

[00:07:29] Roxanne: It’s this, that there is no. Real funding. Right? It’s not like I can get a grant because I’m a it’s an LLC. It’s not a 5 0 1 . , I might be able to find maybe lc and I might be willing to be an umbrella or whatever, but then there are all these stipulations and it’s really hard to do if you’re not a nonprofit and you’re not, you don’t come from money.

[00:07:52] Roxanne: Neither one of us come from money. In fact, I don’t know. I come from the opposite of money and. It’s difficult. So we’re looking for patrons is what we’re really looking for. And our patron rates are very reasonable. If you don’t make a lot of money and you can only afford $3, you’ll still get everything that the person who gives $20 will get.

[00:08:11] Roxanne: It’s perfectly egalitarian. We don’t want anybody to feel like they can’t participate because they don’t make any money. But supporting us as a patron means that we can do more com community-oriented stuff, which is, this has been great. I love giving it away. It gets it into more people’s hands. More people read it and learn from it and get to experience it and talk with their neighbors.

[00:08:34] Roxanne: Just it’s great. So, I would love to give more stuff away or prints, or have it like

[00:08:39] Rachel: super cheap to buy. Yeah. Rather than, trying to charge $20 for something that, yeah, there’s a lot of time and effort put into it, but you don’t necessarily see that when you pick up a small, Such a small object and Right.

[00:08:50] Rachel: Yeah.

[00:08:51] Vicki Markussen: We don’t, so yeah. Lc and I that you mentioned is the umbrella neighborhood organization there. Again, just an umbrella for the many that are out there. Just an fyi cuz it’s things that I’ve been following is there is now, there’s now. Several journalism organizations that have started that are nonprofit.

[00:09:08] Vicki Markussen: And so following that model might be interesting for you as well, but you did get some patrons for these city government zines,

[00:09:17] Roxanne: right? Yes. Yeah, we did raise money on Kickstarter. I initially tried the soup thing, which was. terrifying. But I did it and I don’t know. I did pretty well. I thought, but there was, somebody else won, but that’s fine.

[00:09:30] Roxanne: But I realized that there was enough support in the room that if I did a Kickstarter, then we could probably do it. And we did. I asked, there was two tiers that I wanted to raise. I obviously put in the lowest one on Kickstarter so you can get the money. And that’s the one we got. We got like a little over $2,000.

[00:09:46] Roxanne: So that means I was able to produce 500 a piece. , we can print 500 a piece. The upper tier would’ve, we could have printed a thousand. . And everybody’s donating their time with this. Everybody who’s writing is donating their time. We’re basically donating we always donate our time to op, but it’s just that. There are people in the community gave, and also some of my mother’s friends, but, you know, they’re always concerned. They’re always good for something.

[00:10:09] Vicki Markussen: Yeah. A couple of things. I It’s an opportunity for me just to point you to some resources too. So there’s a Kiva fund.

[00:10:14] Vicki Markussen: Kiva’s, a matched fund. Essentially if you go out and do a Kickstarter, they’ll match those dollars. That’s nice. that is through wic, Uhhuh, which is located, you can email me that. Yeah, I will. But it’s nice for other people going, oh, there’s funds out there. Yeah. Yeah. And like leader ethics would be really interesting if you’re doing more of these government pieces to see if you can partner with them, cuz again, it’s just about getting your.

[00:10:36] Vicki Markussen: name out there. Yeah, there’s some resources out there. WBBA can help with funding models too, the business plans and they’re good resources. So what’s next

[00:10:46] Roxanne: after this? Yeah, we’re trying to get all of these done by the spring so that I can get them in the hands of the high school students before they leave June 1st.

[00:10:52] Roxanne: College or high school high. That they’re done in the college kids, we couldn’t make that deadline. But they’ll be waiting them there for them when they get back. We’ve got a couple of ideas. Fomenting talking to some people about doing a renter’s manifesto. She has an interest in doing, which one was it?

[00:11:11] Roxanne: The farm. .

[00:11:12] Rachel: Yeah, just something ab, farm culture obviously in Wisconsin is a big thing. And just focusing more on small farm, different ways of small farm operation.

[00:11:23] Roxanne: Oh, we almost

[00:11:23] Rachel: forgot the biggest thing. Talk about Like

[00:11:25] Roxanne: city crafts people. Oh yeah. City crafts people. Yeah.

[00:11:27] Roxanne: . There is a I also do a podcast called Goat Cart. It’s on Spotify. And I’ve been doing a esoteric series, meditation and esoteric series. And then I’m also doing an addendum to all of this stuff where I’m gonna try and enter you, the council members, and then we wanna do one on crafts people, people who keep the city running.

[00:11:46] Roxanne: Like the shoe. Which we’re down to one now because Lenny retired. Yep. But we forgot to mention the most important one. It’s your pfas book. Oh, . . She wrote a beautiful, beautiful pfas piece about French Island. Hmm. And we call it goza journalism because, it’s journalism. But it’s.

[00:12:07] Roxanne: an emotional, personal component to it. And some of it’s a gut punch, but it’s a tragic scenario out there. Absolutely. We’re going to be printing that up. Well, we’re sending it out for reviews and then we’re gonna be printing it up hopefully in the next couple of months. And that’s gonna be in a little book with a little spine.

[00:12:23] Roxanne: Cuz I have a binding machine that does that now. Nice. And yeah, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be really lovely and it’s gonna make you think about a few things. Which is really what we want people to do.

[00:12:34] Vicki Markussen: Absolutely. Yeah. I know there’s a people on the island that have a body of knowledge on P FFAs is just incredible what they know about what’s impacting their lives.

[00:12:45] Vicki Markussen: That’s what you have to do is when you have something like that, you learn things you never thought you had to learn. Yep.

[00:12:51] Roxanne: Yeah. Yeah. And she did. Yeah.

[00:12:54] Vicki Markussen: So good for you. And I’m always a big advocate for getting different voices out there, right? You can agree with it, you can disagree with it, but you’ll leave far more educated than if you hadn’t read it at all.

[00:13:05] Vicki Markussen: Where can pick people? Pick these up or go online to

[00:13:08] Roxanne: find, okay, so right now we’re out of the first one that went fast. , pretty much they, the food, the cool, the co-op went through a bunch. The library went through a bunch. We had a bunch of local stores. The list is like downtown stores Larsons and Pearl Street Books and Dan Shoe Repair and on the north side.

[00:13:29] Roxanne: And we had a bunch on North Side. So I don’t know if any are still.

[00:13:33] Rachel: So

[00:13:33] Roxanne: around somewhere up there, there might be some around town in the little, just go to our website, op publishing. It’s the website addresses, op.pub, and there’s a demystify button at the top and click on that. . And that’s everything you need to know, plus the digital copy.

[00:13:48] Roxanne: The digi, the website has There’s a webpage devoted to each one, as well as PDFs you can download to either print for yourself or print out multiple call copies for people that you are interested in sharing it with. It’s laid out so that you can print it front to back on a duplex machine and just want it out. And that’s how they’re being disseminated. Everything is free. You don’t need a hard copy. It’s right there. If you want a hard copy, you can print one out, and if you can find one lying around good for you, it’s kind of rare. Right now it’s a rare beast. But then, then the next one, we’ll do the same route that we did the drop off route.

[00:14:24] Roxanne: . And if we still find a, We won’t put them there and we’ll just update the list as we go along. you can find the list on the website as well. Op Pub, and that’s actually the website. Oh, pb o p e dot pb. Yeah. Yeah. And look forward to more stuff. If anybody has got any ideas about turn this, about turning this town a little upside down and getting more people involved, feel free to contact us through the website.

[00:14:49] Roxanne: I answer the emails obsessively right away. That’s just kind of who I am. Everybody needs a U Trust me, . Touche. And yeah, we got some great stuff coming out this year. And hopefully we’ll be around for a while.

[00:15:05] Vicki Markussen: Sounds fantastic. Thanks for joining us. This is Vicki Markussen, and you’ve been listening to Biz Cast Greater Lacrosse News out of the business community.

[00:15:14] Vicki Markussen: We’ll catch you next week.