YOU, YES YOU, CAN MAKE A ZINE! Part 2
Part 1 is here: https://www.tumblr.com/getintheholezine/771675540692336640/you-yes-you-can-make-a-zine-part-1
What should my zine be about?
A fanzine is typically focused on one fandom – one show, one movie, one book, one comic series, that kind of thing. Often, zines are even more specialized, publishing works on…
A genre, like fluff or angst or smut
Choose something you find interesting and valuable!
The term “zine” can also broadly refer to other group fan projects like calendars and card decks, because those are run very similarly to anthology-type zines.
Zines may have content restrictions based on the comfort level of the person/people running it. For example, they might specify no explicit sexual content or no violence. Please be as specific as possible when outlining your zine’s boundaries.
How big should my zine be?
Big enough to get people excited for the variety of works within, but small enough to manage the work of putting it together and distributing it. For a small, simple zine run by one person, I recommend 10-15 works, for a total of 30-40 pages.
What kinds of works should my zine contain?
Entirely up to you! Fanzines typically contain fanfiction and fanart. You could expand that to include poetry, comics, scripts, and essays of analysis/critique (“meta”).
For art, decide if you want full-color or black-and-white only (more on this later when we discuss printing). For written work, you'll want to set length guidelines. In a booklet, a 2,000-word fic will likely take up about 8 pages, so consider setting a 1,000-word, 1,500-word, or 2,000-word limit.
Unless you have access to free printing (for example, if you work in an office and your boss doesn't pay too much attention to the copier), a digital zine is the only zine you can produce completely cost-free. Distribution of a digital zine is dead easy – just post the download link! And if people want a printed copy, you can always produce a printer-friendly version of the zine, and encourage folks to DIY it at home.
Producing physical copies yourself will cost you money. It might be as little as a ream of paper, if your home printer is up to the task. It’ll cost a bit more if you need it printed and copied at a copy shop. Will you bind it yourself, which takes time, or pay extra for the copy shop to do that? If you plan to distribute it by mail, there's envelopes and postage, too, and the time involved in sending the damn things.
Fandom has long been understood as a labor of love, where people produce and publish fanworks in the spirit of generosity. Add in those pesky copyright issues, and (unless the fanworks are based on something in the public domain, like Shakespeare) trying to turn a profit on fanzines is risky. Some zines do risk it, but that is beyond the scope of this guide. Fan projects like zines have often collected funds to cover their material costs and/or to donate to charity, and that's what I'll be discussing.
Here's a rundown of some options:
A zine that is digital-only and free doesn't cost you a dime, and can be distributed simply by posting a download link on social media. Easy-peasy.
A zine that is digital-only and for charity doesn't cost you a dime, but must be distributed to individuals via email after they've donated the suggested amount. They can pay you, trusting that you'll direct the money to charity; or they can donate directly to the charity and show you a screenshot as proof (my recommendation).
A zine that is physical and free will cost money to make, and unless you hand it out to people in person, will also cost money to distribute. Not to mention the time and effort of collecting addresses, addressing envelopes, getting postage, and so on. You’ll be asking people to trust you with their mailing address and probably their real name. (You should plan to delete all that after distribution is complete.)
A zine that is physical and cost-covering may require you to accept payment from people who want the zine. Not only will you be asking people to trust you with their mailing address and probably their real name, you'll be asking them to trust you with their money – that you are taking only what you need to cover costs, and not pocketing any profit for yourself. You can promise to donate any leftover money to charity, which again requires trust. On the other hand, you can avoid collecting money by using a print-on-demand service like Mixam’s PrintLink. People can pay the printer directly, and the printer will mail the zine out! Just make sure you don't mark up the zine’s price over the cost of production.
A zine that is physical and for charity will cost you money to make and distribute. As with the digital charity zine, you can avoid handling people's money by asking them to send you a screenshot of their charitable donation. The money you spend to make the zine becomes a sort of donation by proxy. Perhaps each printed zine costs you $5 to make, and you require a $10 donation to get a copy, so you spent $5 for the charity to get $10. Unless you have a sizable philanthropy budget, this approach really only works for a small-audience zine.
Note: You need to decide if the zine is digital or physical, and if it's free, cost-covering, or for charity before soliciting fanworks. Potential contributors deserve to know up front exactly what they're getting involved in. Also, if the zine is not entirely free, you need to decide what contributors will get at no cost to them. Plan to give them at least a free digital copy, if not a free physical copy, as well. Some cost-covering zines charge buyers enough to pay for the contributors’ physical copies. Which is just another example of how adding money into the mix also adds complexity!
