Greetings from the VEES Behind the Scenes ZINE Team!
Due to the large amount of questions, we decided to make a post with all the answers and explanations.
Here you'll find all the important information you need to know!
A: A zine is a self-published, thematic project — either digital or physical book. Fanzines frequently come with extras such as charms, stickers, prints, and other merch.
Our zine will be an A4 hardcover artbook with about 80 pages, included in bundles with different merch!
Q: Are the prices in US dollars?
Q: Why the prices are so high? Are you a commercial or charity project, or neither? Where do the pre-order funds go?
A: We are a NON-COMMERCIAL project.
Bundle prices are made up of many factors: production, commission fees, currency conversion losses, paying an assistant, an emergency fund for any force majeure events, and a markup so that we can thank Artists Team and Mods Team (for all their hard work) with a free copy of the zine when the project ends. Our zine's team, including artists and mods, consists of almost 60 people.
Before setting prices for you, we studied the market, looked at many projects, dug through tons of information, and ran countless calculations to make up the price that is fair to everyone.
Our project has no profit motive and no intention of making money off people. The decision to launch this project on an international platform was made first and foremost to bring joy to our friends, acquaintances, and good people abroad, who for years haven’t been able to get a piece of Russian artists' work. We’ve spent many months searching for the most optimal ways to make this happen.
The goal isn’t profit — it’s our only way to bring an international audience what we’ve been working on so diligently and persistently.
In Russia, charity zines are rare because projects usually have no surplus funds left after preorders. In our country, many projects can hardly break even after several months of preorders; not making a loss is considered a success for a Russian zine. It often happens that mods have to invest their own money to make a project happen.
For example, one of our Mods has already invest in this project an amount of their own money that exceeds the average salary in Russia.
Q: Why does part of the price go to pay for zine copies for the project contributors?
A: In Russia, thanking participants for their hard work is considered important. It is considered respectful to try to provide free copies for contributors, and Russian zines always aim for this.
Q: Why all the fuss over a simple fan book?
A: Zines in Russia are usually considered as collectible items. Many zines include unique merch or formats to delight fans, and typically offer multiple bundles to choose from to satisfy all fans and collectors.
In our country, we treat zines with great love and dedication, even though it’s «just a fan work». Making a zine always involves a tremendous amount of work and investment — both from the mods team and from the contributors — and many projects hire experienced layout designers for a fee to ensure the final book is high-quality and pleasing to the eye.
We always approach such projects with complete seriousness and responsibility.
Q: Why such high production costs? There are publicly available lists of good print shops and manufacturers with affordable prices.
A: All those production options are unavailable to us.
The printing and production of the zine itself (reminder: it’s an A4 hardcover artbook) and its merch — acrylics, paper goods, etc. — is based in Russia, i.e. our country, not abroad, because we have no access to print shops or manufacturers outside our country. As we’ve said more than once, we are isolated from other countries and international payment systems. So all production must be paid for in our national currency.
Q: Why don’t you print in China?
A: We don’t print in China because that option is unpredictable and unreliable for us right now. Last year, customs regulations were updated, and a large batch of merch and orders ended up simply lost irretrievably; what little was eventually found arrived only after about 8 months.
Even now, the situation with China remains unreliable for us, and printing from there still poses difficulties.
Q: Why don’t you offer a separate digital version?
A: We’re still considering adding this option, but we can’t promise anything.
In Russia, digital zines are practically non-existent; it’s not a common thing, and very few zines offer that option at all.
We included a digital zine in the bundle only because it will contain text originally written in Russian that in the digital version will be translated into English for our international audience.
Q: Is it possible to get the zine at Russian prices?
A: Yes, it is. If you find a way to pay in rubles to a Russian bank card (Sberbank, T-Bank, Ozon Bank), we’ll gladly sell you the zine using Russian prices.
Keep in mind that our banks are disconnected from SWIFT, so transfers from foreign bank cards are not available. Everything, including shipping, will be at your own risk, because we won’t be able to refund you if something goes wrong.
Q: Why don’t you hire a foreign mod or use a foreign friend’s help?
A: We’ve received messages several times about finding a mod in America or Europe to reduce bundle prices.
Let’s break down why a foreign mod makes no sense and why we specifically don’t take advice from foreign colleagues on this matter.
A mod is a go-between, and we already have one — on our side. A foreign mod makes no sense for one simple reason: to us, they are just foreigners such as the customers.
What does that mean for you and us?
No changes. Everything would be exactly the same whether we had an american/european mod or not, as we are now. That means we’d still have to find a way to accept payment, and we’d still have to cover commission fees for all transfers, compensations, and losses from currency exchanges.
We’ve already explained that our country has been closed off due to current political and economical events for far more than 3 years.
We are very well-versed in production and printing; our project has many artists, merch makers, and mods.
Over the years, we’ve learned to use any options that are available for us to work with international customers. We’re always looking for new ways, and we learn and adapt as soon as something becomes unblocked/blocked and adjust accordingly. There’s no need to teach us something we understand far better than you. We know what we are doing. So please, don't be rude. Stay human.
Q: Why can’t you find a foreign mod who can handle cheaper production abroad?
A: First of all, we can’t completely move production abroad because then the cost and shipping of the zines would become exorbitant for us, which would be completely unfair to the people who worked on creating the zine. Most contributors, and especially regular Russian fans, physically wouldn’t be able to afford such a zine due to its cost and shipping.
Splitting production would be a questionable decision, if only because of differences in the final product.
We can’t guarantee the quality of such a zine and merch. We know our print shops in Russia; we use their services as merch artists ourselves, and we can visit them in person to seek justice in case of a defective batch or incorrect color proofing. We can’t do that with a foreign print shop. We’re not willing to entrust the supervision of something so important to a barely familiar person from another country. If that person lets us down, we won’t be able to fix the situation, and money, time, and your trust will be lost. We want to give you a beautiful, high-quality product to make you happy, not to disappoint you.
Q: Why is payment so complicated? Can’t a mod help you?
A: Mod from our side is helping us already!
Many ways for international communication, payments, etc. are blocked not only from YOUR side but also from OURS.
This means we are isolated both inside and outside the country. SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, WesternUnion, PayPal, etc. are officially blocked in Russia. We can’t accept payments directly; there will always be extra fees and losses from currency conversion through friends in third countries or helpers. And the price will still be the same, regardless of the mod’s country of residence.
Q: Why can’t I order merch separately? Why can’t I choose the items I’m most interested in? Why there are bundles?
A: Because of the difficulties with payment acceptance and shipping. It would be a problem for both sides.
For you, for example, it means exorbitant shipping costs. Let’s say you want to buy a keychain only — shipping that keychain would cost you 2-3 times more than the keychain itself.
For us, it’s huge problems with customs, due to restrictions in our country. We can only send parcels categorized as «gift», so multiple identical items would raise questions and might be classified as commercial goods, which is completely prohibited for international shipping.
For the same reason, we can’t organize a group order.
However, we don’t forbid you to cooperate: you can get together as a group, order a bundle, and split it among yourselves. But keep in mind that we can only ship one full bundle at the same time.
‼️ IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS about preоrdеring the Zine, need a few extra days for pаying, or if you had filled out the prеоrder form but didn't receive the invоice and email-confirmation of your оrdеr, please contact us by email:
For other questions you can use askbox here on Tumblr. Thank you for reading 💙
