TimeOut's guide "How to publish a fanzine"

How to publish a fanzine
By Time Out editors
Posted: Tue Apr 4 2006
The where, why, who, and what of the fanzine world

A toilet stop can also be quality research time
The history
There was a girl at a Kid Harpoon gig last month handing out copies of her fanzine, bound with coloured clothes pegs. Alongside no-frills collectables like Transparent and Sheffield’s Sandman, self-generated music mags like FACT, Plan B and Stool Pigeon, and special-interest fanzines like Full Moon Empty Sports Bag (poetry), Fly Me to the Moon (Middlesbrough FC) and Smoke: A London Peculiar, she’s part of a proud history – which is experiencing a revival. London’s year zero was with Mark Perry’s punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue, and in the ’80s ’zine-shaped publications like Time Out, the Face and i-D became part of the mainstream. ‘It’s brilliant that people still want to put unchecked, crazed opinions in print,’ says Robin Turner, editor of the Heavenly Social’s Socialism fanzine. ‘The net’s cool, but it’s good to see people making things you can read on the bus.’


Why do you want to set one up?
Motivations vary but an obsession and a strong desire to be heard is at the heart of them all. Most are music-related, but there’s a trend towards new fashion and culture titles. Nineteen-year-old Bella Howard makes 100 copies per issue of Bellazine, which she puts together by cutting up old Mandy annuals and interviewing bands. ‘It’s kind of like [blogging website] MySpace but handmade and sweet. It’s like going to get cakes from a little shop instead of going to the supermarket.’

Sahil Varda started photocopy ’n’ staple fanzine Transparent as a reaction to the mainstream press. ‘I was reading lazy, tabloid journalism and nothing about the bands I wanted to read about.’

Dominik Prosser of Super, a self-financing fanzine from the Notting Hill Arts Club, agrees: ‘Fanzines fill a void.’

Getting the staff
It’s easy: find your most energetic friends and tap them up for ideas, photography and words (once issue one is out of the door you’ll find contributors among your readers – Smoke gets more than 100 submissions every issue). Brief everyone, give them a deadline, preferably a false one. It’s an incontrovertible fact that everyone will be at least a week late filing.

It is also a good idea to make sure your creative types don’t get too tired. An early issue of popular and now-defunct magazine Jockey Slut was nearly scuppered when the designer, who had been up for two days, accidentally trashed the wrong file. Fanzines are a hard habit to break: Slut founders are now behind high-end independent mag Dummy.

How to do the ‘do’ in DIY
Once upon a time fanzines were made by cutting and pasting blocks of text and pictures, but computers make the job a lot easier. Quark Xpress and Adobe’s InDesign are the industry-standard desktop publishing packages. There are a number of options for turning your on-screen creation into an actual mag: send your home printer smoking by doing it yourself; use a local copy shop; or find a professional printer by seeing who handles publications you like. You can print 1,000 copies, using one colour and cheap paper, for around £500 – less if you’re printing digitally. Or you can do as Jockey Slut did and cannibalise available resources (in their case, the student magazine offices at Manchester Met). But beware: management noticed high photocopying and phone bills, and they got fined.

Advertising?
Super’s Dominik Prosser is ‘hardcore’: ‘Fanzines are idiosyncratic, 100 per cent honest and not tainted by advertising.’ So don’t get him started on the ‘Trojan horse’ of fanzines created by brands. But if you want ad money, Stool Pigeon, which prints 60,000 copies per issue – around the same as Kerrang! – suggests you ask a friend to help (‘someone with no morals’) or try local record shops at around £100 an ad. Full Moon Empty Sports Bag might have persuaded Pete Doherty to contribute, but they are realistic: ‘You’re never going to attract Nike or Gucci when you publish poetry.’

Get it out there
Rise early, buy a travelcard, traipse around London. Wake and repeat until your holdall is empty. The makers of Smoke and Super spend a week per issue on distribution. ‘Shops in nice middle-class areas tend to be the snottiest,’ reports Smoke. Where you target depends on your subject matter – if it’s culture, try the ICA, if it’s music, a record shop like Selectadisc. Rough Trade’s Sean Forbes advises: ‘Don’t be rude and pushy. Do sale or return. And don’t come in on a Saturday when it’s too mental to deal with some insane fanzine guy.’

Longevity
Fanzines are often transitory and tend to fizzle out if their owners lose heart – or too much money. ‘I’m not sure fanzines should last,’ reckons Prosser. ‘It’s just good to do something for itself rather than for glory or capitalist ends.’

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2 comments
Posted by Ed - Flaneur zine on 27 Oct 2009 20:17
Yes, good to see a zine article. I produce a zine - Flaneur - www.flaneur.me.uk and would like to see an article on ways and means of distribution. Any ideas?

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Posted by Shari - Black Velvet Zine on 20 Jan 2009 11:48
Good to see an article on zines. I've been producing Black Velvet Zine for over 15 years... at the time of writing this I've started work on issue 60. I wish more stores stocked zines. Or more people bought them! Some people say they can't find them in a shop near them - but it's easy to order online with paypal. Visit www.blackvelvetmagazine.com for more info on Black Velvet - which started out as a photocopied zine and is now a full colour glossy zine.


original article
04/04/2006

I Ate Acne (analyzing fanzines)

Been rummaging through the LCC library's collection of fanzines which is impressively extensive, think they're over 200 zines. You can only look at 5 at a time so I picked some, pretty much from random, to have a look at. I found an interesting variety of approaches, and am definitely going to have a look at some more. Poor photography is due to not being able to take them out of the library but am going to do some scans soon.




Title: The Arts Pheumonia, issue 67
Size: A4 portrait
Pages: 36, black and white and colour lazer printing on white and coloured stock.
Price: free
Binding: 2 stapels
Content: Joke articles and games, (dot-to-dot) range of topics, arts, popular culture and music.
Design: Less professional than a glossy magazine but still uses quite a strict grid but a range of typefaces.
Advertising: none




Title: The Eel – from Hackney & beyond, issue 11
Size: A5 portrait
Pages: 52 (numbered) Coloured laser printed cover with all black and white laser printed inside pages.
Price: £2.50
Binding: 2 staples
Content: Guide to Dalston, local independent projects, quite anarchic view point. Un-expectedly text heavy.
Design: more like a local news letter
Advertising: inserts advertising music events and rallies by contributors. Fake perforated voucher inserts.




Title: Poor but Happy no.3
Size: A5 portrait
Pages: 6, black and white photocopied
Price: free
Binding: 2 stapels
Content: Money saving tips with a satirical tone.
Design: very low-fi. Uses children’s book imagery and limited design elements.
Advertising: none



Title: Meow
Size: A5 portrait
Pages: 28, black and white printed on pale yellow stock cover and black and white inside.
Price: free
Binding: 2 stapels
Content: All animal illustrations, not text except illustrator’s names.
Design: Clean, focus on illustrations
Advertising: call for entries message on back about next issue.




Title: Savage Messiah, spring 2009
Size: A5 portrait
Pages: 34, black and white photocopy
Price: £2.00
Binding: 2 Staples
Content: Illustrations, photography and text. Very personal style, seems like it’s made for a very specific audience or a group of friends.
Design: very d-i-y aesthetic. Use of ripped paper and scratchy, hand-written type.
Advertising: none.


Comparing these examples of fanzines to my first zine attempt has given me some considerations;
are there any messages/events I could use this as an opportunity to promote
how would use of coloured stock/printing affect the production cost and therefore would I consider charging for it (immediate thought is no)
most of the examples I looked at are A5 (rather than my A6), consider increasing the size of my publication.
Am I going to actually distribute my fanzine to the public, where are how?

Most 4/5 examples I looked at are a lot less 'D-I-Y' than I might have expected. Has the accessibility of desktop publishing and printing meant that they cut, paste and photocopy attitude no longer applies?
has modern technology changed the medium altogether?

My fanzines

Been making my own fanzines. I will do a full post on them soon by here is an image

what is a zine?

3/9
A few definitions of a 'zine' from book 'vol.1 zines!'

Alt Cutlure:
“An independent, not-for-profit, self-publication… The name ‘zine’ comes from an abbreviation of the punk-era ‘fanzine’ (itself a corruption of ‘magazine,’ which itself dates from post-war Hollywood).”

Factsheet Five:
“A small handmade amateur publication done purely out of passion, rarely making a profit or breaking even. Sounds like ‘zeen.’”

Weird Flower 6:
“What separates a zine from a magazine is not only budget, but the quirkiness, the individuality, the spirit and yes, even the unavailability that made finding a good read make your day. Maybe this is an overly romantic view, but zines were/shoud be …honest, raw and exciting.”

zineswap.com

'Zinesters' organized a fun sounding zine making and swapping event, hopefully I'll make the next one