Making your own zines will also teach you a lot about the process of production. There is also the added bonus of creating zines with multiple types of paper, inserts, and even french folds, which are expensive options when you print at a print shop. If you have a large audience, then this makes sense, but if you are still building your practice, making smaller runs will keep you from overspending. And I don’t suggest doing this on your first go. Most print shops, which will fold and bind your zine for you, do not produce books at a price that makes them affordable for a reader until you are publishing 100+ copies. You have more finishing choices to make here, as well as options to have your book professionally printed by a printing shop.īut I am going to focus on making small runs at home. Stapled zines are probably the most “book like” in terms of creating a finished piece that feels professional. So, whether you use the information below to make one zine– mini comic or otherwise– or you use it to make a hundred (or a few hundred), I hope you give the adventure of self publishing a try. There is something about the printed page that stays, that feels like a small and secret treasure, that feels real in a way that is hard to achive on the internet, with its constant scrolling and shifting Terms of Service. Sure, you could make a webcomic or post a short story on social media, but those options are almost more ephemeral than a zine. And to get that story out to people who might be interested. They proved I could tell a story in a limited space, and showed proof of concept when it came to my weird fantasy world.īut I also love making mini comics to simply tell a story. Why wait for an editor to approve your story when you can produce it yourself? And, in fact, the first ORCS! books were zines I made for my first indie comic shows. Coming from a background in comics and illustration, I have always loved self publishing and mini comics. The purpose of this post is to focus somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. Others are quick and dirty fold-ups that serve the purpose of any ephemera, a quick relay of information. Some zines are akin to tiny works of art: riso printed, screen printed, hand bound, and full of fancy papers. They have long served the comics community as a way to tell a story that is short and unfettered. There’s a good sized community out there for any kind of zine you can think of, not to mention numerous local and national zine fests where zinesters can gather to trade their books. Anyone can make them and distribute them in whatever way they wish. Because they are self published and produced, they are void of editorial oversight or interference. Essentially, a zine can be anything its creator wants it to be, whether it is a mini-comic or a manifesto (or combination of the two). They can serve as periodicals for fandoms ( fanzines), writing anthologies, gatherings of political ideologies, or pure artistic expression through comics, illustration, or poetry. Unlike most published material, zines are produced entirely by an artist or artists.
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