Why Make a Zine?

It only occurred to me afterward how odd a thing it really was to solicit material for a zine online.

In a time when any one person could easily start 5 different blogs using 5 different well-publicized, multi-functional platforms, why would anyone start a zine? Why would anyone want to photocopy some words onto paper, and hand them out, when they could syndicate them immediately to their network of interested people in a format everyone is already prepared to accept? And why would someone, upon deciding that they want to do such an odd thing, turn to the internet for help, whenever on the internet has already rejected the model, replacing it with all of the technology and all of those reasons that a zine seems archaic?

Here is a list of reasons why:

1. A zine can be made for about $15 in photocopies. This is less than the price of nearly any US steady internet connection. It also requires no subscription, no sign-up, no log-in.

2. You are not utilizing some company’s content management system in order to publish your work. It is never handled, stored, or transmitted by anyone other than yourself.

3. A zine is solid. It’s made of paper. It comes in weird shapes. With different materials. Maybe this doesn’t do anything for you. But it does for some people.

4. You could write a zine with a pencil, if you wanted to. A pencil needs no cadmium, no mercury, no fossil fuels. This is kind of interesting. In 50 years it could be really interesting.

5. A zine has no gimmick. It isn’t a themed blog, a link generator, a cleverly-named Tumblr, a pseudonymous tell-all, or a satirical characterization. Of course, it could be like anyone of these things if you wanted it to. But it’s gimmick is that it is a zine. Like what a blog used to be. You can’t say, “I’m starting a blog,” without someone saying, “what kind of blog?” But if you are making a zine, it could be just a zine.

6. There are some challenges, of the old school print variety. Layout. Typeface. Page thickness. Signatures. All of this could be easily handled by the famous, “slap it all together with a fucking stample” method, but it also doesn’t have to be. No WYSIWYG here. No browser rendering issues. It isn’t necessarily easier or harder than HTML. It’s most just different.

7. Everyone who contributes to a zine gets a copy. What do you get if you contribute to a blog? You get a RT? Great. Put that on your coffee table and impress your dinner guests.

8. Getting people to read a zine is hard. You have to force it into their hands, and make them sit still long enough to read it. You can’t just tweet a link and hope for the best. SEO becomes almost as exciting as flirting with someone. I like to hide zines on the shelves of legitimate bookstores. Maybe no one will see it for years. But I can be almost guaranteed that one day, someone will pull it down, say “what the hell is this?” and start flipping through it. That, my friends, is a “hit”.

9. You can trade zines for things. To some fools, they actually have real world value. I’ve traded zines for indie comics before. For stickers. For pizza! For a bus fare. You can’t trade a blog link for shit, except more links.

10. Your mother will think it’s cool that you were published in something made of paper. She’ll still think you’re weird, but she’ll get the zine much more than the blog. Unless she has a blog, and then, well, there’s only 9 reasons to make a zine.

11. But there’s one more. We make zines because we have a disturbingly strong, unstoppable need to publish things. In print, on the Internet, on bathroom walls. Because we can. This reason is best and most.

Don’t just take a typically blog-like “ten/eleven reasons to ____” list! Find out for yourself. I’m making a zine, here is how to help.