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Permalink Reply by Katie Hanratty on May 13, 2009 at 10:12am

Im just starting to play around with zines but I would recomend this awesome book thats got loads of hints and tips about making zines, a good investment for the ziney beginner.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whatcha-Mean-Whats-Zine-Making/dp/061856315...

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Permalink Reply by George Hayford-Taylor on May 14, 2009 at 1:54pm

thanks very much!!

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Permalink Reply by Mark Todd on June 8, 2009 at 4:09pm

A friend and I did one about 2 months ago called 'The Survey' we made it in InDesign, and printed a proof at work then took it to a printers to be told it was going to cost about £500 to print 200, and that was even if we folded and stapled it ourselves. So maybe the professional printers is too costly, so I would suggest going lo-fi to start with maybe photocopy a master set of pages, I think if you want volume and to really put your message out there go photocopy first, if it gains momentum, finish quality and stuff can come later. You get me?

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Permalink Reply by George Hayford-Taylor on June 11, 2009 at 12:57pm

ye, thanks for the comment, i don't think many people can go to print straight off! i will spend the next three days on a photocopier, maybe longer...

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Permalink Reply by Chris Knight on June 14, 2009 at 7:06pm

With a bit of research you can find a printer/ photocopies who can do a fairly small run for a resonable price. But with all these things using a bit of lateral thinking might be the key. Make friends with the printer - buy them a beer and explain your dream for the zine, that this is going to be the first step towards a publishing empire or something. You might get a big discount. They might do it for free. Offer them a sponsorship deal where they get a backpage ad or something and explain that you'll be selling/ distributing to an audience who might well want to do their own zine so the chances are they will get more business.

Or you can save on printing costs by doing a digital publication. It's not such a rare thing anymore - New Sugar (a member of this network) has a great site and online magazine.

If you feel that a physical object is what you really want consider why that is - probably the quality and satisfaction of holding your own work (or others) in your hands. So why not go all out and try and make an object of real uniqueness and value. You might only be able to make 20 or so but consider screenprinting your own book or making some etching plates - Lower volume but higher quality ways of producing something truly memorable. (sometimes if you do some decent promotion it doesn't matter if only 10 people buy your publication if 10,000 people see it and think - that's cool then maybe the second one you do you can produce 100 and go further with the quality)

There are also print your own book websites offering print services. They tend to be expensive though and not really viable for zine publishing (I am probably wrong about this. I'm sure there are 'zine publishing specialist websites out there if anyone knows of them please post links!!)

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Permalink Reply by Chris Knight on June 14, 2009 at 7:11pm

And google is your friend (no recommendations, just random results from "print your own zine" search:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Zine_making/Print_version

http://www.poewar.com/how-and-why-to-start-your-own-print-or-web-zine/

http://www.houseoffun.com/action/zines/diy.html

http://www.obsolete.com/convulsion/interviews/convulse/fanzine.html

http://www.doitgreen.org/article/diy/zine

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Permalink Reply by George Hayford-Taylor on June 15, 2009 at 9:11am

thanks, this is great info and advice.

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Permalink Reply by Ant King on June 15, 2009 at 7:34pm

easy mate, just msg me for details blud x

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Permalink Reply by Rachel Nicholls on June 23, 2009 at 10:26am

I havent used this website yet but it looks pretty good u can upload ur mag and then get it printed for 20cents per page http://magcloud.com/

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