zines again

[Alex Corvus]

No: HPFGUIDX 9781

Kelley said:
>>I was thinking, as Penny said, along the lines of a non-profit sort of
arrangement; basically the most popular and recommended fics that so many have
fallen in love with, and only with the authors' consent.>>

Oh absolutely - fannish ethics would dictate only with the authors' consent.
It would be a matter of approaching those writers to get permission, or of
soliciting submissions (that could be picked and chosen from). Another zine
publishing convention is that the writers and illustrators in a zine each get
a contributor's copy, so those free copies plus postage to mail them have to
be factored in with your cost-of-production when you set the price of the
zine. That's the way the contributors get "paid," and it's one of the best
parts of submitting material to a zine. <g>

>>Like Carole, I've been printing some out and saving in spiral-binders, but
that's a bit costly for me. But, it seems that zines could be as expensive, if
not more. Thanks for all the info, Alexa. If the quality zines sell for
$10-20, what do the ones that resemble trade paperbacks go for?>>

De nada. I'm not an expert, though, I've only tribbed to and bought zines,
never actually produced one. Ummmm .... I *think* the trade-sized zines I saw
advertised went for $9-$13? I could be making that up entirely, it's been
awhile. But the thing to remember when it comes to zines is that "quality"
isn't necessarily connected to size, it has to do with the work and the
materials that went into it. Prices are going to be pretty much the same for
quality or for crap in a particular size, whether standard or trade, because
you're paying cost-of-production. You're just gonna feel gypped if you found
out you paid for crap. Quality may go for a bit higher if publishers go for a
better grade of paper or for color art, for instance, or use a broader
typeface for better readability so the formatting takes up more pages.
Conversely, crap may go for a higher price, if a publisher inflates the number
of pages by printing in, like, 13-point type with inch margins on every side
of the page.

With trade-sized zines, you're still paying pretty much the same amount for
paper, printing and binding, you're just doing it in a different format. A
trade-sized zine may not be as big as a standard (8 1/2x11) zine when it comes
to height and width, but it's going to have to be thicker to get the same
amount of material in it. A trade-sized zine that's cheaper than a standard
zine is probably going to be cheaper because it's got less material in it.
(all that being said, I think I'd like trade-sized because they're more
portable and convenient - I've just never seen a zine that I particularly
wanted in trade-sized. I think it's a cool idea, though.)

Zines aren't cheap, and particularly with online culture being used to
so-called "free" fanfiction, a lot of people aren't willing to pay for them
these days. There is a fair bit of material in them, though ... I'm trying to
think ... the last zine I got was a trib copy, so I didn't have to pay for it,
but I believe the cost was $20, and I think it hovered around 200 pages - and
that was in standard format, not trade-sized. It also had some wonderful art
in it, including some four-process color, and the cover (heavy-stock paper)
was slick, which isn't always the case. So when you consider what it would
cost to make 100 double-sided copies (some more expensive because of the
color) - or to print an entire ream of paper one-sided - plus the binder, plus
the special stock for the cover, plus postage, it's not really a bad price. I
know some people say, well, why don't I just print it out for myself, if I'm
paying for all the paper and the binding anyway? It may be a bit cheaper to
pay for it as a zine, because a zine publisher may be able to get a discount
for bulk copies, but even if they don't, that's why a zine should have some
quality behind it - it should have formatting and attention to details like
typeface and point size that affect readability and make it look nice, details
that *I* don't want to mess with when I'm printing it out myself; if it's got
art, that's certainly not something I'm going to have access to elsewhere, and
like I said before, it should also be edited not just for grammar and
punctuation, but for content. (not that *that* always happens, but then, those
are the zines I won't spend my money on)

Someone who's printed out DD or DS or PoU or something else fairly standard -
how many pages did it come to, and what formatting did you use? Page size
really isn't a good indicator of how much you should be paying for a zine
because formatting will change that - word count is better, but I can never
for the life of me remember a good word-count-per-price cost - but it might
enable a ballpark estimate of what cost and therefore price should be (subject
to writer consent at all, of course - they're probably sitting back going,
"*Wait* a minute!" <g>).

>>What sort of interest would these publishers look for? Is there any minimum
level? Do they base this on requests?>>

Well, "they" is most likely to be "you." <g> Someone within the fandom is
probably going to have to step up and say "OK, I'm going to produce a zine,
what kind of interest is there?" This is very much homemade stuff. Fanfiction
zines are done by the fans - some more proficiently and with more expertise
than others - but it's generally a situation where someone says, "hey,
wouldn't it be cool if we could do a zine for X" and then does it. They walk
amongst you, you just have to find the willing victims who will sacrifice
their time and sanity to accept submissions/approach writers and artists,
edit, format, lay it out, figure out which local copy shop will give you the
best price for what kind of materials and what amount of printing and binding
(and which copy shop is going to be willing to run the copies of it at all,
especially if you have sexual material in it, particularly any of that nasty,
nasty slash, tsk, tsk <smirk>)- or conversely be willing to take on the
mammoth task of doing the copying and collating and binding, themselves - and
actually manage to get it all mailed out to the people who order copies.

Even if someone wants to do this, though, it's still going to be dependent on
demand. If you don't have enough interest, the costs of production could be
high enough that it makes the cost of the zine prohibitive.

Alexa

Look at the way he's always grabbing Pecky ...
All I'm saying, it's a lot of body contact, man.
- Ryan O'Reilly explains sock-puppet subtext, OZ


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