Zines for fun and profit and social change

By Ben Livingston

Underground press, alternative press, dissident press - pick your favorite. Luther did it. Frederick Douglass did it. Susan B. Anthony and Elizibeth Cady Stanton did it. Malcom X did it and so did Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Women, men, transgendered. Jew, Muslim, Catholic, Shaker, Buddhist. Every age, every race, every class and creed - they're all involved. Every niche, every minority, every demographic, no matter how small, has at some time had their own media - created by them, for them.

Alternative press has been around for a hell of a long time and it's not only the way for non-mainstream voices to be heard in the media, it's the only way to cut through the bullshit of the mainstream media. It's how you stay informed about things that matter to you: your issues, your peers, your community. It speaks to you in this vast wasteland of unintelligable mega-media. It doesn't take much either. The usual catalyst is a message - something to say. The early abolitionists were denied access to and often mocked in the mainstream press, so they started their own. The message doesn't have to be political either. Maybe you want to showcase art or poetry or discuss Keanu Reeves movies at length. One of the best zines I've seen was all about sharks.

Besides something to say, you need desire. You've got to love doing it - writing, talking, typing, recording, copy-and-pasting, distributing, informing. You've got to love the feel of a freshly copied zine or hearing an illegal radio broadcast or coming across a kid's "fuck the man" website. It's got to make you smile, bring tears to your eyes, make your heart race, make you want to shout "fuck yeah."

So it really boils down to two important things: something to say and a desire to say it. If you've got those, nothing else matters.

Being a zinester for a quarter of my young life, I've seen innumerable flavors. The first paper zine I ever laid my hands on was called "Hellbound," out of Olympia, Washington. As with most zines, it was a medley of sorts. It had an interview with some band called Wool and a bunch of other random stuff they compiled. I recall a page dedicated to pickles and airplanes.

I've seen zines 200-pages thick and one-pagers. I've seen zines secretly distributed and zines sold in bookstores. Near my house, on 45th and University, a guy and girl stand on the corner and hand out their four-page literary zine on random Saturdays.

To start out, create content. As I mentioned above, most zines are medleys, containing lots of unrelated content. Do you think some rule or law is stupid? Write about it! Got a friend who draws comics? Use them! Enjoy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Hell, include a biography of Leonardo.

Some of the best zines touch on some of the most emotional subjects - accounts of rape, parental abuse, the death of a loved one, coming to terms with your sexuality. Not only do these extremely sensitive issues make for thought-provoking reading, they also act as a way to talk to people, to get things out of your system.

Once you've got some content, you've got to put it all together. For some, this means going down to the copy shop, cutting, and pasting it all together. You can handwrite it all if you want, or type it on an old typewriter. Oblivion is done almost completely on a computer (the orange on the cover of issue 9 and the red foil on issue 6 were done by hand). One of my favorite zines, Ker-Bloom!, is done on an old press using hand-set type, just like Ben Franklin used to do.

If you use a computer and want to use those fancy page-layout programs, here's a cost-cutting tip: pirate the software. Don't feel bad about using software from Microsoft or Adobe without paying for it. If you didn't pirate the software, you wouldn't use it, so it's not like you're depriving Adobe of $400. Besides, you are doing something important; surely Bill Gates would say "here's a free copy of Publisher" if he had the chance. So cut your costs and pirate software. Everyone has a friend who knows how to get software. Ask them for help.

The most common - and easiest - zine size is digest, which is a sheet of 8.5x11 paper folded in half. Oblivion's last two issues were legal-size paper folded in half. You can make you zine any size you want, it's just that 8.5x11 paper is the easiest to get.

One of the most challenging issues for any zine is printing. Most zinesters use traditional photocopying to produce their zine. Others have moved to offset printing, which is only a viable option once you start doing over 1,000 copies. Most printers won't do smaller runs than that. All of this copying and printing costs money - and that's where problems arise. The people behind alternative press have historically been poor.

Like most things, there are ways around money. Some people get at-cost copying from a local shop that digs their rag. Some hold benefit concerts or rummage sales to make cash. Many people have what we in the industry call a "Kinkos Connection" - an employee - usually working graveyard - who will make you copies without charge.

Still others resort to theft. I'll flat out admit that I stole copies from my old high school. I know people with half a dozen Kinkos counters. Just go into Kinkos, grab a counter and use one of your previously-hijacked counters to do the bulk of your copying. Once you're almost finished, put the "real" counter in and make a few copies so you at least have some copies on it. Make sure to be extremely careful and do it at larger Kinkos. And remember, they have cameras!

Also, you can tap the counter firmly against your palm like a pack of cigarettes and it might turn the numbers closer to zero. Try dropping the counter - it might turn to "999999" or something. Then you say, "this thing is messed up. I made twenty-five copies."

One more thing: to reset the counters, Kinkos uses a device with a powerful magnet. I'm talking an extremely powerful magnet like the kind you might find in a specialty store or on the Internet or in a radio tuner. Powerful magnets can be very small too.

Once you get your copies - paid for or otherwise - you need to fold and perhaps staple them. (One of the best investments I ever made was purchasing a $25 long stapler from Office Depot.) If you have a few hundred copies or more, it's worthwhile to invite your friends over for a folding and stapling party. Once that's all done, it's time to distribute.

We put Oblivion in book stores and record stores for the most part, and we don't charge for it. If you want to charge a few bucks, many independent bookstores will carry your zines and keep track of your sales for you. Hand your zine out to friends. Hand it out at school (see "Zines, distribution and the word `fuck'" in Oblivion 8). You should also send it to other zines that do reviews. A review in Maximumrockandroll should get you a good number of orders. To find other zines you might want to mail to, check out "A Readers Guide to the Underground Press," which is currently the behemoth of zine review zines.

Despite all this talk of computer software, paper sizes, distribution and stealing, zine making still boils down to two things: something to say and a desire to say it. If you've got those two, you're halfway to your destination. All these other issues may give you some trouble on your way, but they can be overcome. Hell, just steal a few more key counters.