Zine

My very first 'zine is now available in my shop.
I'm really proud of it so I hope you'll like it too.

I've recently seen in a few different places people complaining about the 'quality' of 'zines they're bought so I thought I'd just share my views on the matter.
Obviously that's quite vague so I don't know for sure what in particular they mean by 'quality' but I've had the feeling they're, at least in part, talking about the quality of the printing and/or the paper. So I just wanted to get it out there that as far as I'm concerned 'zines are meant to be made cheaply, not necessarily sent off to fancy printers to be printed on fancy paper (although I see nothing wrong with that either) but I would never be disappointed with a 'zine that had simply been photocopied from the original drawing, folded in half and stapled together. That's the beauty of them, anyone that has something to share can share it by making a zine without the worry of printers costs.
My 'zine is printed on my basic home printer on regular white printer paper.
I suppose I wanted to say this just to be sure people knew what they were getting, a nice simple homemade 'zine, put together and printed by me with care.
I hope no one buys it expecting a professional quality magazine and is then disappointed that they've got something different and end up classing it as bad quality. I guess my point is, there's nothing wrong with sending things off to the printer and making a fancy 'zine but there is also nothing wrong with photocopying it onto cheap paper but I personally think if you purchase a 'zine it's best to expect 'low quality' printing and paper and see the beauty in those things rather than expect a glossy magazine and then be disappointed.


In slightly more coherent words from zinewiki.com:
A zine - pronounced zeen - derived from magazine - is an independently- or self-published booklet, often created by a single person. Zines are customarily created by physically cutting and gluing text and images together onto a master flat for photocopying, but it is also common to produce the master by typing and formatting pages on a computer. The end product is usually folded and stapled. Zines can be printed and bound in any manner. Offset printing is a relatively common alternative to photocopying, though there is some controversy among zine writers as to whether professionally printed products may be defined as zines.


So there you have it, some people think photocopied 'zines are bad quality and are disappointed by them while hardcore 'zine geeks are out there complaining about 'zines that aren't photocopied.

Each to their own.

I hope you get your hands on a copy of my 'zine and I hope you like it.

x