As much as I love the craft of writing, it doesn't give me the same kind of satisfaction as a more literal type of craft, where you're producing something tangible that you can hold. I think that's why I love bookmaking. It combines storytelling with something that is truly hand-crafted, turning written works into physical objects that can be works of art in their own right. One of my current projects in progress is a series of single-sheet litzines inspired by Rinky Dink Press, which puts out beautiful little micro-chapbooks and sells them for a buck a pop.
Rinky Dink's mission is to “get poetry back into the hands (and pockets) of the people,” and that's the spirit I love about zines in general. They're an accessible way to share thoughts, words, art, or whatever else you want to print and distribute to the world. If you're not familiar with the term, a zine is a small, DIY book that's printed or photocopied in small batches. The term is a shortened form of “fanzine” and has its origins in the 1930s, when it described sci-fi magazines like The Comet and The Planet. Zines started to take on a more subversive spirit in the '50s and '60s, when they were used to share ideas and art that commercial publications would reject or censor, and were adopted by the punk subculture in the '80s for the same purpose.
Exactly what qualifies something as a “zine” versus a “hand-bound chapbook” is nebulous and depends on who you're talking to. But whatever you call it, this kind of DIY book is very easy to make. For the most basic versions, all you need is an idea, some planning, and access to a copier.
Types of zines
A zine can include basically anything. Comics, poetry, manifestos, sketches, stories, photos, collages, an aisle-by-aisle rundown of your last trip to the grocery store—literally whatever you want to publish and share with people. While a zine can be anything, though, there are a few common flavors that you'll find, like:
- Perzines - Personal zines, ones that focus on the creator's daily life. This could be their mundane day-to-day in a diary style, ruminations on a specific event or topic (like a DIY memoir), or focused on the author's opinions and thoughts.
- Minicomics - Handmade short comics that are typically both written and illustrated fully by the creator
- Art Zines - Main content is the creator's visual art (drawings, photos, collages, etc.)
- Compzines - Compilation zines. You can think of them like a DIY literary journal, containing art and writing from multiple creators, usually focused around a single topic or idea
- Fanzine - Non-official publication produced by and for enthusiasts of a genre, fandom, or other cultural phenomenon
- Litzines - Literary zines, with content that's fiction, poetry, or personal essays
I've also noticed some online publications that call themselves ezines or digital zines. This doesn't quite compute to my brain, based on my personal definition of the term, but in this context “zine” usually seems to mean something that's distributed for free and has a DIY/counter-culture spirit.
Steps to make a zine
Step 1: Choose a size/format and create templates.
The reason you want to do this first is that it's going to dictate every other step, like how much stuff you can include and what supplies and materials you'll need. Just like with the content, there are a near endless variety of ways that you can create a hand-bound book. But there are 3 formats that are going to be the easiest to make using standard 8.5” X 11” paper:
- Half-page fold – Pages are stacked together then folded in half and bound with staples or string. Each piece of paper creates four pages with an untrimmed measurement of 5.5” X 8.5”
- Quarter-page fold – Each piece of paper is folded twice, then nested inside other folded sheets and bound together with staples or string. Each piece of paper creates eight pages with an untrimmed measurement of 4.25” X 5.5”
- One-piece zine – Made from a single sheet of paper that's slit in the middle and printed on one side, then folded to create 8 pages that are 4.25” X 2.75”. There is also an alternate version of this that is printed on both sides and creates a 16-page string-bound booklet.
One-piece zines can't be nested, so your page count options are either 8 or 16. With the other two styles, you can add pages in multiples of 8 (for quarter-page) or 4 (for half-page) up to around the 40-page mark. Once you get over that, the booklet is going to get very thick to the point it can be difficult to keep shut, depending on the thickness of paper that you're using. With a thinner paper you can sometimes get away with up to around 48-56 pages before the book stops acting book-like.
Once you've picked your size and page count, you can create a template for the pages. Getting the pages in the right order can be tricky with folded zines. It's relatively simple with a half-page fold, and some software programs even have a setting that will print documents paginated for a folded booklet without you needing to re-order them. With single-sheet and quarter-page folds, though, some of the pages will need to be laid out upside-down, and the order isn’t as intuitive. My suggestion is to fold (but don't bind) a dummy version using blank paper. Number each page while it's folded, then unfold it and use that as your guide for how to lay out the pages.
Step 2: Create or curate the content.
Which, again, can be anything, although there are some things that tend to be best-suited to the zine format. Given the low page count, only shorter form things will fit, like poetry and stand-alone short stories or personal essays (you could serialize something like a novella or memoir, but it's likely to take a lot of installments). The format also lends itself well to work that incorporates visual elements and non-traditional forms and layouts.
There's a tone factor to consider, too. Zines tend to live along the fringes and margins, sharing voices and exploring ideas that don't get much attention from mainstream publishers. This doesn't mean that what you publish in a zine needs to have overtly “fight the man” type energy, but it's a format tailor-made for work that's raw and rough around the edges.
Step 3: Layout and format.
There are two ways you can do this. The old-school approach is to physically arrange your content IRL, either by creating directly on the paper you'll photocopy or by cutting and taping/gluing the pieces collage-style onto a master sheet (note here: if you're taking this approach, cardstock is a sturdier base than regular computer paper). Once the master sheets are prepared, you can xerox them to create the copies you'll distribute.
The other option is to use a software program for the layout. If you're making a half-page zine, you can do this pretty well even in a word processor like Microsoft Word just by turning the layout to “landscape” and making it two columns. I wouldn't recommend trying to do anything more complicated than that in Word, though, and even for a half-page zine Word isn't the best option for things like art books or comics. There is a free program called Affinity that works very well for book layouts, and is worth checking out if you're interested in making zines or other books.
Step 4: Buy supplies and materials.
For a zine that's all or mostly text, standard printer paper will work fine. If you're including artwork, especially if that art is in color, then a heavier paper will be better so things don't bleed through. Something in the 24-pound weight will still be thin enough to fold and nest together but stand up better to heavy ink. Note that this doesn't matter for an 8-page single-sheet zine since only one side of the page is going to be printed on (though of course you can still use fancier paper if you want to).
It's common for zines to use standard paper covers. If you want to have a separate, sturdier-feeling cover, cardstock in the 80-100-pound range tends to work the best. This is stiff enough to feel substantial but still flexible and easy to fold. Once you get thicker than that, it's actually less durable because the fibers along the spine can crack from repeated folding.
The other thing you'll need for most zines is a way to bind them. Staples are the fastest, and you can use any standard stapler for the job (provided it's long enough to get the whole way to the fold). You can also get bookbinding kits for about $10 that include a few different colors of twine along with an awl to poke the holes and large needles to pull the twine through.
A couple of other optional supplies—if you're making a one-sheet zine, it's helpful to have an X-acto knife and metal ruler for putting the slit in the page. You can do the job with scissors if you have to but it takes longer and isn't as clean of a cut. It can also be very helpful to have a paper cutter for trimming up the edges of the pages when you don't get the fold exactly right, or making the post-binding cuts on quarter-page zines. You can get a basic guillotine-style one for $30-$40 that will work fine for something short like a zine.
Step 5: Print (or copy) and bind.
If you have a home printer, you're all set. Most home printers don't have automatic double-sided printing. None of the ones I've ever owned have, at least, which just means you need to go page by page manually. I do them in batches—so if I'm making 10 zines, I print 10 copies of a page then put those copies into the tray and print the back, and so on. I use a similar assembly-line style for the rest of the stages. Once everything's printed, I go through and paginate it into separate copies, then bind them and cut them.
Small piece of advice here: if it's not immediately obvious how your printer pulls paper through the machine, do a test print first. Before you print, mark the page with which side is facing you and which end is “up” (however that’s defined in your paper tray). This will keep you from accidentally double-printing on the same side or printing one side upside-down.
If you don't have your own printer, you have some options. The standard Kinkos isn't too expensive for black-and-white copies and you can bring and use your own paper. They also often have tools like paper cutters there that you can use for free. If you want to do color, Kinkos is a pricier option—the last time I went, those cost upwards of .70 per copy, which means 1.40 for every two-sided paper in the book. Depending on how many copies you want to make, that could add up fast.
You can also check if there are any maker spaces or coworking spaces in your area. They usually have things like a copier or printer available for members, and maker spaces especially are likely to have other tools like awls or heavy-duty paper cutters. Granted, this usually isn't a completely free option, either—most of those places have a per-hour or monthly membership fee, and you might still need to pay for color copies, though likely less than you would at a Kinkos.
Like I mentioned in the intro, I'm in the process of creating some litzines and I've reached that final print-and-bind step, which I plan to do the first run of this week. I'll take some pictures along the way and share them next week to give some more step-by-step instructions on how to do both the basic hand-bound book and a couple of more complex options that I've used.
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