Over the years we’ve been asked many times about how to run a fandom zine, so to finally answer those questions here is our incomplete and rough guide/collection of questions to ask yourself on good practices for running a fandom event or charity zine. By no means is this an exact how-to, but we hope this will help answer questions and prompt you in the right direction for running a clean and organized event safely and responsibly!
What is the purpose of your zine (or event)? Why are you doing this? Is it for fun? Are you raising money for charity? Are you doing it because you just want to and because you love fandom and your ship? Is it a combination of all of the above? Will it be fan fiction? Fan art? Gifs? Video edits? Music? A combination of any? Are you going to run a big bang or reverse bang? Are you running a gift exchange for the holidays? These are all incredibly important questions to ask yourself when you first decide you want to lead a zine or event!
If this is for charity, decide your charities before you launch anything. It is good practice to have a solid plan on what you want to do and what you want to accomplish before posting an interest check. It is better to be prepared and have to postpone your zine or event than to try to run a project with no clear cut agenda. Projects that do not have a clear path or set agenda have a much higher risk of fizzling and falling apart.
When choosing your charity, make sure to research them first before making your final decision. To best protect yourself and make sure your money is going to a real cause your charity should be a 501(c)(3) registered charity and you should be able to view their IRS 990 form on their website, or on a helpful website called Charity Navigator.
WARNING. If you are involving money, it is in your best interest NOT to include photoshop manipulations, gifs, videos, or any other form of media that includes real photography or the voices of your characters (this includes voice actors). Actors and companies are very strict in their contracts about how their likenesses and voices can and can’t be used for profit. You would be risking the integrity of your event as well as financial responsibility. If anything, you could potentially receive a Cease & Desist with a threat of legal action.
If you are concerned about the safety of your money, draw up a contract with any partners that protect those funds from being stolen-or result in legal consequences if so. If you are running a non-fandom event and paying your artists, you will need to speak to a lawyer to make sure you safely and legally can compensate them for their work. Find and speak to a lawyer or financial advisor to see what your options are.
Who is your audience? Events and zines with narrower focuses are easier to maintain. Are you prepared to keep a close audience or are you going to go broader? If you are thinking of a broader event you should look and see if other people from different fandoms are interested in running a fandom project to help you organize the process and spread the word. Do your research on fandom relations. Some fandoms are often not held in favorable light by other fandoms and trying to marry two together may result in a failure to organize. If you are determined but may not have the audience, start small with something like a fic exchange and see how it goes.
Though not necessarily true, a good way to gain an audience is by generating content. Have you been active in the fandom you want to run your zine/event for? If so, how have your posts been doing and have you been interacting with other people? People are more likely to trust and join a project if they at least know of the person running it even if they aren’t a “BFN” (Big Fandom Name). There is no way to truly determine if you will even get an audience as much of fandom’s attention now is based on what’s the newest and what is going to bring the most instant gratification. Fandom events take a lot of time, how will you maintain your audience during the lulls?
How are you going to organize this? What social media platforms do you want to utilize? Will you set up a Discord? Only contact via Email? How will you collect and organize the contributions? Google drive folders or documents or an AO3 collection? Will you have your contributors email you word docs or PDFs if you are distributing?
Is it a call for all admissions or will you have curated limited slots? Are you doing an invitation only event? If you are doing applications, what are the requirements? How will you vet people? Allowing transphobic creators into a zine raising money for trans charities is not ideal, which is why we encourage having the vision for your event before you put out an interest check. What is your schedule? How long do you want to dedicate to the entire process while still allowing adequate time for people to contribute? How are you going to share it?
What if it’s 100% digital? Will you do an online collection on AO3? If not AO3, how are you compiling it? Will you have the contributors send you a PDF that you will then stitch together? Will you find someone with design experience to do it for you?
What if you want to print? Who will you print with? How will you ship? Will you offer it internationally? It is possible some printers will not want to work with you if you are trying to do monetary sales on fan fiction and fan art for fear of copyright infringement. Make sure to do your research for online companies (Lulu does not like to do this, Smartpress is a decent option) or look around at a local printshop (tends to run more expensive, especially now with continuing material shortages). If you are doing print things get trickier, especially if you need to adhere to print specifications-usually CMYK, 300dpi, press ready PDFs following the printer’s templates for safety area and document bleed-at a minimum. You’ll have a smoother time if someone on your team (or you) have some sort of design experience. It’s easy to put words on a page to print. It’s hard to make them look good.
At a glance digital considerations:
Where to host (do not tie money to ao3, see note in Outreach & Promotion)
Create a visual standard (colors, sizes, ‘logos’, etc)
Create submission standard (word count or other content requirements, location, file type/size, etc)
At a glance print considerations:
If offering both digital & physical versions, you will want to have files tailored to each application (see notes about bleed & printer templates above)
Finding and working with a vendor
-International packages come with their own caveats about where will accept what shipping companies
-Physical items: generate labels, acquire boxes & protective stuffing, physically package items (where? Enough packagers?)
-Schedule pickups
-Size of product will affect size & therefore cost of shipping per item
At a glance overall considerations:
Sales vendor/storefront if applicable
Tracking costs & transparency documents
Tracking participant communications
Tracking customer communications
Upkeeping social media posts & communications (& generating content)
Tracking participant deliverables
With all of this considered, clear communication is key. Having clear expectations of deliverables, dates, and timelines for your participants and as well as clear responsibilities between leadership individuals will help you be successful.
Your timeline is important and you should try your best to stick to it. Have it posted, have an FAQ, again be transparent about both internal scheduling for your contributors and public scheduling for those watching.
When creating your schedule, it may be helpful to do a ‘workback’ schedule - pick an ideal final date, and working backwards, add in estimated times and dates for every single task and deliverable to see what is realistic to accomplish for contributors and for leadership. If you are ordering physical items, build in buffer times - particularly remembering that with today’s chaotic global supply chain, things may take more time. Required check-ins can be helpful for visibility and prevent procrastination.
Also do your research on your fandom. Have there been previous events? If so, are you potentially overlapping with other events? Potential overlap can harm both events, so look around and think about potentially starting when one is finishing up or has just finished so you can reach a bigger pool of creatives. Don’t be afraid to reach out and talk to other event organizers, they may be wanting to participate in other events that aren’t theirs but have been unable to due to scheduling. BUT, don’t let others’ schedule dictate your own, you need to stick to a calendar that you know you can abide by.
An “all welcome” zine or event is far different from a curated zine or event. What is the quality of work you are looking for? People are more likely to interact with work that is of better quality if it involves money, so if you are wanting to raise money or pay your participants (or have enough funds for production and shipping alone), then you might need to think about running a curated project. Even with talented contributors, if the time isn’t right or if something changes with the event leadership the quality can still be affected.
Another consideration when deciding on curation is physical (and to a lesser extent) real estate. If you are printing, costs of printing itself and shipping are affected by page size and number and weight, so remember to account for this when looking at curation, printers, shipping, and finances.
When thinking about curation and before opening applications, leadership should be in agreement on how many spots for each type of media are ideal, and what parameters the project is looking for ie x amount of fanfiction or fanart or both, certain styles, certain themes, certain content, certain subjective qualities etc. Those are qualities based on submitted work but there could be other factors you might filter your participants by, such as age if you have explicit content, previous participation in fandom work, etc. Having these clarified will help the team confidently select participants as well as give applicants better expectations and understanding of the decisions made.
Rejection, unfortunately, is the reality of a curated project. It can be difficult to turn an application down because you can see the passion and excitement, but the work isn’t right or ready for the project. Not everyone will be accepted if they don’t meet the standards that you are looking for, and not everyone has the formal creative background through school or career to teach them how to navigate these rejections. There will be some people who don’t have experience applying to something like this before or who won’t understand why they weren’t chosen or take a rejection as a personal attack. You must be prepared for upset or inappropriate responses and be able to act calmly and professionally while sticking to your decisions, and without lashing out. If you need someone on your team skilled in PR or customer service, this will be a good time for them to help you. This is your project, and you must stick by what you set out to do.
How are you going to find contributors? Are you going to rely on word of mouth or ask people to join? Do you have a minimum count of people you would like to join? How are you going to spread the word? Social media accounts? What kind of content are you going to generate to keep up the attention to the project? How will you get this content-yourself or asking those interested to help?
Find your core audience and cater your posts to catch their attention. Use hashtags, graphics, buzz words etc to bolster this. Retweet/reblog/share to your stories regularly a few times a week to keep the momentum. The more you put this on people’s radar, the better chance you’ll have at it stabilizing and gaining momentum. There is no “easy step” to starting and maintaining an event.
**Remember, please DO NOT use Ao3 as a platform for promoting a monetary project. You may use it as a means of distribution and sharing but be conscious of how that work is presented. Bringing money into Ao3 risks the legality of what the OTW’s legal team has fought and won for fandom.
Things get harder when money is involved. If you plan to sell your zine or raise money through your event it is in your best interest to make it 100% not for profit. If you are creating a fanzine it is highly recommended that it is solely for charity to protect yourself from copyright and receiving a cease and desist letter (and possible legal retaliation).
This means your contributors nor you will be receiving a single monetary amount for anything, everything will be going to the charity (or charities) you have chosen. If you choose to print, you will have to account for 30-50% of your gross going to production and shipping and any other materials you may need. If you are determined to raise money, offer your zine or the content as a limited exclusive offer for a few months before allowing your contributors to post. Doing so helps drum up excitement and generate sales therefore helping you raise more money.
An easy and clean way to raise money is either through PDF sales or a fundraiser where interested supporters share a receipt of a donation so you don’t have to touch a cent. Your gross profit would then become your net profit, and you can give the entirety of the funds raised without messing with the logistics of printing and shipping. Don’t get yourself in trouble. Account for every cent.
Talk to a tax accountant for guidance for your state and country.
While you may not be planning on counting your raised money as taxable income and donate every cent, the IRS (or other government tax offices) may not think so. Make a financial plan that protects you from owing extra income tax as some charities don’t accept PayPal donations and you will need to transfer funds through a bank account-or plan to take a small percentage to pay taxes on or consider registering as an LLC depending on how long you want to be in operation. You can then of course turn around and donate the percentage taken to truly donate every cent. Don’t get yourself in trouble. Account for every cent.
If money is involved you MUST be transparent.
This will not only protect you and your contributors in the long run, but gain trust. This means records of all receipts, record of orders, record of donations, EVERYTHING (with your personal information blacked out). Show a record for any reimbursement of materials if you choose to take that reimbursement. Not sharing the bare bones of your financial records can open you up to questions and criticisms and grow distrust-which would then hurt future endeavors.
The first step is to open a new clean paypal account for zine-only transactions, this will help you with transparency. Don’t get yourself in trouble. Account for every cent.
Here’s the kicker. If you don’t have the dedication to run your project, it will suffer and possibly even fail.
Running a fandom zine or event takes a lot of time and energy on your part. They simply don’t spring into existence just because you think it would be fun and you have the passion for it. Things would be so much easier if that were the case!
Some events will be easier to maintain than others, like fic exchanges. Big bangs can also be as easy or as hard as you want them to be depending on the number of contributors and if you are doing a regular-or reverse bang, or an open or closed big bang.
Zines usually require a lot more dedication and effort to complete because of printing, production, shipping, and finances. At the shortest, these endeavors can last from three months to six to eight months, with zines ranging up to a year or over depending on internal scheduling even if your supporters only see it publicly for a couple months. Even if you do try to do everything right, sometimes projects just don’t work out. Anything could happen to halt or slow down the process, but it’s up to you to keep it going if you can and if you want to.
In the end, this is a fun project that you can do. But there are many moving parts to make sure that it runs smoothly. In short: take your time, get your ducks in a row, and have a clear goal of what you want to accomplish because it will take a lot of work. Good luck!
