It looks like I can't send you a direct message, but I will send over an ask. Thanks so much for taking the time to get back to me! I'm looking to organize a zine in the upcoming months and since I've not had much experience with fandom publications i want to see what advice can be offered, particularly on timeline and running orders. I also LOVED the printing service you used and would love to know which service that was.
Hello, apologies for the late reply. I’ve been pretty busy. I hope you don’t mind if I publish this publicly because I know a lot of people have questions about how to run a zine!
There’s a lot of advice I could give about running a zine, but your best way to learn is probably to take a look at existing publications (projects that have finished and you can see their results) and take a look at how they’ve run things. A lot of zines are run by amateurs, but every once in a while, you’ll see someone who has done it multiple times. Those are the people you want to try and learn from because the first time around, there’s always a lot of trial and error and research and mistakes.
On the subject of schedule, a zine is easily a six to nine month process, if not longer. Between the creation period, the order period, the production period, shipping, customer service, etc. Worlds started September 25th, 2017 and ended mid-May, 2018. We were a leadership team of two and, while certainly there were times when the project was more busy or less, it was running in the back of my head for pretty much that entire time. It’s a large commitment and the back half is nearly all business-related, so you need to be very organized, be comfortable with dealing with real money, and have a very good grasp of all the moving parts.
(I’m a little proud of Worlds because we ran it pretty tight with only a small delay due to the fact I had to coordinate flying out to my partner to do all the shipping over the course of three days. Which was... a choice. @u@;; I think most projects do their shipping over longer periods of time, but we worked morning to night to do it all at once. It was a little hellish. But the reason we pulled it off was because we had planned everything ahead of time to ensure that everything, from merch and books to supplies, arrived at the same time.)
Ordering any sort of product takes about ~ a month, from merch to books. This can be exacerbated if you want proofs (not every company will do them). Usually with zines, because people don’t start off with a lot of capital, orders have to be made after preorders close so it’s important to build that production time into your schedule.
The labor of shipping really depends on whether you have help and how familiar you are with the shipping process in general. I would highly recommend a third party shipping site that creates your labels automatically like stamps or shippingeasy - that’ll easily cut down about 2-3x the time of labor. Then if you’re domestic US, it’s important to get a good handle on the sizes of your package and the international shipping prices that result from that. The easiest and cheapest option is usually USPS First Class, but you’ll need to understand the dimensions and weight of your package.
As for printing, we used printi- they’re pretty good as you can get a proof of your zine (you pay for one copy and then they reimburse you if you do a large order) and if you order three weeks in advance, shipping is free. I liked the quality of their books - their postcards are good, but not the best. In general, I think if you have access to things like cheaper shipping or a local print shop that will do discounts, it’s very useful to investigate - building a relationship with your production companies will help a lot in the long run.
This just scratches the surface, but I hope this can help you get started! Making zines is a very rewarding process if done properly, but like any small business and collaborative project rolled together, it requires a lot of careful thought and a enormous amount of work. But in the end, if you can make something that everyone is proud of and had a good experience making, I think it’s one of the best things in the world. Best of luck!
