What's a zine? And why?
I'm going to ramble self-indulgently for a bit, feel free to skip to the next part.
Last week, I went back home and was looking through some of my stuff from high school. I found the first zine I'd ever seen, given to me by another student, printed out on the school printer. It had never previously occurred to me that you could just make a book and call it something worth doing. It also probably wasn't a coincidence that we were both queer, both closeted, though not particularly close, at a time when one simply could not be out in high school. I saw the hints of a possibility of a community that we defined ourselves, not one that was defined for us.
At the time I had access to the Internet, but in a fairly limited way and it was pretty new. I read about making websites in a magazine about science for kids but couldn't actually do so. So for me this one single zine contained within it all of the possibilities that the Internet might have, if I had been born a few years later. I wasn't part of a larger "scene" either. But this idea of a zine stuck with me for many years before I heard the word again.
Gatekeeping zines (keeping the gate open)
I want everyone to be able to make zines.
I don't want to tell anyone that what they are making isn't a zine. If the word feels right to you, you're free to it. But I also don't want anyone to feel like what they're making isn't good enough to be a zine, because there's no such thing. The concept of a zine opens the door to people to create who are shut out of conventional publishing.
So I won't ever tell someone that they are wrong to call something a zine, but I will tell you if your definition of a zine is wrong. Your definition of a zine is wrong, if:
- You think it needs professional, paid art on the cover or any interior page
- You think doodles or collages or random pieces of public domain art aren't good enough
- You think pages need to be bound nicely, or professionally printed
- You think the layout needs to be professional, to be done in layout software
- Maybe most controversially, if you think it needs editing
A zine should have a barrier to entry no higher than a blog post.
You probably haven't heard anyone actually explicitly say "a zine requires editing" or "my art isn't good enough for a zine". This is probably something you've only heard a voice say inside your head. The gate that needs opening is the one inside your head.
I'm not telling you not to do anything. Maybe you're really into fonts, or love doing layout. Maybe you are actually quite good at art. Maybe you have a relevant university degree. PoD doesn't need a big financial investment, and you can fund a Mixam print run by selling PDFs on itch. The point isn't that you aren't allowed to do those things, or that you need to achieve some platonic ideal of zine-hood. The point is that you don't have to. You are free of those constraints, and can freely pick the constraints that matter to you.
Why zines, though? Why do they matter?
Another thing to consider is, why were zines a thing? Before the Internet, they were a cheap and easy way of spreading ideas in a way that allows for many copies to be made. Zines didn't exist just because people really liked photocopy machines. Zines allowed books to be published without any gatekeepers. Conventional publishing limits who can access it. You need money and time, you need your idea to be respectable and marketable, you need to get your ideas past the gatekeepers of those who can own printing presses or brick and mortar stores.
There are a lot of things that carry the spirit of zines without being zines. PDFs made with free software and posted on itch. Blog posts. Cheap personal websites. Google docs and shared spreadsheets.
And there are other ways of making things more accessible, easier to spread. Creative commons publications, for instance. Games that are entirely markdown files. PDF files meant to be printed.
The point actually isn't the format, although the format is fun and worthwhile. The point is the creative freedom.
On non-corporate media
Every now and then someone makes a grand pronouncement about how we will free ourselves from corporations. We won't post on corporate social media, or use Kickstarter, or any of those things. And it never actually happens - because it's hard, it's too ambitious, and people give up. Yes, some people stick with it, but not the whole community.
Part of the problem is that it is often phrased as an obligation, a sacrifice you have to make, a cause that's imposed on you. And so people don't follow through. And another part of the problem is that it is basically impossible to exist on the Internet these days entirely outside of corporate control, and I'm going to be honest, an extremely niche hobby is not going to transform the entire Internet. When it comes to generally trying to fix things in society, I spend 99% of my energy outside of the world of TTRPGs.
Ask yourself instead, in what ways do you feel trapped or constrained? What non-corporate options make you excited about its possibilities? Maybe you feel you need corporate social media, but can create a space that you control by making your own website. Maybe you have to do Kickstarters to pay the bills or to just fulfill your dream of being published, but your blog gives you an outlet to share ideas without the constant pressure of marketability. Maybe it's learning to draw in this world of generative AI. But most importantly, find something you love, that you care about, and not just something that someone on social media said you need to do.
And maybe none of that is important to you. Personally, I think that's fine. But try and leave room for other people to find those things that are important to them, and maybe spend a bit of time cheering them on.
Related Work
A bunch of blog posts have been written recently on the general subject:
The Zungeon Manifesto: This is the one that finally motivated me to polish up and publish this blog post that has been in my drafts for over a year. If you want to try and make a zine - in the sense of something unpolished and unconstrained - here's a good place to start.
The Year of the Beta - Put out something you've done this year that isn't finished. For me, I'll do one or more of these things - a set of rules for stanalone community and character relatinships I've been working on for over a year, or maybe more elements of my implied setting, probably as blog posts.
1E Manifesto: Put out something that's complete, but a first version. Finish something instead of making something perfect.
Indie TTRPG Scene Agenda: try and be a bit scrappier, a bit less dependent on big corporate platforms and more dependent on your peers.
The website manifesto: Not TTRPG related, but maybe some motivation to put together a website.
I've probably missed some, let me know.
Also, consider looking into non-RPG zines as well. There's a lot of cool stuff out there.