#zine spotlight

[neondownpourzine]

CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT – HIGHONCATFOOD

Next is the phenomenal Highoncatfood! With striking colors and delightfully expressive character art, we’re very excited to see what he creates for the zine. His forte is Silent Stride, which allows him to become practically invisible as he walks quietly- perfect for working incognito.

#rain code zine #mdarc #rain code #fandom zine #raincode #master detective archives: rain code #zine promo #zine spotlight #yomiakou

[objectumzine]

Contributor spotlight📞

Check her out here!!!! @pigswithwings

#objectum #posic #zine #zine promo #objectophilia #osor #zine spotlight

[thejasminezine]

✨Volume 1 is out NOW!✨

We're so excited to share the work of LGBTQ+ South Asian artist and writers with you!

You can download it for free here:

#zine #zine release #zine feature #free zine #fanzine #lgbt zine #south asian zine #artzine #writing zine #zine scene #zine spotlight #zine promo #fan zine

[aktyzine]

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ GUEST SPOTLIGHT⋆⁺₊⋆

We’re excited to kick off our guest spotlights! Our first guest artist is @soapyakships! Their favorite things about AkiToya are the trust, the companionship, their chemistry, and those sweet teasing moments.

We love the character and raw emotions in her art, and are greatly honored that they’re on board and look forward to what they will create!

#guest spotlight #zine promo #project sekai #akitoya #zine spotlight

[worldbeyondzine]

next artist spotlight we've got @newtcookie!

#description in alt text #horror zine #horror artist #transmasc zine #transmasc artists #zine spotlight #zine contributor #world beyond zine

[ff7ogzine]

Making a zine?

Consider going ✨ digital first and free/not for profit! ✨

There are so many benefits to this approach:

Eliminates your risk of fraud, embezzlement, tax issues and legal liability (which might be on your mind after the latest scandal)

Reduces scope and logistical complexity while your zine is being produced 

Makes your zine more accessible to readers, contributors, and first-time mods 

Allows you to include whatever content you want without worrying about unfriendly storefront policies (often a concern for NSFW content)

Reduces your zine’s overall timeline to delivery

Allows you to have a nice big simul-launch party

Keeps your zine a community passion project rather than a professional commitment, preserving the spirit of fannish culture

You can still coordinate a print run later, if you want to!

Free + digital first is the strategy we took with Return to the Planet, and everyone on the team feels that it was an excellent decision. Our zine was a success! To give you an idea of our impact:

Our Twitter follower count is about 512, and our zine release has received 444 likes and 289 retweets (a 144% engagement rate), plus 697 impressions to our website, indicating that it has been pretty widely read among the audience we have

Although our zine was completely free, we raised $1300 USD and counting in at-will donations using Tiltify as a charity fundraiser platform – without a mod ever having to handle money or personal information

Even with the digital zine freely available, we still had enough interest to proceed with a print run, and sold 133 copies internationally (which we are now working to fulfill)

I cannot overstate how well this model worked for us! After the cut I’ll go into detail about the logistics and the benefits at each step. If you’re curious about this option, or just want to read about our process, read on!

We chose free + digital first for RTTP because of two constraints on the project:

As an anniversary zine, we had a fixed deadline we were targeting for delivery, which would have given us 7 months total from “hey let’s make a zine” to delivery. A print run was out of the question.

We had a team of first-time mods and wanted to minimize scope, stress and risk by taking money out of the equation

Here's how it turned out.

Timeline

Our mods are spreadsheet-loving workaholics, so YMMV, but the 7 month timeline from inception to delivery turned out to be just right. This broke down to:

1 month interest check and initial planning

1 month contributor applications opened and prep finalized

3 months for contributors to work on their pieces

2 months for zine production and promotion

We saved a significant amount of time that would have gone towards printing and shipping, which could have easily doubled the length of the project. We also had to make fewer decisions and do less research and setup up-front because we didn’t need to make decisions related to costing early on. 

Although we were working towards a fixed deadline we didn’t want to move, choosing a digital release generally affords you better control over your timeline by reducing your dependencies on external factors such as shipping delays and changing import laws.

Contributors and Content

Under normal circumstances, printing or selling your zine comes with contributor and content restrictions. 

The number of contributors a zine has will impact the size and weight of the physical book, which will affect its cost to print and ship. Digital zines simply don’t have this problem, and so our contributor limits were instead dictated by the amount of work our mod team felt willing to handle.

The same physical size constraints tend to cause zines to feature more art than writing because it takes less space per piece. Alternative, fewer writers being accepted with a much more restrictive word count. Because we weren’t worried about the size, we were able to accept many writers with a reasonable word-count, and invite essayists as well as fic authors for content variety.

Our zine was SFW, so we don’t have strong experience here, but going free/not-for-profit will also eliminate issues NSFW zines might encounter with trying to comply with storefront policies.

Charity Campaign

We decided later in the project that although the zine would be free, we should try to raise some money for charity while we were at it. We created digital merch that would be gated behind a minimum charity payment as an incentive. It was very painless to set this up without mods having to handle money directly. We used the charity fundraising platform Tiltify to accept payments on our behalf.

Anyone who contributed to the Tiltify campaign above a certain dollar amount received an email with a link to a Google Drive folder containing all the digital goodies. One could easily use this service to deliver a digital charity zine in the same way without having to manage a storefront. It's an excellent option for not-for-profit mods who want to avoid bookkeeping.

Release

Working toward a specific release date for the zine helped with the sense of community and morale on this project. We were very in control of our own delivery timelines and not beholden to external delays, so building the hype train was fun! Everyone involved got to see their work go out into the world at the same time and share in that sense of achievement.

Contributors also had a pretty minimal publishing embargo on their work, and were able to share their pieces approximately 2 months after the completion deadline, as opposed to having to wait for all shipping and fulfillment to complete.

Print Run

We had always entertained the idea of a limited print run, so we kept the project print-safe from the start, enabling us to do a print-run afte the fact. 

After the zine’s release and a much needed several-month break for our mods, we felt we had the confidence, experience and trust we needed, and we set out to pursue that print run. We were unsure at the outset whether or not anyone would be interested in buying a copy of an already freely accessible zine. Turns out, the interest was definitely there!

We had no trouble at all meeting minimum order thresholds and have been able to move into the production phase. We are still in the process of delivering on our print run, so more reflections to come later, but I think having already delivered on our zine made the process less stressful and created less guesswork for us when it came to working out costs. We knew what our product would be like and we had a pretty good idea about the interest of our audience. This allowed us to stay pretty close to at-cost pricing for the zine.

Minimal Stress and Headaches

Our mod team had two mantras. One of them we repeated to each other whenever things felt overwhelming: “Free digital zine.” Just by removing any money from the equation we lowered the stakes – and therefore the stress – substantially. We were blessedly free of internal problems and drama, but if they had arisen, the “free digital zine” principle also would have helped to protect us, and protect the success of the project.

It also limited the stress on mods to break creating the zine and coordinating the production run into two separate projects. We were able to focus on one thing at a time and make sure that the details were all ironed out to the point that nobody lost any sleep over the project.

In the end, reduced stress + greater accessibility are probably the #1 reasons to pursue free and digital first. If you've made it this far - thanks for reading, and feel free to reach out with any questions. We'd love to see more free digital zines make it out into the world!

#free zines #zines on tumblr #zines #fandom zines #zine spotlight #ffvii zines #fanzines #zine #interest check

[studentfilm-mhzine]

Meet some of our artists!

Meet our amazing artists.

@flomp-mp4

Gantz.

@stampsthemeow

You can check their art in their accounts, hype them up! what will they draw?

#artist spotlight #mh fanzine #fanzine #fandom zine #zine #digital fanzine #zine spotlight

[jaydick-week]

❤️💙 Writer Spotlight 💙❤️

Who is that? Why it’s element78, who will be writing for our SFW volume! Check them out on AO3!

#element78 #jaydick #dickjay #jaydickzine #zine spotlight

[enemywithinzine]

ENEMY WITHIN SPOTLIGHT

One of our fantastic writers @no-shxme!

#league of legends zine #league of legends #league zine #fanzine #fanzines #lol zine #zine spotlight #writer spotlight

[nevermind-zine]

Welcome Jesse, our guest merch artist!

@deadmaidclub

#danganronpa #danganronpa zine #zine #danganronpa fanzine #sdr2 #sonia nevermind #sonia nevermind sdr2 #sonia nevermind zine #super danganronpa 2 #guest spotlight #merch artist #zine spotlight #merch artist spotlight

[labelleepoque-vanlockzine]

🎻GUEST ARTIST 🍷 @ayyunsart brings a real breeze of fresh air to our zine with their colorful illustrations!

#vanlock #la belle epoque fanzine #vanlock fanzine #dgs fanzine #fanzine #vanlock zine #zine spotlight #la belle epoque zine #lbe spotlights

[neondownpourzine]

CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT – ICYONICE

Next, meet IcyonIce, an environmental writer who’s very skilled at setting an utterly magical mood in her work. Her forte is basically a portable red-stringed corkboard, a staple for us detectives. With her descriptive writing, we hope you’ll enjoy what she has in store!

#rain code zine #mdarc #rain code #fandom zine #raincode #master detective archives: rain code #zine promo #zine spotlight #clockmare

[objectumzine]

Contributor spotlight📞

Check them out here!! @spookylovesboba @spookylovesart

#objectum #posic #zine #zine promo #objectophilia #osor #zine spotlight

[loveacrossthedaszine]

⚔️ Guest Spotlight: Hava

Our Cover Artist is @haverdoodles

Hava’s art emotes tenderness & love through each stroke & color choice; her lighting evokes such strong emotions at each glance & the details have us staring for hours! We’re excited to see the cover she cooks up!

#dragon age zine #love across thedas #cover artist #artist spotlight #zine spotlight #dragon age #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquistion

[aktyzine]

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ GUEST SPOTLIGHT⋆⁺₊⋆

Our next guest artist is @nemururin! Her favorite thing about AkiToya is their partnership and that they are always looking out for each other and growing stronger together!

We absolutely adore the charm of her work, especially how goofy she portrays Akito and Toya! We’re honored she’s joined us!

#project sekai #zine promo #akitoya #zine spotlight #fandom zine

[worldbeyondzine]

today's writer spotlight is @jojotier!

for ease of reading:

Laurel thinks to count the dead but can only count so high. There are hundreds of them. Thousands. They stretch off so far into the dark that Laurel thinks they might cover the whole of the ocean in legions of beautifully drowned gore.

There is a ringing in her ears and Laurel knows she is being called home.

Slowly, she lowers the light. The drowned ladies are once again rendered as shades bulging under the cover of the silent sea as Laurel’s throat burns with the salt.

#description in alt text #transgender zine #trans zine #horror zine #transmasc zine #horror writer #transmasc writer #transgender writer #trans writer #world beyond zine #zine contributor #zine spotlight