Zine Resources:

(last updated February 2009, just a draft)

Interesting Zines:

This will have its own page at some point...

Reading & Buying Zines:

Of course, zine fests are the best way to browse and talk to individual zine makers. But if you don't happen to be near one spatially and temporally:

SF Bay Area:

• Needles & Pens in the Mission is a great source of zines, letterpressed items, and other like-minded things
  • You can also buy some eldash zines there
• Various of the bookstores on Valencia St (in particular Modern Times (check out that early-to-the-internet-party 4-letter domain name...) and Dog-Eared)
• City Lights Bookstore in North beach
• Bound Together bookstore in the Haight
• Aquarius Records in the Mission
• Other record and book stores in general, I'm sure

• The San Francisco Public Library also has a special zine / little maga collection, focusing in particular on SF Bay Area zines. They have 1000+ zines from the past 70 years or so.
  • The collection is fascinating-- it's interesting to browse through the both polished and informal zines full of political, artistic, personal, and mundane ramblings of previous decades of SF residents. I've only been there for one afternoon, but here are some interesting ones I came across:
    • (em)zine -- issue #15 about bikes was good
    • H2SO4 -- interesting to look at the first 6 issues or so and see how print run and production values evolved (including the move from hand-screenprinted covers on stiff paper to "professional" glossy high-run offset-printed(?) on thinner paper for later issues)
    • The Digger Papers (1960s/70s, "free store"/"free city" musings)
    • Zine World #1 (1996) compared to #25 (2007)
    • Directory of Little Magazines (1972-1973)
  • Some practical details: It's part of the "book arts & special collections" center, so they are non-circulating and not available for open browsing: you go in to the reading room (there's actually a special side room off the main special collections reading room, on the 6th floor), look through the list (currently just titles), fill out a slip with what you want to read, and a runner goes off and comes back with boxes with your zines of interest (the boxes are sorted alphabetically by title, so for each zine you've requested, you get a box with probably 2-5 different zines in alphabetical proximity-- interesting for browsing).
  • The book arts & special collections center has more limited hours than the library in general-- check out the link above. And on Sundays, while they are technically open, the experts who run the special side room are out. So you might need to know what you wanted ahead of time. The woman who was sitting in the side reading room was very knowledgable, so I'd recommend going there on a day other than Sunday.
  • There are various policies, mainly: you have to leave your bag at a desk, and only use a pencil to take notes, not a pen. You also have to leave an ID with them when you request the zines. You should also ask for permission before taking photos/making copies of any of the zines-- it's generally okay, but you need to sign a copyright-related form to tell them it's for personal use, not commercial
  • I think you can also get photocopies of particular zines through interlibrary loan, if you're not in the area? I'm not sure. But since the catalog is currently just title, number, and year.
  • (also as a bit of self-promotion: they have one issue of the eldash zine in their collection-- neat! 'm not sure how it happened-- maybe they have a buyer who goes to zine fests and surreptitiously (why?) buys zines.)
  • 

Outside the SF Bay Area, or mail order / internet-based:

• The University of Wisconsin has quite a collection, some online or indexed online? I haven't looked into this yet.
• Zine World is a collection of reviews, news, articles, and letters, I recommend picking up a copy. No, you can't just read it all online (you can also read through current and old issues in the SFPL Zine collection, see above). They also have a list of some stores & distros on their web site.
  • I appreciate people who take a stand, on anything. They say: "We’re not likely to review anything that’s made by a company, corporation, or college; anything that’s easily available through mainstream commercial channels; or anything where the primary purpose seems to be making a buck. We believe in independent literature, so our general rule of thumb is - if you did it yourself we’re interested, but if someone paid you to do it, we’re not. We do not review e-zines or websites. We do not review music. Additionally, we have specific criteria for the books we will review."
• Etsy's zine category
• Guapo Comics & Books in Portland (I haven't been there, but someone involved with them came down to the SF Zine Fest to buy interesting zines to carry).
• We Make Zines - zine-related online network, I'm just starting to check it out. (though it is organized through another company that places ads on the pages. not totally in the zine spirit, though yeah, yeah, that's how most of the internet is organized and providing a platform for making connections is good, blah blah blah.)
• Or in general, finding a zine maker's address through one of the above methods, and writing to them.

Making Zines:

• Just do it, right? No fancy tools needed.

Well, a few things I find handy (links to be added, at some point):

• Zine World's online "Zine 101" 2-page pdf
• Photocopying info to be added here
• Interesting paper for covers or special sections: Arch Drafting & Supplies, etc.
• Imposing: the process of arranging and rotating your pages so that you can photocopy and cut them and everything lines up correctly (especially when you're printing multiple pages to a sheet of paper).
  • You can do this pretty quickly by physicall printing, cutting, and pasting.
  • There are also software methods if you have your zine in the computer to start, or scanned. Quite Imposing is an Acrobat plugin that lets you do some pretty detailed document layout and arrangement. It's not remotely free and designed for higher-end publishing applications, but if someone you know or a media/printing lab has it available...
• Assembly tools
  • If you're stapling a lot of bindings yourself, a long-arm stapler (here's one I've used from Swingline) is useful, but expensive.
• Other resources
  • Stolen Sharpie Revolution is nice: blog (notes that version 2 of SSR is coming out soon), Google Books link, Microcosm Publishing sells the previous version (sadly, there's been a falling out between Microcosm and the author, Zine World #25 has some info about this).
  • Just looking at a lot of other zines gives ideas for the technical/assembly side

( <== back to eldash zine (an out of date page...) )