While most zine creators regard their publications as a labor of love, others also make money from them. We take an honest and helpful look at how to increase your chances of making a profit from your zine
In today’s digital age, zines continue to thrive as a unique form of self-expression and self-publishing. These small, independently produced publications offer a platform for creators to share their work, ideas, and passions with like-minded individuals. With the rise of zine culture, we get an increasing number of questions from independent creators who are curious about the potential to make money from their zines. In this post guide, we explore the various aspects of zine-making, the advantages of printing with an offset printer, choosing a zine topic, the costs involved, and ultimately, the potential for generating income from your zines.
Although, in the interests of honesty and transparency, we know from our long experience that the idea of making anything like a living from selling your zine is unrealistic. Not impossible, but so unlikely that you may as well forget about it. There are easier ways to make money! Publishing a zine will always be primarily a passion project. However, with the right approach, you can make your zine profitable; at least enough so that it pays for itself in terms of production and distribution costs; and if you’re really smart, maybe a little side income, too. Now we’ve calibrated our expectations, let’s dive in!
What is a zine?
A zine, which is short for a magazine, is a small, self-published, and often non-commercial publication that usually focuses on a specific topic or theme. Zines can encompass a wide range of formats, including short stories, essays, tracts, poetry, photography, or artwork. They are often handmade, or printed in limited quantities, and distributed at a low cost or for free. By nature and definition, they have a small circulation – usually only a few hundred copies of each issue, although the most successful can run to a few thousand – and focus on a single, niche topic.
DIY culture and zines
Zines have a long history in the DIY (do-it-yourself) culture, with roots in punk rock, political activism, and underground art scenes. The DIY ethos of zine-making emphasizes accessibility, affordability, and creative freedom, making it a popular choice for independent artists, writers, commentators, and activists who want to share their work outside the mainstream publishing industry. While the early zines were often hand written and then copied using an old-fashioned mimeograph (or stencil copying machine) with a hand-driven crank handle, most successful zine publishers now get their copies professionally printed. A cheap option is always digital printing, especially for very short or occasional runs; while offset printing is the most efficient choice for longer runs or zines which need higher quality artwork reproduction. But the content creation, artwork, layout, and distribution are still part of the DIY culture, all being handled by one person or a small team of unpaid, dedicated enthusiasts.
So, can you make money from zines?
While some zine creators may have found financial success, it’s essential to understand that zines are primarily a labor of love, driven by passion and the desire to connect with others. The non-profit nature of zines means that creators often prioritize community-building, artistic expression, and sharing ideas over generating income. That said, since the origin of zines, times and technology have changed. With the rise of the Internet and social media, it’s easier than ever to find and build a community around your zine project. And just as with a social media channel or a blog, there are now more opportunities to monetize your zine than there used to be. So, while not a focus of the zine culture, yes, it is possible to monetize a zine through sales, advertising, subscriptions, donation models, or promoting and distributing it on platforms such as Patreon, Ko-Fi, or Kickstarter, for example.
A quick word about offset printing and zine production
Hands up, we have a natural bias here as we are an offset printing company. However, we’re honest folks who genuinely care about all our customers, so we’ll never tell you that our services are the best option for you if they’re not. For example, if you have no intention of monetizing your zine and your distribution will be fewer than a hundred copies, you’d be better off printing them with a digital printer. The quality won’t be as good, but the price will be better. So, when would offset printing be the best option for you?
If you intend to monetize, you’ll need a better-looking zine and a wider distribution. In that case, for printing your zines, working with an offset printer can offer several advantages over the alternatives. Offset printing provides higher quality prints, more consistent color reproduction, and a wider range of paper and formatting options, making it an ideal choice for zine creators who want to produce professional-looking publications. While offset printing can be more expensive than other methods like photocopying or digital printing if you only need a few copies per run, it can be much more cost-effective for larger print runs, potentially allowing you to lower the per-unit cost of printing your zines to just a few cents.
For technical reasons, with digital printing, the price-per-unit doesn’t change even if you need a thousand copies or more, so large runs of even a few hundred can get very costly. With offset, the more you print at a time, the cheaper it gets per unit. So, if you know you need over one hundred copies in a run, you’ll almost certainly be better off with offset printing than with digital. And you’ll also get the advantages of much more creative freedom in terms of paper choices, styles, formatting, finishes, bindings, and more. So, which you choose depends very much on your needs and aims. If you’re not sure which is best for your project, just talk to us. We’re a friendly bunch and will be happy to give you an honest opinion.
How to choose your zine topic
While you may already have a clear idea of what your zine is to be about and to whom it’s targeted, selecting a topic for your zine is an essential step in the creative process. If you’re still undecided, then consider your own interests, passions, and expertise when choosing a subject. Think about the audience you want to reach and the message you want to convey. Keep in mind that zines are often niche publications, catering to specific communities or subcultures, so focusing on a unique or specialized topic can help you stand out and connect with your target audience, which will help you build a following and a community around your work. And building a strong and dedicated community will be necessary to monetize your zine down the line. An extra word of advice on that score: just as with a blog, at the start, focus solely on delivering excellent content and building your fanbase; leave monetization until you have a minimum number of regular readers who value your efforts and the ideas, work, and information that you share. Once you have, say, 100 subscribers or maybe 1,000 subscribers depending on your aims, then you can monetize. Before you can ask for patronage, sell ad space, or expect voluntary donations, you need to prove that you’re serious, that you care, and that you can supply real value to your target readership. So, you’ll need to invest time and energy upfront as a loss-leader while you provide that proof.
How much does it cost to print a zine?
The cost of printing a zine can vary depending on factors such as the size, page count, paper quality, and printing method used. While DIY photocopying or short run digital printing can be an affordable option for small-scale zine production, offset printing can offer better quality and cost-efficiency for larger print runs. As a zine creator, you’ll need to weigh the costs and benefits of different printing methods to determine the best approach for your specific needs and budget.
Perfect Bound Zine Printing Prices
- Cover: 250 gsm / 92 lb coated cover paper with matte lamination
- Interior: 128 gsm / 86 lb coated text paper, full color printing
- Saddle stitch or perfect binding
| Quantity / Page count | 100 | 200 | 500 | 800 | 1000 | 2000 | 3000 | 5000 |
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Prices Updated on July 24, 2023（The price doesn’t include shipping costs.）
10 steps to zine success: creating, distributing, and monetizing your zine
Now, if you’re still reading, we can assume that you have a good grasp of what’s involved in producing a successful zine, that you’re still keen to have a go, and that you’d probably like to monetize your publication once you’ve established a following. With that in mind, let’s go into a little more detail and share the 10 steps you’ll need to cover to maximize your chances of printing and distributing a successful money-making zine.
1. Find your niche
Determine a unique and interesting topic for your zine that will resonate with your intended audience. Ideally, this will be a topic about which you are already both knowledgeable and passionate. It could be anything from a literary genre or subgenre such as SF or Steampunk to a game like World of WarCraft, Elder Scrolls, or Call of Duty. You might choose a hobby, such as cultivating bonsai trees at home or collecting baseball cards, vintage plates, or candy wrappers. Alternatively, promote a cause such as environmentalism, a particular philosophy or worldview. You could also use a zine as a hub to build a community around your poetry, artwork, or even music. There’s no limit other than your imagination and enthusiasm. But with zines, assuming there’s a community out there, the narrower the niche, the better.
2. Develop your content
Creating engaging and original content for your zine, including writing, artwork, photography, or any other medium that suits your chosen field, is clearly a core part of your effort. It’s best not to leave this side of things to chance or inspiration. A better idea is to develop and organize a content calendar, even up to a year ahead. How much content you need will depend on your ncihe, your available time, and how often you plan to publish. But the first step should be to brainstorm every topic, sub-topic, idea, and theme that you can think of relating to your niche. Then group these together in lists and see how you can expand on them. You’ll need to ask yourself how much content you can write based on the knowledge you already have and how much you’ll need to research to fill out any gaps and make sure that everything you share is up-to-date and correct. Many zines divide their content into different types. For example:
- An editorial
- Regular columns or pages dedicated to a specific aspect of the niche
- Features that cover a subject in more depth or link to a particular season or important date for the community
- Fillers – short pieces that may add value, highlight specific facts in a few words, or be humorous, for example
- Illustrations and cartoons
- Comic strips
- Photographs
- Events and meetups listings
- Profile pieces focusing on historical or contemporary persons who have played or play an important role in the activity, hobby, interest, or community
Once you have enough ideas, give them titles, list bullet points of everything that each piece will include, and assign them a start date, completion date, and publication date. It takes an investment of time, for sure, to plan a content calendar, but it means that you’ll never be short of ideas. You can always change it if something topical and unexpected comes to light. Also, it’s a good way of finding out if you have enough material to run the zine in the long term. We’ve seen a few zines start only to run out of steam before the first year’s up. So, make sure that you have enough material. Running questionnaires and quizzes on your social media is a great way to find out what the community is interested in and to generate more topics for future content.
3. Choose a format
Once you know your topic or niche and you’ve got a good idea of the kind and quantity of content you’ll be creating, you can move on to think about the actual print parameters of the publication itself. You’ll need to decide on the size, layout, and binding method for your zine, considering factors like cost, aesthetics, and ease of production. For example, you may have a text-only zine which you want to be pocket-sized and can be printed on uncoated paper, or you may need a larger format with at least some pages – say, for full color art reproductions – printed on gloss or matte coated art paper. Likewise, if your zine has fewer than 46 pages, you might opt for a saddle stitch binding; whereas if it has more, a perfect bound edition could be the better choice.
4. Printing options
We’ve already looked at the pros and cons of digital versus offset printing. Before you can go ahead with producing your zine, you must assess the advantages and drawbacks of different printing methods, such as photocopying, digital printing, or offset printing, to determine the most suitable option for your zine, your audience, your budget, and your target readership. If you feel cautious about the investment, it’s always possible to print your first few editions in small numbers with a digital printer and upgrade to offset printing to improve quality and reduce costs once you’ve built a reasonable following.
5. Set your price
Setting a price point for selling your zine can be a tricky balancing act. How you calculate the figure will depend on several factors, such as your set up, production, and distribution costs, whether you aim to make a profit or just cover your expenses, and how much your readers can afford and will pay. You could also explore other ways of generating revenue without putting a fixed price tag on each issue. For example:
- Subscriptions – which could be for fixed renewable periods, fixed numbers of issues, or lifetime
- Donations – many zines survive on voluntary reader donations and a few even thrive that way
- Patronage – use an open platform such as Patreon or Ko-Fi to build supporters. There’s a bit more work involved if you take this route because supporters on these platforms expect a range of benefits over and above the basic product (in this case, your zine). So, be ready to write “update” posts, offer special giveaways, create video blogs, and run Q&A sessions, for example
- Crowdfunding – in many ways similar to patronage, but with crowdfunding platforms such as Indiegogo, Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and the rest, you generate initial capital to get your zine up-and-running. However, if you build a friendly community this can lead to ongoing support via other income streams once you’ve launched
And talking of building a community, in the 21st century, there’s no doubt that the best, most efficient, and cost-effective way to do that is online, leveraging the power of blogging, vlogging, social media, and forums.
6. Create an online presence
Developing a website or a blog coupled to your social media presence and your patronage or crowdfunding platforms is a must to showcase and promote your zine, attract potential readers, and facilitate sales. It takes time to build an audience. Expect to invest several months to a year of your time to build a readership or viewership for your blog or vlog. And the secret of social media is engagement. You can’t just post what amount to adverts for your zine or requests for money on social media and expect anyone to notice or care. You need to output content that informs, entertains, and appeals to your target readership, share other people’s relevant, quality content, follow people in your niche, be helpful and interactive. But a schedule of blog posting or video publishing once or twice a week, regular engagement on the social media that your target group favor, and an active Patreon page, for example, should eventually bring results if you are consistent and give high value.
7. Distribution channels
While your funding and online activities can all act as distribution channels, it’s worthwhile to explore various distribution methods for your zine, such as online sales through retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Quimby’s. If your zine deals with a hobby, interest, activity, or lifestyle that has retail outlets associated with it, such as independent game stores, local bookstores, comic stands, art and craft supplies, vintage clothing, antiques and collectibles, you can ask the proprietors if they’d be willing to stock your zine. Once you start researching, you’ll be surprised at how many zine fairs, conventions, and meetups there are where you might also promote your zines. If you have a very specific target audience – which you should – then investing in direct mailings can also be a good way to go. Brainstorm as many possibilities as you can think of to find even more ways to reach your target audience and maximize exposure.
8. Connect with other zine creators
Remember that most zines are passion projects supported by friendly and enthusiastic communities. Often, there’s a crossover between your niche audience and someone else’s. For example, many Fantasy and SF fans are into reading books, graphic novels and comics, playing video games, board games, role-playing, attending conventions, cosplay events, and watching movies. Think outside the box and look for other communities with whom you can cross-reference information, ideas, and… your zine. Network with fellow zine-makers to share, collaborate on projects, and support each other’s work.
9. Promote your zine offline
We’ve already looked at several ways to promote your zine offline when you’re networking, going to conventions, or pitching your publication to independent stores. But you can also put classified ads in newspapers, put up posters, hand out leaflets and flyers, send out press releases, and run a stall at many related events. Also consider offering talks and workshops to relevant groups, libraries, schools, and colleges. These could be about some aspect of your niche or even about setting up a zine!
10. Monetization strategies
As we’ve seen, you can make money from your zine through direct sales and subscriptions. But you can also sell advertising space, promote third-party goods through affiliate marketing, and even manufacture and sell your own goods – buttons, greeting cards, books are all viable options.
The bottom line
So, what’s the bottom line? Well, while making money from zines may not be a primary goal for many creators, as we’ve shown you, it’s possible to generate some income from your passion through strategic planning, creative marketing, and smart distribution methods. Remember that zines are an avenue for self-expression, community-building, and sharing ideas. Embrace the DIY spirit and enjoy creating, distributing, and connecting with like-minded people and fellow enthusiasts through your zines as your first focus. Once you have a community, then you can monetize.
Let’s talk!
If you’re a genre fan, an original thinker, a non-profit organization, or an independent creative with a story to tell and a desire to print a zine with a company that’s genuinely sympathetic and wants to help you make a thing of beauty without breaking the bank, we should talk. Get in touch today to chat through your needs or to ask for a no-obligation quote. We can’t wait to help you make your zine printing project into a reality and to help you maximize your chances of making money from your zine when you’re ready!
