I want my zines to do something

Experiences making, distributing, and selling zines

Most of my experience with zine-making comes from community organizing. I’ve made zines as an individual and as part of a collective.

My experience as a community organizer makes me feel that my responsibility to the reader does not end when the zine is printed and folded. I want my zine to be legible, interesting and engaging.

I once went to Tompkins Square Park and handed out zines related to a tenant organizing effort a couple blocks away. The first zine recipient stared at the folded pamphlet with his eyes glazed over, unfolding the paper and tearing it apart. The destruction seemed unintentional. He asked me to explain what the zine was about.

A year later, I was handing zines to every breathing soul in my complex as part of a tenant unionization effort. I collaborated on these zines with local community organizers who helped design and print the zines. We loved the final result, but most tenants in my building did not feel the same way.

I witnessed tenants do a quick scan through the zine’s pages and then ask me to explain what they had just looked at. They did not appear to be reading at all.

Every once in a while, a tenant would get it. I can count the number of tenants who did - three. I’m glad a few people read the zine from beginning to end, but we easily printed and folded over a hundred. We would dedicate entire days of summer to folding these zines in the park and distributing them to tenants in the building. The gaping lack of return on (emotional) investment motivated me to understand why the read-through rate was so low.

In community organizing meetings, we discussed how most people who are handed a free zine will not read it.

I started to explore how we could play with the zine format. What about a choose-your-own-adventure zine? What about a zine that contains instructions for different games people can play in groups of 4 or more? What about a zine that contains a card game for two people, and the pages of the zine must be ripped out to play the game?

I was shocked when a local bookstore reached out to me and asked if they could sell my zines. People did not want to read my zines for free, so why would they pay for them?

Zines, according to Jeffrey Brown, usually “lose money.” I have been lucky enough to make modest profits. People do buy the zines I have made, but I am still trying to achieve my original goal.

I want to do community organizing. I want my zines to educate and agitate and provoke discussions.

I care about the process of making the zine, but I care even more about what the zine does. What is the result? What does it do? I am okay with people making zines for the sake of making a zine, but I want something different for myself. I want to make zines that do something.

I’m currently taking a class about zines at SFPC, so I will have time and space to explore these ideas further.