Make a Zine!: Start Your Own Underground Publishing Revolution

Ask anyone who works for a magazine -- it's a job. Ask anyonewho works on their zine -- it's a passion. This is true and I wouldlike to confirm these words from the first page of the Make A Zine! 20 years ago, when I was young and the Soviet Union was still struggling for communism, I co-published with my friends a jazz zine. It was real SAMIZDAT -- an illegal self-published independent zine. We printed it on the electric type writer with print out of 50 copies or so. It was dangerous but it was passion. Today I am working for a popular computer magazine -- and it is just a good job, not more.This book is destined to be the starting point of an independent magazine self-publishing. You will find the answers to virtually any question you have regarding how to self-publish zine or e-zine. And it's fun to read even if you don't want to publish. Bill Brent gives the best introduction to layout, typography, stats, and design I've ever seen. But he also pays too much attention to his sex zines. In appendix of the book there is a good directory of stores and zine distributors (esp. sex-positive), but valuable in the USA only. Now, in the time of the e-zine explosion, veteran and novice zine editors alike are discovering the joys of paperless publishing. With Internet pulishing everyone is absolutelly independent and free, and there are no expensive print or postage bills. So, make your zines, ladies and genlemen. And I believe computers & Internet someday destroy any ...totalitarian state.

Everything you ever wanted to know about doing your own zine, but didn't know who to ask. Bill's been publishing zines since before forever, knows his stuff inside out, and keeps no secrets. Most highly recommeded, and why so affordable???? I'd pay a lot more than ten bucks to have a successful, big-circulation zine publisher tell me absolutely everything he knows about zines...

I had been doing a zine for two years, and thought I knew what I was doing but I didn't. Thanks to the tips in Make A Zine, my zine's circulation has jumped from a few dozen to more than a thousand, and I've been picked up by Desert Moon and Tower. THANK YOU, BILL BRENT!!!

great read, tells you everything you need to know to get your message out there. excellent!

Over the years, I've accumulated a fair-sized collection of "how to publish" books, looking for tips on putting out a zine. And here or there, I have picked up the odd tip - the use of the folding bone, the joy of rubber cement, the ecstasy of offset - but for the most part, I learned the way every-one else does: the hard, trial & error way. But now Make A Zine! has made the hard way superfluous. Bill Brent, of Black Sheets infamy, has assembled the definitive guide to publishing a zine, and it's a must for any neophyte zinester. Even the most grizzled veteran can pick up a few tips. Of course, anyone telling zine publishers what or how to do anything is bound to catch some flack; they're such an anti-authoritarian bunch. But Bill doesn't shy away from any aspect of zine publishing. From the nuts and bolts of getting things ready for the printer and running things in a somewhat sane, businesslike fashion, to more touchy-feely things like handling the temperamental contributor and dealing with the inevitable sense of burn-out, sound advice is dealt out in a light, breezy way. Hey, it's fun to read even if you don't want to publish! The best stuff is in the production sections. Bill really knows his stuff. He gives the best introduction to layout, typography, stats, and design I've ever seen. Nor is he a piker on the business side of things; sooner or later, money becomes a consideration (generally the amount lost), and you'd better be prepared to deal with it. There's also a useful primer on the legal side of the zine game (copyrights, libel, and taxes), and the inevitable list of store and distribution contacts. It's hard to think of anything that isn't here. Make A Zine! is destined to be the starting point of many a zine, none of which will make the same stupid mistakes I did. Frankly, I'm already jealous. -John Marr