Mous

so over the last two years I have printed and assembled at home hundreds of zines, and my god have I learned a lot between ink, scissors, tape and mail. everyone can and should make zines! I want to encourage chosters(?) to make zines so, in no particular order:

• start small and quick. practice making a one page zine in one day. your magnum opus zine should wait until you have destroyed the notion of perfection and embraced cheap, quick, and accessible art.
• if printing at home, include printer settings in the file name. ex. "sad gay vampire poems_print_shortedge_fit". I know this is the print file, that it needs to be printed at fitted scale and with short edge layout. when working with multiple layouts, colors, sizes, etc this is a lifesaver
• printing with bleed is a pain in the ass. I would consider it an advanced printing skill. if you want to do something a little special, consider printing the cover on color paper instead of bothering with bleed.
• • HOWEVER if you really want to do bleed: give your interior pages wide margins for when you trim. always "hand" collate the pages instead of printing with booklet settings. as in, make your own print spreads that are a full page image instead of two half-pages. the reason for this is that some printers will not perfectly center pages when printing booklet. (my printer adds room for staples on the long or short side which. I don't want that?? stop.)
• • if you don't know what those words meant, printing with bleed will probably be a huge headache.
• • frankly if you are a stickler for details, "hand" collating your print files is the best way to go.
• if you want to make a lot of zines and assemble them yourself, invest in a long arm stapler first, and then a paper guillotine.
• open source images are your friend. here's an infinite scroll of the met museum's open source images
• zines can be mailed cheapest in the USA and internationally in a regular envelope and stamp. just make sure the envelope is not thicker than 1/4 inch, not larger than 11-1/2" long x 6-1/8" high, has no clasps, and is BENDY. you'll have to pay more for square envelopes or heaver than 1oz. larger envelopes like for Important Documents cost a little more but at $1.20 are still cheap.
• printing/copy $$$ copy shop xerox machines are often the cheapest way to source your zines, but in some locations they've gotten more expensive. cheapest method is to befriend someone with an office job and printer / copy machine and liberate it's usage. best value copy has good prices, staples has ok prices. ink is notoriously expensive if you want to print at home BUT some printers have ink subscriptions at a great value.
• ZCMAG has lots of cool free resources including a print-at-home library, free small edition printing for those who can't print zines themselves (10 copies), resources, an idea generator, and an upcoming NSA micro grant! we have a p cool discord server too.

who else has some zine making tips? also hmu with any questions or encouragement as needed!

awesome tips!! a few others i'd give is:

• plan your zine's page count to always be divisible by 4. every sheet of paper you use to print your booklet will become four pages in your final book. work this into your layout plans from the jump.
• dummy copies: wherever you're printing your zine, always print out a single test or "dummy" copy of your zine and fold it together first. this lets you check your layout work AND it gives you an idea of your printing device's settings. you may need to adjust copy brightness/darkness, page alignment, paper type, or color settings-- do this with a test copy before printing out like 100 copies to sell.
• it's always morally correct to pirate Adobe software. there are also nice print layout program alternatives, like Affinity Publisher, but Adobe patented the PDF file format and the CMYK color profile system, so InDesign essentially has this annoying stranglehold on the graphic design industry right now. which makes it perfectly okay to steal it. fuck 'em