Home / Articles / About / Contact

Publishing is perceived as an industry driven by more than mere profit, one guided by the light of spreading information, awareness and literacy. But in reality, most newspapers, magazines and books (as well as TV, radio and the internet) are controlled by an ever-shrinking list of media conglomerates (Bertelsman, AOL Time Warner) whose job is to make profits for shareholders. Publishers today need their products to be marketable to the widest possible audience, which means deriving a formula that sells, developing brands around the authors who have mastered that formula, and selling millions of books by only a few writers. Not exactly a recipe for wide-ranging dissemination of art and information. The result is that those with something to say are much more likely to be given a spot on a daytime talk show than to be published in the conventional manner.

This exclusionary state of affairs is even more pronounced if you're young. Among the trials of being a teen is trying to share your gifts with a world that's too busy to care. Young people yearn to vent their torrent of ideas, raves and rants, but it takes a lot of guts to stand up and express yourself, given the social pressure to blend in and the lack of safe and accessible outlets. American high schools are brimming with painters, writers, musicians and even filmmakers, many of whom feel they never get the chance to showcase their talents.

But for those with a burning desire to be heard and no official channel, there is hope -- the zine.

A zine is just a homemade magazine, but to many it's the ultimate vehicle of self- expression. It's an art form confined by no rules whatsoever, suitable for mass distribution or a run of one or two. Zines can be focused on a single topic, change themes each issue or be about whatever the creator is smitten with at the time. They can be prominently authored, anonymous or, as is often the case, written under a pseudonym.

Producing a zine requires only scissors, tape, glue and access to a photocopier -- and something to say, of course. Assemble it, copy it and put it out there; more professional touches may be added (color covers, inserts, binding), but that's basically it. Lucky zinesters find ways to photocopy on the cheap, but the cost of reproducing zines at a copyshop is hardly prohibitive. There are distribution networks for more ambitious home publishers, but work, school, coffee shops or music events are the best places to connect zines with potential readers. Local book and comic stores sometimes allow zines to be sold on consignment. It's nice to return printing costs by charging a quarter or two, but some zinesters enjoy the goodwill and ease of just giving them away.

To get an idea of the possibilities inherent in the medium, take any random sampling of zines. There are zines about thrift shopping (THRIFT SCORE), washing dishes (DISHWASHER), Pez collecting (CANDY DISPENSER JOURNAL), eight track cassettes (8-TRACK MIND), clip art (CRAP HOUND), family restaurants (A DAY IN THE LIFE OF APPLEBEES), pinball (MULTIBALL), sizeism (FAT!SO?), geriatrics (DUPLEX PLANET) and even excrement (WE LIKE POO). There are journal zines (called "perzines") galore (COMETBUS, GIRL INFINITY, UBERBOT), music zines (MAXIMUM ROCK AND ROLL, E.X.P.B.) and zines about zines (FACT SHEET FIVE). There's so many that no list can claim to be comprehensive, and new titles are created and discontinued all the time.

Who makes zines? Often, they're people who oppose the status quo of their schools, their jobs or their social groups; people with something to say who don't wait to be invited to say it. School-age zinesters are looking for an alternative to writing about the football game for the school paper or entering the social studies essay contest. Working-stiff zinesters see it as an opportunity to create something more personal and tangible than they can at their jobs. Zineing is usually perpetrated on the margins -- by artists, eccentrics, malcontents, radicals -- but under the right circumstances it can connect with the greater community. The following personal anecdote is an example of this, and a good illustration of a zine lifecycle.

Some friends and I started Young Anarchist Publication (YAP) as an alternative to what we saw as the jockish, conformist hegemony of our Des Moines, Iowa high school. It was an identity-building exercise for people disappointed by mainstream culture, blended with some half-understood radical politics. We collected writing and imagery we liked from other anarchist zines and superimposed the faces of school administrators and student council members onto raunchy cartoons. Original content included poems of teen alienation, a commentary on the decision to lock the school doors during class hours, and inflammatory lies about what went on in the teachers’ lounge. A sympathetic night-shifter at the Gay/Lesbian Resource Center let us use their copier if we supplied the paper (which I stole from my job, along with a stapler). We passed out YAP #1 during class before teachers knew what was happening. Students crowded in the hallways between classes, thrilled to be holding something so blatantly inappropriate at school.

YAP #1 was banned at school within two hours. Copies were rounded up by teachers and those found responsible were given in-school suspension (although we had cunningly used made-up names, we also bragged widely of our authorship). After YAP #2, the Des Moines Register wrote a brief story featuring a picture of us sitting in a "circle A" configuration (the symbol for anarchy) in front of our school. Somebody's younger sibling passed YAP around at the middle school, to the horrified dismay of local parents, earning our zine a spot on the nightly news. Kids at other high schools emulated our effort and began inviting us to their parties. For publishing things we didn't have the nerve to say out loud, our zine garnered us attention far beyond our expectations, and validated the feelings that drove us to produce it.

Six issues of YAP were produced, which is a decent run for a self-financed effort banned from its main distribution outlet. Our production values improved and our list of contributors shrank, reduced to two by the last issue. What began as a contemptuous joke on people and things we disliked became a mini-sensation, and then, years later, something that is shown to high school journalism students to illustrate how, in media, you don't necessarily have to play by the rules.

And it's this realization that motivates so many young people to make zines. In a world that feels aggressively circumscribed by rules and negative consequences for speaking one's mind, the zine is unencumbered. As one young Zinester puts it, "If I have to be told I can talk, but I have to wait my turn (which is never) and I have to do it quietly, I’m gonna lose it. I’m not gonna wait to be heard." This is 14-year old Emilie Fiengold-Tarrant, aka Electra Karma of GIRL INFINITY, a zine about art, media, girl power and affecting change. With the help of her mother, who drives her to and from the copyshop, Emilie has managed to get heard. Zine chatrooms titter gleefully with news of her appearances at events or the release of new issues. Electra Karma's example is rare, but it's possible for zinesters to attain fame on a small-scale -- and on their own terms.

Like notorious teen zinester Seth Bogard, who has created an underground industry out of his zany publications and corollary projects. Perhaps best known as the author of PUBERTY STRIKE, the "retard zine machine" from Tucson has made over 30 issues of his various zines and gained attention on the web and in books about zineing, like Francesca Block and Hillary Carlip's Zine Scene. He has his own record label (The Super-8 Underground, which sells compilation CDs), a website (Super8.com, with music reviews and lots of baffling weirdness), and even font designs he sells and gives away. In his highly coveted zines, like A DAY IN THE LIFE OF APPLEBEES and THE CHICKEN FINGERS BASKETS, he grades his teachers, spins haikus and outlines pranks he's played on Applebee's restaurant employees. Seth is a superb example of empowerment through zines. The popularity of his absurd offerings have turned him into a crusader for teen voices and an unlikely launch pad for young artists and musicians from across the country. All for being his wacky, awkward self.

The number of teen zinesters out there is impossible to determine, as no distro, as zine distributors are called, can claim to represent them all. And that's good, because discovering zines you’ve never heard of is part of the fun as a consumer. I found a zine on the net by Jesse Heckman, who writes personal stories about being a rebellious drifter in STAY GOLD JESSE, STAY GOLD... out of Lawrence, Kansas. A friend told me about Madflowr from D.C., who writes MAKE OUT PARTY, about meeting boys, making out, getting dumped and meeting new boys. Zines are a self-contained world of expression that manages to be fresh, provocative and wildly diverse on top of being non-commercial. It's something like the internet utopia gurus envisioned before the web became big business -- information and art, cheap or free, for everybody, by everybody. But unlike the computer-driven internet, all you need to make and enjoy zines is you, and to zinesters, that's the most important person in the world.