The Zine: Alive or Dead?
Picture a magazine. Now tear away the conglomeration and professional printing, the sales department and all the rest of the publishing infrastructure. Zines are independently published, limited circulation books or magazines. They grew out of the advent of accessible photocopying; text is stapled and glued to pages alongside images, which provides a characteristic edge.
Zines capture culture in all its chaos and collaboration. They often emerged from music circles, but they were invaluable in their ability to cultivate all kinds of communities no matter how marginalized or taboo.
Feminist and queer voices made themselves heard in zines particularly in the 80’s and 90’s, though the format existed before that. Gone Home, a video game that establishes itself firmly in the 90’s, depicted zines that the player could interact with because the form is so quintessentially 90’s, especially in the Portland, Oregon setting, a hotspot for the Riot Grrrl movement.
However, that perception that the zine is antiquated is worrying. Booklets and magazines distributed at concerts or small book stores have certainly been made obsolete by the immediacy of the internet. Why cut and paste and staple when the message could be spread digitally?
Independent bookstores are alive and have even seen a rise in recent years. People still love the physical experience of reading, and that is part of why the zine still exists. As a form that is generally non-profit, distribution is hard. Zines are typically made by individuals and disseminated via small mailing lists. Physical zines have survived on a wide scale through small bookstores. Specialty shops like Quimby’s in Chicago carries a hefty assortment, as do Microcosm Publishing and Reading Frenzy in Portland. Plenty of other distributors exist online that still sell physical copies of zines on topics ranging from political to musical to artistic.
The internet has made pure digital formats easier and more accessible, though there are plenty of purely digital zine out there, physical zines are far from extinct. Etsy has become an ideal place for zinesters to spread their art, collaborate, and achieve nationwide distribution.
The effect of wider distribution means that a new generation is beginning to explore the zine. Artists make zines of their own to sell online or at conventions. Fanzines bring together art, stories, and music from communities that may otherwise exist only in the immediacy of a concert.
The appeal of the zine is its detachment from the larger machinations of publishing. Indie bookstores are a valuable ally, but even if the fear that e-books would erase the print medium held true, the zine would still exist to fill that gap, and no doubt vehemently protest it.
Digital formats have made it far easier to create and distribute digital zines, but because the zine is such a fiercely physical thing, the preference is to have the real thing and not just an PDF. Efforts continue to archive vintage zines and legitimize them as cultural documents, which is certainly a boon. Preserving the history of the form is almost as important as adapting it for the future and circulating zines to inspire and reinforce communities.
