Zines

A zine is a shortened term for “fanzine” or magazine, and is a small-press publication with a low circulation, traditionally self-published without a profit motive. In the early days, the line between a zine and a mainstream publication may have seemed slim; for example, there is a fine line between the pulp science fiction magazines of the 1930s and the fan-produced “fanzines” circulated to discuss them. But by the 1970s, when the term zine caught on, mainstream magazines had reached levels of circulation, professionalism, and physical quality that made for a clear divide between the glossy color photos of Life and the blurry photocopies stapled together that constituted many zines.

Recent advances in desktop publishing have again narrowed this gap, and the watermark of a zine might most properly be considered its attitude. Since the 1970s, zines have been particularly associated with the punk subculture and other underground [Page 1294]movements—left-of-center politics and anarchism, the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement, cyberculture (especially before blogging and Websites became an available form of expression), and various music and drug cultures. Constrained groups like prison inmates and high school students have used zines as their chosen, or only, form of expression that they can share with the outside world.

Essentially a hardcopy blog or public diary, personal zines don't have to be devoted to any particular topic—they're just a periodical that is released, often irregularly, by a sole creator. Zines are rarely carried at traditional outlets, though the largest ones can sometimes be found in record stores, skate shops, and coffeehouses—as can locally produced zines. Others are traded, given away, sold at concerts and other gatherings, distributed through the mail or on college campuses, and so forth.

A very small number of bookstores, notably Powell's in Portland, Oregon, and Bluestockings in New York City, make it a practice to stock zines. Since the 1980s and the founding of Fact-sheet Five, a now-defunct magazine that reviewed zines and published their contact information for free, zines have become a movement and subculture unto themselves, and personal zines (sometimes called perzines) have become especially common. With the popularization of the Internet in the 1990s, zines have been in decline, and some that began as zines have since become Websites, like Boingboing.