i've been making these dadatract books for the past few years,
they're pocket sized zines made up of sketches, paintings, collage & cut-up text.


here's the one i passed out at sdcc on thursday...



now that i've finally gotten around to starting this thread... anybody else? let's see...

No, but I have wanted to make one. If you have any tips on how to print/produce them, please share.

Scott (HMS) produces a wonderful annual(?) zine called What Gives. Usually passes it out during SDCC.

I'm in the process of creating a photo zine right now.

when i made the first one 5 years ago, i told myself "it can't be that hard... i know what a zine a looks like" twenty books later, i still feel like i have no idea what i'm doing. i've tried explaining it to a buddy numerous times, he's watched me layout pages & gone with me to print them... all the while i'm explaining it away like it's the easiest thing in the world. we've made two books together and he's watched me print at least 5 runs... he still has no idea how we get from point a to point b. so i'm either a horrible teacher or he's just an idiot perhaps writing it down would be easier to understand.

i read this before i made the 1st one... though it's not just about zines. http://www.reddingk.com/img/reproguide.pdf

i also have this book, it explains a bunch of formats... many of which i've never tried. http://www.amazon.com/Whatcha-Mean-What ... 104&sr=8-1

cool, post it up when you're done.

I got one from Chad/Lurker (Monster Workship) at SDCC, one from Scott What gives and of course one from you

thanks

This is great! (And co-authored by artist David Choe.) Thanks for the link.

In the early 90s I did several different 'zines. Hand stitched, stapled, full color, b&w, gluestick and cutout (pre-printer/page layout program)... I miss zines.

I was moaning and whining the other day that no one makes zines anymore... glad to see that people are still at it!

Does anyone have a price range for how much it cost to make a zine of about 50 copies? I'm making a black and white photo zine. How much more for color? Kinkos sound good for the job?

kinko's are a bit more expensive than most smaller places... 18cents per double sided copy vs. 10-14cents at one of the other shops around me.

the staff at smaller shop could better help you with any problems you may encounter, especially if your doing any resizing with the copier or using special settings. also, if you want to print from digital files kinko's tends to charge it as a bulk job, since many don't have the actual copiers networked to the PCs, just printers. i suggest checking out what places you have around & going in running some test pages & feeling out the staff/machines first to make sure everything will go right on the first run.

overall cost wise, depends on the size, how many pages, etc. here's the general idea if you print it yourself on a standard copier at kinko's price:

at 9cent per side... a 5.5 x 8.5inch zine with 24 pages [22 interior plus front/back covers, 6 sheets] is 1.08 per copy.

if you a 4.25 x 5.5ich, 24pgs would be 54cents each [use image combination on the machine to do this, or digital format]

color wise, you will want to talk to the folks behind the counter for the best deal. self serve color can run 40-90 cents, per side.

hope that makes sense.

I used to do hardcore fanzine, break free, for a # of years, I got up in to the 500 run size and came with records and i did all of the printing and collating myself. And I also did a more legit music mag., Nothing Left, with my friend, that thing was a beast.
It's definitely a fun thing to do.

The Squak zine is something me and John/kichigai do together. John does neat little comics and such also.

I do not recommend trying to do odd sizes with bleeds and such unless you know what u are doing, because it can get real aggravating doing the pagination and such.

Also using self service copy machines can um save u money, specially back in the day u could buy loaded kinkos cards on the cheap from friends.

where did you get that idea?
good luck! let me know if you have any questions

Man... I miss the loaded kinkos cards!
The shop I worked at tattooed a couple of kids from Kinkos, and they used to hook me up with them.
Walking to the post office every other day to get the letters from people who read my zines, zines from other "publishers"... nothing like it in the world. Even the bad ones had character.

I remember putting my email address in one of the zines in 1994 with a post script that I checked my PO box more than I checked my email. Haha.

I started out handwritten with xeroxed/original pasted images. In 1995 Windows came out with PUBLISHER95 that had a great "catalog" template that was PERFECT for zines. I still occasionally added handwritten text, but technology, as always, made us lazy and it eventually moved to all digital layout.

redhanded used to do a zine, long long ago.. but for some reason, I don't see him chiming in.

He moved to San Diego this year, and would be a good person for any locals to consult on possible price ranges and what will be most cost efficient (trust me). You should PM him, Winu. I'm still not sure how many local SBers he's met out there yet.

I did for many years, but haven't in a long time. Began as collage surrealism, started to include comics & music reviews, then back to pure comic before fading away.

Here are two of the early ones. When I stop and think that these are over 20 years old now it makes me feel ancient. I still remember pasting them together & making copies at the local 7-11 like it was yesterday.






Here is a flickr link to cover shots of many of them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/73902814@N00/sets/72157609281664971/

They look great, I'd love to see some in hand!

shoot me yr address & something will be headed yr way.

Man, so far it has been a pain organizing this thing. Not even close to done yet though, some people need to submit their photos.

Here's a small preview of the cover though.

Good luck with it.
I mainly did solo zines, since expecting anyone else to be punctual always ended badly. But there's something so much cooler about having an in-hand zine than a blog or website. I have a blog of my Pushead collection that I update every day and it's more to remind me what I have and what I don't have than to be read by anyone. When I upload a photo, I barely write three, four sentences.

Something about making a 'zine always encouraged me to actually write copy instead of just having pictures.