Zines are small-scale publications for specific audiences, often distributed by hand within a community. The concept began in the 1970s with punk fanzines, and expanded to include political and literary zines. They are sold at events and bookstores, and e-zines are also popular.
A zine is a publication designed for a very limited target audience and usually also distributed on a small scale. They are cheap to produce and are often spread by hand through the affected community; for example, a punk zine might be available at punk performances and a poetry zine would be featured at poetry readings. The term itself is short for “magazine,” suggesting a collection of various written and visual works distributed to readers at a relatively low cost. A zine is often viewed as a news organ of an underground or clandestine community, and a zine’s readers often have an inclusive sense of pride in being a part of the movement to which the zine relates.
The idea of distributing writings and pamphlets that are reproduced cheaply to make them readily available is an old one, but zine culture really began to explode in the 1970s, when numerous members of the punk scene began creating zines, or fanzines. A fanzine is a fanzine that communicates information about a group or movement to its fans, and might contain things like upcoming tour dates, interviews, album reviews, and other material that might be of interest to fans of a group or cultural movement. The idea caught on, and comics began using fanzines to distribute their work, along with other members of the counterculture.
In the 1990s, the riot grrrl movement burst onto the scene with a series of well-distributed feminist zines such as Bust, which later became a major magazine in its own right. They pushed for gender equality in the zine community and ushered in an era of increasingly political zines covering controversial issues. In addition, writing zines also began to flourish, and many novice writers and poets published their own works to increase readership.
There are several ways to get a zine. The most direct, of course, comes from the people who made it. Zines are often sold at concerts, counterculture book fairs, and underground events. In some urban areas, large bookstores also sell fanzines, and some distribution houses specialize in fanzines alongside other counterculture publications. In the late 1990s, e-zines also became popular. An e-zine uses the Internet as a method of distribution, in the form of mass email or a website, and is often free. Physical magazines usually have a very low cost, so that manufacturers can recoup their printing costs, and some people prefer ezines because they can contain only physical media, such as pop-ups, gag glasses, and other multimedia content.
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