I asked the printer where I print my own zine in Bulgaria how much it would cost to print 800 copies, 80 pages, 8.5x11, full color zine and they came up with a total price of $2800. As I emailed you last year, printing prices in the US are insane and it would be much cheaper for you to just send the files so we can print it here in Europe.
I'd love to take up that conversation again because you are right, the printing in the US is stupid expensive these days. I guess the real question would be the shipping cost from Bulgaria back to the USA - I would guess the weight would be around 250 KG.
Sorry for the late reply. I didn't mention this with the idea of shipping it back to the US, but to distribute it throughout Europe, as shipping from Bulgaria to EU member states is quite easy and relatively cheap. The idea is to print the zine in the poor part of Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Greece) and distribute it in the rich part of Europe (Germany, Sweden, etc.).
Super enlightening. Thanks for sharing. If it's cool, I am going to share some of this with my students (high school). Their first semester project is coming up, and it is to create their own eight page zine. It is possible to be romantic and pragmatic. Lesson learned.
Totally cool - doing zines is a lot of fun. And like I said, nothing wrong with doing everything cut and paste, photocopied, etc. It's just wild to me how expensive photocopying a zine is these days - like I've even toyed w/ doing a 11x17, double sided, folded over zine to just pass out at shows and it was a lot more expensive than I thought - so much so that I looked into using a pro printer instead!
Back in college I used to make cheap little B&W zines I printed on whatever random printer I could access for free. After not making a new zine for like 18 years, this year I was like, oh let me make a nice little full-color zine through a legit printer and HOO-BOY did I have sticker shock. Even though I definitely lost money on it, I don't regret it because it came out lovely (I used Mixam) and it was very fun to make and distribute, but man...I just...was not ready.
Great article.
Need to sit with you and do that interview.
Nemanja/ out of the darkness fanzine
Anytime!
You rock.
I asked the printer where I print my own zine in Bulgaria how much it would cost to print 800 copies, 80 pages, 8.5x11, full color zine and they came up with a total price of $2800. As I emailed you last year, printing prices in the US are insane and it would be much cheaper for you to just send the files so we can print it here in Europe.
I'd love to take up that conversation again because you are right, the printing in the US is stupid expensive these days. I guess the real question would be the shipping cost from Bulgaria back to the USA - I would guess the weight would be around 250 KG.
Sorry for the late reply. I didn't mention this with the idea of shipping it back to the US, but to distribute it throughout Europe, as shipping from Bulgaria to EU member states is quite easy and relatively cheap. The idea is to print the zine in the poor part of Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Greece) and distribute it in the rich part of Europe (Germany, Sweden, etc.).
Super enlightening. Thanks for sharing. If it's cool, I am going to share some of this with my students (high school). Their first semester project is coming up, and it is to create their own eight page zine. It is possible to be romantic and pragmatic. Lesson learned.
Totally cool - doing zines is a lot of fun. And like I said, nothing wrong with doing everything cut and paste, photocopied, etc. It's just wild to me how expensive photocopying a zine is these days - like I've even toyed w/ doing a 11x17, double sided, folded over zine to just pass out at shows and it was a lot more expensive than I thought - so much so that I looked into using a pro printer instead!
Back in college I used to make cheap little B&W zines I printed on whatever random printer I could access for free. After not making a new zine for like 18 years, this year I was like, oh let me make a nice little full-color zine through a legit printer and HOO-BOY did I have sticker shock. Even though I definitely lost money on it, I don't regret it because it came out lovely (I used Mixam) and it was very fun to make and distribute, but man...I just...was not ready.
its CRAZY how expensive it is to print these days... even just doing photocopied zines is $$$
Can you talk more about direct mail? Do people have a subscription or do they buy it at the time of release more like a book?