The Best Print-on-Demand Services for Zines & Art Books

Mixam is a printer first: you choose a format in its Instant Quote Calculator, upload your files and it ships the copies. Its zine page lists saddle-stitch, perfect-bound (PUR), wire-o and spiral-bound booklets, and the wider catalogue runs to hardcover and layflat books. It says you can order one copy as a test print before a larger run, and it sends free printed samples of its paper stocks.

It expects a proper file: 0.125-inch bleed on most items, CMYK colour and, for perfect binding, a spine. Downloadable PDF templates and an online design tool are there for those who need them. Mixam also runs a print-on-demand service that prints and ships each order to your buyer, sold through a shareable PrintLink, a Shopify connection or its Print API, with no setup cost and, according to the page, no revenue share. For a stapled zine or a perfect-bound art book where you control the design, it covers the most bindings in this guide from a single quote form.

Blurb is built around the image-heavy book. Its formats include photo books in six sizes, layflat books, paperback and hardcover trade books, and a magazine format it suggests for lookbooks and zines. There are several ways in: a browser editor, the free BookWright desktop app, plug-ins for InDesign, Lightroom and Photoshop, or an upload of your own PDF. You can print one copy at a time, and volume discounts start at 10 copies.

Selling is built in: Blurb lists books on its own bookstore and on Amazon, reaches bookstores and libraries through Ingram, and offers an Instant Store link to sell directly. Its published price table starts low for small trade books and climbs with size, paper and binding: a 12×12-inch hardcover photo book on premium paper starts at US $74.00. For a photography monograph where the paper is the point, that table is the place to start; for a plain text zine, the cheaper formats elsewhere in this guide may do.

Lulu’s strength is what happens after the file. It prints on demand from an interior PDF and a cover PDF, in hardcover, paperback, coil-bound or saddle-stitch, and sells the result in several ways: on your own site through integrations with Shopify, Wix and WooCommerce or a Direct Buy Button, through the more than 40,000 retailers it lists books with, or through its Print API. Orders print and ship without you touching stock, and an Order Import tool handles pre-orders and crowdfunding rewards.

There is no flat price list: the book cost calculator gives a per-copy cost for your exact spec and estimates earnings by sales channel, and Lulu publishes free templates. If you want to sell continuously rather than print one batch, it offers the most ways to sell a book in this guide. Order a printed copy before you list anything: a screen cannot show you the paper.

Gelato’s idea is a distributed network: each order goes to the production partner nearest the customer, which Gelato describes as more than 140 local production hubs in 32 countries. For a maker who sells abroad, local production can matter more than the per-unit price. It connects to Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, BigCommerce, Amazon and TikTok Shop, and has an API.

Its book range is narrower than the printers above: Gelato lists photo books in softcover and hardcover, alongside the posters, cards and apparel that make up most of its catalogue, and no zine bindings. There is no minimum order and no commission on your sales; the paid Gelato+ subscription unlocks product discounts. Because each order is made by whichever partner is nearest the buyer, a proof sent to your own address may come from a different printer than your customers’ copies.

Peecho is less a place to order a zine than a print engine you wire into something else. Its products are a print button for your site, a branded shop, a checkout that sells prints without a storefront, and a Print API, backed by what it calls local printing wherever your customers are. It prints hardback, softback and layflat books and magazines with no stock and no minimum order, and it belongs to the Prodigi Group. You can upload a file and try it without an account.

For one designer printing one zine, it is the wrong shape: the site is written for platforms, photographers selling prints and self-publishers who want orders shipped for them. If you are building print into a product, it belongs on your list; if you just want boxes of your book, the printers above are simpler.

Newspaper Club prints newspapers: broadsheet, tabloid, a magazine-sized Midi and a Mini it describes as “a newspaper with zine spirit”, all on newsprint. There is no minimum order, so one copy is possible, and its price list shows how fast the per-copy cost falls as the run grows. It offers free templates for InDesign and Canva, a free sample pack, and PDF upload.

It is a printer, not a storefront: you design, order and sell yourself. The formats are newspapers, not bound books, so a hardcover photo monograph belongs elsewhere. For an exhibition handout or a zine that should feel like a newspaper, it is the only one of the six that prints the format.