What Is a Zine? Definition, Origins and Examples

A zine (say zeen) is a small publication made and put out by the person who wrote it, with no publisher in between, usually on paper and usually copied on a photocopier or a home printer. Merriam-Webster (opens in new tab) defines it as a “noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject matter.” The Barnard Zine Library (opens in new tab), which collects them, says it more plainly: “a DIY subculture self-publication, usually made on paper and reproduced with a photocopier or printer.”

That is the whole definition. The rest is detail: where the word came from, what separates a zine from a magazine, what one usually looks like, and ten examples, each with its date, that show how wide the form runs.

Where the word comes from

Zine is what is left of fanzine once the fans are taken off the front, and fanzine is fan plus magazine. The longer word has an author and a date. Russ Chauvenet coined it in 1940, in his own fanzine, Detours, arguing that it was “the best short form of ‘fan-magazine’”; it entered the Oxford English Dictionary in a supplement published in 1972 (Wikipedia, “Zine” (opens in new tab)).

The fans in question read science fiction. In January 1927 Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories began printing readers’ letters with their addresses, so that readers could write to one another, and the first fanzines grew out of that mailing list. The title usually cited as the first of all is The Comet, put out in May 1930 by the Chicago chapter of the Science Correspondence Club and edited by Raymond A. Palmer and Walter Dennis (a scan of the first issue is kept at Fanac.org (opens in new tab)). Historians still argue the point: the science-fiction historian Sam Moskowitz called The Planet, first published two months later, the first fan magazine about science fiction rather than science, and the fan encyclopedia Fancyclopedia 3 counts it as the first fanzine for that reason (Wikipedia, “The Comet” (opens in new tab)). Today the short form is the usual one, and it covers far more than fandom.

What makes it a zine, and not a magazine

No single rule decides it, but four traits come back in every definition above.

It is made by a person, not a company. Zines are “the product of either a single person or of a very small group” (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)). The maker writes it, lays it out, copies it, folds it and usually hands it out.

It is not made for profit. A price, when there is one, covers the copies. One zine maker’s definition, reproduced on the Barnard Zine Library’s Zine Basics page (opens in new tab), calls the form “non-profit, non-commercial, low budget, and non-competitive,” and insists it stay accessible “both to readers (everyone can afford to buy or trade them) and to writers (everyone can make them).”

It is small. Zines are “popularly defined within a circulation of 1,000 or fewer copies,” and in practice many are produced “in editions of fewer than 100” (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

It is cheap to copy. Mimeograph, spirit duplicator, photocopier, Risograph, home inkjet: which machine matters less than the fact that the maker can run it. The Press keeps a field guide to the three machines that shaped the small run.

A magazine is the opposite on each count: a company, a staff, advertisers, a schedule, a distributor, a print run sized for newsstands. Some titles cross the line. Crawdaddy!, a rock fanzine started in 1966, quickly became one of the first rock “prozines,” with paid advertisers and newsstand distribution (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)). The word describes a way of making things more than a size or a format.

What a zine looks like

There is no required format, but two come straight out of the paper already in the printer tray. The mini zine is one sheet folded into eight small pages with a single cut; the Press has the page order, the folds and a printable template. The half-size zine is a few sheets folded in half and stapled on the fold: US Letter folded in half gives a 5.5 × 8.5 inch booklet, and A4 folded in half gives A5, 148 × 210 mm. Anything grander, from a fold-out poster to a perfect-bound book, is a choice the maker pays for, usually at a print-on-demand press.

Inside, anything goes. Wikipedia’s list of subjects runs from fan fiction, politics and poetry through art and design, ephemera and personal journals to “single-topic obsession.”

Ten examples, 1926 to 1990

Fire!! (1926). A literary magazine made in New York during the Harlem Renaissance by young writers and artists including Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas and Langston Hughes, who wanted to publish “without interference from old heads, white or Negro” (the words come from a 1974 study in the Journal of American Studies, quoted by Wikipedia, “Zine” (opens in new tab)). Debt, and a fire at its premises, ended it after one issue. Strictly a “little magazine,” not a zine, and an ancestor the form often forgets (Wikipedia, “Fire!!” (opens in new tab)).

The Comet (1930). The fanzine of the Science Correspondence Club’s Chicago chapter, usually called the first of all. Seventeen issues to 1933, all but the last mimeographed (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

Science Fiction (1933). Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s fanzine. The first version of Superman appeared in its third issue, as a bald-headed villain (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

Detours (1940). Russ Chauvenet’s fanzine, the one that gave the form its name.

Het Onderwater-Cabaret (1943 to 1945). “The Underwater Cabaret.” Between August 1943 and April 1945, Curt Bloch, a German-Jewish writer hiding from the Nazis near Enschede, made 95 issues and one special edition by hand: nearly 500 poems in German and Dutch, under covers collaged from newspapers, passed among other people in hiding and the local resistance (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

Spockanalia (1967). The first media fanzine, about Star Trek, published in September 1967 by members of the Lunarians (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

Janus (1975). A feminist science-fiction zine started by Janice Bogstad and Jeanne Gomoll, later renamed Aurora, with contributions from Octavia Butler, Joanna Russ and Samuel R. Delany. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1978, 1979 and 1980 (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

Sniffin’ Glue (1976). Mark Perry’s punk zine from Deptford, in south-east London, begun in July 1976 in response to the Ramones’ first London show. Twelve photocopied issues in about a year; the first issues sold 50 copies and circulation reached 15,000. Perry stopped in 1977 and told his readers to start their own (Wikipedia, “Sniffin’ Glue” (opens in new tab)).

Factsheet Five (1982). Mike Gunderloy started it in Boston on a spirit duplicator, in a run of 50: a zine of short reviews of other zines, with their addresses, which made it the directory of the scene before the web. Gunderloy’s own collection of more than 10,000 zines and pieces of mail art is now at the New York State Library in Albany (Wikipedia, “Factsheet Five” (opens in new tab)).

Bikini Kill (1990). The riot grrrl zine that printed the Riot Grrrl Manifesto in its second issue. Zinesters Erika Reinstein and May Summer went on to found Riot Grrrl Press, a distribution network that let riot grrrls reach readers “without having to rely on the mainstream press” (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

Where to read zines

Zines are kept now by university libraries, museums and public libraries, and some of them lend zines out. The Barnard Zine Library (opens in new tab) in New York acquires zines by women, transfeminine people, trans women and trans men, “from any time period or subject.” Wikipedia’s list of notable collections includes the British Library, the Tate, Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, Duke’s Sallie Bingham Center, the San Francisco and Los Angeles public libraries, and independent zine libraries in Denver, Toronto and Glasgow. Long Beach Public Library was the first in California to circulate zines, for three weeks at a time, in 2015, and Los Angeles Public Library followed in 2017 (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

To meet the people who make them, go to a zine fest. San Francisco Zine Fest began in 2001; Los Angeles Zine Fest began in 2012 with a handful of exhibitors and has since hosted more than 200 (Wikipedia (opens in new tab)).

Make one

The quickest way to understand the form is to make one, and it takes less than people expect: one sheet of paper and one cut. How to Make a Zine starts there and ends, if you want it to, with a print run and a shop. The engine on this site only sets a cover from a word; the pages are yours.

Sources, consulted on 17 October 2026: Merriam-Webster, “zine” (opens in new tab); Barnard Zine Library, “Zine Basics” (opens in new tab) and home page (opens in new tab); Wikipedia, “Zine” (opens in new tab), “The Comet (fanzine)” (opens in new tab), “Fire!!” (opens in new tab), “Sniffin’ Glue” (opens in new tab) and “Factsheet Five” (opens in new tab); Fanac.org, The Comet (opens in new tab).