Zines are a good place to start.

Christian Walker · Jul 9, 2003

Start small. Start safe. Run a zine.
With lowered barriers to entry into the RPG industry, many aspiring writers are taking their ideas straight to retail. While a few enjoy immediate success, far more lose money and are forced to make a premature exit from publishing. With some careful planning, this need not be the case. Zines, anyone?

Running a zine is a time honored method of honing one's skills as a writer, while acquiring knowledge that will be useful in future endeavors. Below are just a few ways that zine publishing can help a career in the RPG industry:

Practice Makes Perfect: When publishing a zine, you do quite a bit of writing, revising, and copy editing. The benefit of these skills for an aspiring freelancer are obvious.

Deadlines: Nothing infuriates a publisher more than when his freelancers fail to meet word counts or deadlines. When you have pages to fill each month (if you go with a monthly zine), you learn how to budget your time. If you eventually decide to start your own company, running a zine is helpful because meeting deadlines is even more crucial. Many publishers have sent books to print without proper editing simply because they ran out of time.

System Mastery: Many writers are adept with NPC, location, and magic item descriptions, but are unskilled at crunching numbers. Penning a zine gives you an opportunity to fiddle with the rules, or in my case, it gives you time to find someone with whom you can collaborate. "Faster, stat block monkey, FASTER!"

Graphic Design: Doing layout on your zine is a great way to experiment with fonts, graphics, and other design elements. If you currently have no idea why B&W line art should be submitted to you in 600dpi .tiff, you will after a few issues.

Contacts and Industry Knowledge: After you have a dozen or so issues under your belt, your knowledge of the industry, its players, and how it functions will be greatly improved.This information will be very helpful if you decide to create a formal business entity.

Building a Rep: Another great thing about a print zine is that it's an informal resume. You can send promo copies to publishers, news sites, reviewers, and industry notables. Over time, your name will spread and you'll be surprised at how many people know who you are. Imagine the advantage you'd have when responding to an "all call" for a freelance position offered by a company on your comp subscriber list.

Lessons in the School of Hard Knocks: Running a zine will help you know if you've got the talent to succeed with a commercial venture. If your zine is getting torn apart by reviewers, you might want to think twice before maxing the ol' VISA card to finance your first retail supplement. Conversely, if you are able to develop a sizeable following and earn good reviews, maybe you'll enjoy success when you tackle larger projects. Moreover, an aspiring freelancer will see just how much effort goes into writing a book-length project.

These are just a few ways that running a print zine can benefit a freelancer or potential publisher. Why try to learn these lessons when thousands of dollars or your livelihood are on the line? I just don't understand why so many folks jump from "hobby enthusiast" to "game designer" without taking the time to educate themselves. I encourage you to gather first hand experience the zine way, when the risks are rather low.

And should you need help setting up that zine, well....

I publish a zine, Scrollworks, and have done so for 32 issues and now I want to help others do the same. My site, www.scrollworkspress.com, has a new feature called, "The RPG Zine Exchange." It offers publishers a way to share their work with others in a supportive environment. The site offers tutorials, a forum, and web sales. The site is operated on a not-for-profit basis, because I really want to help folks get their zines up and running. If you are remotely curious about running a zine, please visit the site.

http://www.scrollworkspress.com/exchange.htm

Monte At Home · Jul 9, 2003

For what it's worth, I agree with Christian.

And I think that Scrollworks is truly one of the gems of the d20 industry. I wish there were more zines out there like it.

Ghostwind · Jul 9, 2003

I would also chime in that not all zines need be in print. There are several excellent zines that are available for electronic download and most are free.

Here's a short list:
* d20Zine!
* Legions Realm Monthly
* Fictional Reality
* Deep Magic
* Sword's Edge
* The Stygian
* Demon Underground
* Revisiting the Three Kingdoms Quarterly
(and there are many more...)

Developing and publishing a zine (also writing and/or editing for one) is a great tool for getting your foot into the door of this industry. Several freelancers got their first starts with articles in zines, which opened that door to more work with publishers.

Christian has a great idea and it is one that should prove helpful to many who have toyed with the thought of producing their own magazine...

Renocide · Jul 9, 2003

Im planning on using the Zine Exchange services.
The idea of creating the actual physical product is really cool!

Thanks for providing me a easy way of doing this Christian.

Scorpio · Jul 10, 2003

Damn, you wanted that stuff at 600 DPI?

Christian Walker · Jul 10, 2003

Monte: Thanks for the kind words. They mean a great deal to me, so thank you.

Ghostwind: I respect the work that goes into webzines, but there's something special about holding a print zine in your hands. I'm not saying that print zines are inherently better; it's just really neat to open up your mailbox to see a few 6" x 9" manila envelopes waiting for you. Leave the bills behind, take the zines, and sit back for a comfy, quiet read on the sofa. I receive 3-5 zines a week and it really gives me something to look forward to.

For what it's worth, one of my fave zines of all times is web based. Critical Miss ROCKS!

I should also add that I am really impressed with the body of work that you are creating. Nice work, my man!

Almost forgot. Pyramid is sweet, too. But that's more of a prozine I guess. They (SJG) published something of mine way back; I still have the check hanging on my wall, framed.

Renocide: Your enthusiasm is firing me up, giving me confidence that this project can work.

Scorpio: Maybe I should say, "600dpi if you are lucky enough to live in a broadband area. Slobs like me, stuck in a barren wasteland, have to make do with 300dpi." Hee hee!

Freeman's Keep is fast becoming one of my fave locales, thanks to your work. I hand delivered some issues this weekend and the readers really liked your maps. Kudos.

Scorpio · Jul 10, 2003

You are too kind, Christian...
#32 is great issue, a really fun read! Kudos!

Renocide · Jul 10, 2003

Just thought Id add how supportive Christian is about this project and answering e-mails and such with me. I had no idea about how to produce a small press zine and have talked to Christian alot lately. Very helpfull and very nice fellow.
Couple of things that might need to be pointed out for those that just skeem threw his original post:
1. The zine is what you want it to be. It can be about anything involving the RPG industry. You could have a Con-zine where you discuss different industry get togethers. It could be a DM-zine where you discuss and pass on ideas and helpfull hints on DMing.
You can have it on D&D3E, Gurps, or whatever you prefer. Christian isnt telling you what system or what part of the RPG industry to cover. He is only stipulating that it be about SOME part of role-play gaming(just found out that he is also open to perzines and others, according to the site just e-mail him your idea and he may consider it).
2. He set up a forum and a workshop for those(like I) that are not sure how to get started. Read the PDF on the workshop page. It is FULL of helpful information and what he actually does to produce Scrollworks. Its a huge help for those that arent in the know. Then there is always directly e-mailing Christain. Like I said he has always been quick to reply and very helpful with any questions that I have had.
3. You dont actually have to do anything BUT write out what you want on it and come up with a couple of dollar bills to cover the printing and mailing(this is a non-profit project as he said above). You could type up a single page document in WordPad, convert it to PDF, and send it along with a couple of Washingtons, to cover printing. Then send it to Christain and he takes it from there. Thats it.
4. There isnt anyone telling you that they have rejected your article or anything like that. YOU are in control of your zine. Just like a website but without all that nasty HTML code!

(well he will control content to a point. No weird stuff ofcourse.)
5. Everyone that submits a zine will get a copy of all the other zines(with the exception of Scrollworks

) that has been submitted for that month. So if 10 other folks submit a zine on the same month that you have submitted yours then you will get a copy of those 10 zines for FREE. Why NOT send some of your own design and then recieve something from the imagination of someone else?

Im sure I am forgetting something but Ill leave it at that for now.
This could become an incredible hub for creative thinking and gaming. Sure, it could be done online and you can download and print out what you like but, having it printed out is the cats meow!