The Ins and Outs of Web 'Zine Publication

Web 'zines (shortened form of magazine used to refer to an independently published, not-for-profit magazine-style publication, which is free to the public) are becoming a bigger and bigger trend with each passing day, due in part to the increasing ease of website publishing, made possible through services such as Lycos, Geocities, and AOL offering free webspace, and other services offering subscription space for as low as $4 per month. But how do you get your web 'zine off the ground and not lose yourself and your publication in the sea of other publications on the web?

Start by selecting your subject. Certainly if you are to the point of wanting to produce your own web 'zine, you have already got a subject in mind. But if your subject is too broad, or too specific, it may not get as much attention as one right in the middle. For example if you are wanting to create a literature 'zine, you should select a genre that interests you. When I started my 'zine, it was focused on science fiction, fantasy and horror. While this may seem like a good subject, I wasn't getting a lot of traffic, until I broadened it to "speculative fiction." The purpose of the publication is still the same but my traffic and submissions increased 200% with that one little change. I figured out that "science fiction" was alienating (no pun intended) horror fans and "horror" was pushing away the fantasy fans. But they could all be welcomed by "speculative fiction."

Before jumping into website programming, you may want to draw out the publication on paper. How do you want it to look? What sort of color scheme would you like? What will you call it? The last question is the first one you should answer. If you choose to go with a subscription service (www.yourname.com), you will want the name of the publication in the URL and will have to choose it at the time of registration. Even with a free service you will typically be permitted to use the title in your URL (www.lycos.com/yourname). And whatever name you select will be the name of your publication for as long as you choose to publish it (generally speaking, although publications do occasionally alter their names to suit their demographic).

After you have decided on a subject and a name, a layout and color scheme, you have the site ready to go, from the index page to "About us," your next step is to select your hosting service. If you don't have the funding, or are not sure you want to commit to the contracts most subscription services require until you are sure that your publication is going to take off, there are several free services. Most of these require that you allow ads somewhere on your site but with a little research you can find one that uses banner style ads in place of pop-ups to be less obtrusive to your readers.

Another benefit of the free services over the paid services, besides not having to pay for them, is that many, if not all, of them provide assistance for the novice website designer ranging from premade templates to forms where you can fill in the blanks with what you want to HTML editors for the more advanced programmer. Even if you cannot afford to pay a subscription fee each month, you may still consider registering your domain name so that when you are finally able to afford the subscription, you will know the name you want will be available. Then you can tailor your free service URL to resemble the "official" URL.

Once you have taken these steps, start publishing. Microsoft Paint (or the default graphics software that comes with your operating system) offers a great deal of options in terms of creating graphics for your website, including logos, splash pages, and text that you want to stay the same no matter what your viewers' browser is set to. Borderless tables inside tables are terrific for keeping text and graphics right where you want them to be and the positions won't vary based on screen size.

Look to Paint for promotional options as well. Create a simple logo to represent your publication and use it to make stickers, business cards, banners and much much more. Take your stickers and business cards to your local bookstores and slip them into books relevant to your subject matter. If your 'zine is about cars, find books about cars. They can be non-fiction coffee table books with pictures of cars, reference books such as the "…For Dummies" series or the "Everything…" series, and any other books that you can find that might attract the kinds of readers you are wanting to draw to your publication.

Make fliers and hang them in relevant businesses. And don't rule out something because it's not exactly related. For instance hanging fliers for a literary 'zine in a coffee bar is a great place. Also all-night diners are good places, especially if you live in a college town. College students will often go to diners for late night study sessions.

Also employ avenues such as MySpace.com, Xanga and MyCyberScene.com to advertise to people outside your immediate geographical area; in fact these avenues will get your publication seen by potential readers from around the world. For example, with MySpace.com, you can add friends and then leave those friends "comments" when your new issue is ready for viewing. That way, not only do your friends get information about the publication but so do all of their friends, and anyone else who visits their profiles.

The most important part of publishing your own 'zine, no matter what the topic, no matter whether you use a free hosting service or a subscription service, is promotion. You have to promote your site like crazy, otherwise you are just doing it to keep yourself busy. Take this from someone who did very little to promote my own site for several months, wanting to be sure that everything was perfect before I released my child to the public. With just a little bit of promoting, the traffic to the site tripled.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is the basic step by step of publishing your own online 'zine. Now pick a topic and go get started.