How much do the zines cost in 2001, and why?
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| Title: | How much do the zines cost in 2001, and why? |
| Creator: | Jane of Australia |
| Date(s): | 1999 |
| Medium: | online |
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| External Links: | How much do the zines cost in 2001, and why? |
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How much do the zines cost in 2001, and why? is a 2001 essay by Jane of Australia.
The essay was posted to the Nut Hatch website and was an explanation as to why the reprint of some zines from the 1970s were so costly to reproduce.
The Reprinted Zines in Question
STARDATE UNKNOWN and the slash progression, ALTERNATIVE, are a set of Classic Star Trek zines produced in the 1970s by Gerry Downes, who has long been known as "the Mother of slash."
The STARDATE UNKNOWN issues are gen — that is, Classic Kirk and Spock, of the original series. They're Letter size (or A4), and are comprised of stories, poems, artwork and editorial issues. They range from 100pp to 160pp in size ... they're photocopied, coil bound, and black-and-white from cover to cover.
These are the kind of zines that were on the cutting edge of fannish publishing in the mid/late 1970s. They're rather different from the zines as we know them today, and in fact are a piece of history in themselves.
It's tremendously unusual for a 1970s zine to be reprinted ... even more so for it to be reproduced exactly as it was back in the days when few, if any, fannish editors had access to a computer. However, these zines, the STARDATE UNKNOWNS and their slash sequal [sic], ALTERNATIVE, are the wonderful fannish legacy of Gerry Downes, and part of their magic lies in the fact they are a time capsule!
When the reissue of these zines was first mooted, several suggestions were made, from simply uploading the stories and art as .html and .jpg files to the internet, to scanning in the whole zines and updating the text and format into our digital world. I'm delighted to say, the decision was made, early and spontaneously by both Jennifer and Dave, to not do this!
What we want to do (and it's being done right now!) is to preserve Gerry's original vision in every sense. Not merely her stories and art, but her publishing vision, too. Her page design, her way of putting together prose, art and verse, so that the reader in 2001 and onward has the opportunity to share Gerry's publishing thoughts and graphical ingenuity, rather than being served with a "facelift" version of the original where the difficulties, the sheer simplicity, of the era that gave birth to these zines has been lost in the rush to digitize into fonts and files! [1]
The Essay
As I said in my editorial waffle, I've tried to produce the zines as cheaply in 2001 as possible, while at the same time preserving the quality of the product ... and I'm actually extremely pleased with the results and prices.
Below is the promised "self-audit" regarding just exactly how the zines are "costed," based on the copy-shop's quote for the work to be done. To see how the cost-per-page is worked out, read this and gasp! Or just trust me to get this whole job right, and then leave the tough stuff to me! The short version is, we can get top-notch xerox copying for US.5c, on the smallest batch possible. If you're thinking, "hey, OfficeMax can beat that" then please do take a quick look at the practicalities of per-copy costing on a job of this size, xerox and offset!!
Take STARDATE UNKNOWN #2, as an example. Why? Because it's open on the desk in front of me as I type this! In 1976 the proce was US$4, which included book rate. The zine was going to be about US$3.50 in-hand. Well, guys, I can do this zine in 2001 for US$7.00, which is exactly double the cost ... a quarter of a century later! Most prices have blown out by about a factor of 7x - 10x over that 2.5 decades. For instance, a paperback book here in Aus was around $1.99 then, and is now around $17. So I'm looking at US$7 for Issue #2 as a good price, since that is also budgeted to include A3/11x17 copying, and an unfortunate, unavoidabable "pro-rating" for some special pages. What is "pro-rating?" Bear with me a little while longer!
When these zines were originally designed and printed, they were intended for ink systems (extremely cheap consumables where it didn't make much difference if you had a page of type or wall-to-wall black ink). They were also designed for vast printruns, many hundreds of copies. That was the nature of fannish publishing in its Golden Age. Today, however, small print runs (perhaps as low as 30x in any one batch), the only viable printing method is xerox ... and xerox toner is $98+tax per carton! Your average photocopy is said to be a "4% fill of the accessible page surface." That is, a typical typed letter.
That $98 cartridge is "good" for around 5,000 - 8,000 copies, so long as you're printing a typical typed letter. Now, copy artwork with about an 80% fill, and you empty out the machine's toner hopper so fast, the copy shop has got to notice! See the panic when they realize how you're using twenty times more toner than they expect you to. You can empty out a cartridge of toner in 500 copies of a blacker-than-black fannish art print, then smilingly ask the nice lady to put another cartridge in. A good-size printrun of a 1970s fanzine, designed originally for ink systems, can so far overrun a copy shop's "assigned toner budget," the store can take a loss equal to a week's rent on the storefront — or, if the company leasing out the machine is worried, the copy shop can have its "service agreement including toner" contract hiked from the 5c line that allows them their profit, to the 8c line, which is where they go out of business!!
So we negotiate, in the interests of long-term survival. To prevent ourselves being charged overall at a very much higher rate, we usually negotiate for a "pro-rated" charge on a specific number of copies. This means, we don't try to fool the copy shop, but tell 'em up-front about the 7.9 metric tonnes of xerox toner we're going to need for a certain number of artwork pages. They "peek and shriek" at an 80% fill page, and rate it as being worth many more than one copy on the machine's counter. We usually get pro rated at about 5:1, meaning, tar-black artwork pages cost 10x the normal copy price — then they do us a favor and call it 5x the price, offering the difference as a "discount for bulk." It's a good deal in 2001.
Put another way, every tar-black page adds the equivalent of four extra pages to the length of the zine. These are phantom pages ... they're not in the page-count, but believe me, their toner is there!
These are some of the problems facing a zine publisher in 2001. Smaller printruns, higher prices, xerox toners instead of printer's inks, pro rated copies, coil binding rather than staples ...! I'm sure there are many, many people reading this who are also zine publishers, and they know exactly what I'm babbling about.
I've gone through the costing process with each of the zines in the STARDATE UNKNOWN and ALTERNATIVE set, and come to bottom-line figures that just won't be beat. You'll find the costs quoted on each of the flyers, and if you prefer to go to the "quick version," go directly to Shopping! There, catalog-fashion, there's a physical thumbnail description of each zine plus a depiction of the cover; you'll find the price for each individual zine, plus "Compleats," and the full set of everything to go. Phew!