How I Make My Zines

1. Intro (SKILLSHARE): Hello, everyone. My name is Luke Cordas. I'm a photographer here in New York. Today, I want to talk to you about how I make my zines. Let's start from basics. What are Zens? Well, Zens are simply small magazines. In fact, they don't actually have to be smaller in size, but they usually are. This is an example of a zine that I made. I've made 18 of those. The major difference between a magazine and a zine is that usually Zen is self published. The print run is much smaller, and a lot of times it's made by hand. Not always, not in this case, I don't make them. I don't actually make them by hand. I have them printed by professional printer, but a lot of people do it by hand because it's enjoyable. But the main thing about zines as opposed to the magazines you see in bookstores, is that they are self published. They are usually produced in smaller circles, and they are much easier to make. And, of course, you don't actually need a big publishing house to publish a Zen. And that's why they're an amazing tool for photographers, writers, artists in general. Now, who are Zens for? The short answer is Zins are for everybody. The more nuanced answer would be zines are predominantly for artists, I would say, or anyone who creates something, so for creatives. The good thing about Zins is that they are very easy to make. You can make them with little money, and it doesn't take long. Zins are a great tool for artists to showcase the work. They can serve as a portfolio. They can serve as a leave behind. They can serve as a sort of a business card as well. We'll talk about it later. But first and foremost, what is the major problem of today's photography, in my opinion, is that because everything is digital, we consume thousands or millions of images, and it's just the number keeps growing. We don't actually ever see or very rarely see our work in print, and Zens solve that problem. Zens are for anyone who likes to showcase their work in a form of a little magazine. Of course, most of our work, whether we are photographers, writers or sculptors, or any artist, normally, don't end up in a magazine. Sure. If you're a photographer, especially if you're a fashion photographer or fine art photographer, you can submit your work to magazines, and yes, they will accept your work every once in a while and they'll publish it, but there are a whole range of issues or obstacles that are connected with it. You know, it's much harder to publish your work in a big magazine than it is to make a zine. Sometimes it takes years for photographers to get published. Some of them never get to get published, especially that in today's landscape, magazines are less and less important. Fewer and fewer people read magazines. We consume everything online. Magazines are going bankrupt, magazines are cutting their budgets. It's getting increasingly difficult to publish your work in a magazine, let alone a big magazine, a magazine that matters, a magazine that has certain brand and is known, right? So what do we do as photographers? Do we just cry in the corner and despair and say, Oh, I'm never going to get published in the magazine. You could do that, but I would recommend making a zine. Making a zine is a much easier way to get your work published. No, it's probably not going to be seen by thousands of people as it would have been if it was published in vogue, for example, or New York Times. But guess what? It's really hard to get your stuff to vogue or New York Times. But it doesn't mean that you should just give up and never showcase your work. And, of course, yes, I'm sure you publish your work online. It's everywhere from Instagram to TikTok or even Facebook if that still exists. But it's not the same. Having your work published in a physical form like that is a different ballgame. And if you've never tried it, I recommend it because it really is a different experience. It brings you back to those times where maybe if you're old enough as a kid, you would go and buy your favorite magazines. In my case, there would be a sports magazine usually about football and there it's a certain experience that you had with it. You know, it was biweekly, for example, so you could only get it twice a month. You waited for it. You were kind of expecting what's inside. And then the most important thing, you could have it and put it on the shelf and go back to it. Yes, of course, you can have it online as well. You can always go back to Instagram. But you know what I mean, it's not the same. Photographs printed on paper, is something else. It's something nicer, it's something to remember. But like I said, it's not only about actually putting your work and printing it out and then having it for yourself. This could also serve as a promotional material. You could send it out to editors, to galleries, to magazines. You can bring it to a portfolio review. That's important. It doesn't cost a lot, so you can just leave it with someone and don't worry about it. It's not a book if you're if you ever publish a book or you ever publish the book, you know that to leave behind a book, you know, each book is a certain cost, and you get a certain amount of books from your publisher for free, but then those books run out. And then if you want to you can just go around and hand your books for free because each books is say $50, it's not a great way to promote your work because it's just simply expensive. Also, a book is a big object, much bigger, much heavier than this. So when you're at the portfolio review, even if you want to leave a book behind, a lot of editors won't take it because they can take a book from every person they review because they would end up with boxes of books, right? But this is lightweight. This is just like a little notebook. That's all. And if they throw it away, no biggie, right? You have a lot of those. It's quite disposable, but if they do like it, I guarantee you that people will take notice. People like to smell the paper. People like to see stuff printed because it's becoming more and more rare. So whether you're an artist or a poet or any kind of visual creative and your work would benefit from being seen in that form, Zenes are for you and today I'm going to walk you through my process of making Zens starting from the idea itself, how it came about to the very last step, which is selling and sending them out because that is also important. There are a lot of issues connected with shipping depending on where you live and where your audience lives. All of that in this workshop, let's dive right in. 2. I The Process - Finding a Theme: Okay, so you're listening to me. You're thinking, Alright, that sounds good. I should probably make a zine. He's got a point. What is the next step? Well, the next step is to find a theme for your zine. In other words, to find the title, find a thread that would make the zen specific. I wouldn't recommend making zenes that sound very general, for example, my best landscape photography. Sure. You could make a zen like that. It could serve as a portfolio, as a cheap form of a portfolio. If you're a landscape photographer, maybe you want to go to Portfolio Reviews and leave that behind. Okay, cool. But imagine that every photographer, every landscape photographer that ever lived made a zen about their best landscape photography. We see that all the time online. We see that on Instagram on Flicker. And sure, sometimes it's very good, but I would say I would argue that it's too general. Just like in any other genre of art, specificity is the key to grabbing people's attention. So me instead of making Zen that would be titled New York. I decided to go deeper and I decided to divide it into different specific themes. The one of my latest themes is Gleason's Gym. So photos that were just taken in this one boxing gym, the oldest boxing gym in the United States, this is one of my thinnest zines. It doesn't mean that it's one of the worst. It's quality over quantity. In fact, the thinner the zine, the easier it is to ship it. We'll talk about it later. If you make a bulky heavy zine, shipping costs are going to be an issue. So, you know, I've lived in New York for ten years. Imagine me trying to make a zine on New York from 20,000 photos? No, that's almost impossible. I made a book on New York, but even that book, New York Unseen has a specific angle to it. It's not just best off. A anything like books, zines, or even albums, you know, musical albums, if it's best off, it's usually not best off. It's usually uh, something that someone else made for that artist. If you think about music, a lot of best of albums are made after the artist's death because the producer want to make more money on that artist. And listen, I have best of albums in my discography as well. You know, artists like Bob Marley, of course. But at the end of the day, I prefer to listen to a specific Bob Marley album rather than his best off. And the same applies with photography. I would not want to see a best of Helmut Newton or a best of Joel Maowiz or best of Gary Winegran. Gary Winegrand has books with specific themes, and so do all other photographers. There's a reason for that. People want to see a story, and the best of album is not a great way to approach it. So when making a zen, you need to find the theme. I suspect that especially if you've been taking pictures for a while, it shouldn't be difficult. Maybe you live close to a park that you love, maybe if you've lived there your entire life and you have a lot of photos, and your first zen would be just that, my park, whatever its name. Maybe you're lucky enough to live by the ocean and you photograph surfers. That's a great way to start. Just surfers, not California. California is big. There's a lot of things to photograph. And of course, if you go on holiday to California, for example, for a week, this is your first time in California. Sure, you can make a zen, especially if you don't treat it very seriously, and this is supposed to be only for your family and friends. Sure, make a zen that's titled California, and that's it. And you'll have colorful pictures of cars and black and white pictures of people. And some abstract pictures of clouds in the sky, and it's going to be a nice memory, a nice souvenir. But if you're a little bit more serious about photography and if you've been taking pictures for a while, specificity is the key. So I'm guessing you already know what your first zen would be. Could be members of your family, could be your classmates. Could be your neighborhood. That's an interesting one. But even within that theme, your neighborhood, depending how big your neighborhood is, you could go deeper. You could just focus on one corner of the street, which actually, one of my zenes is just about that. It's just about seventh Avenue and 34th Street in New York. It's the busiest corner in New York. I went there for years, photographed it, and all of those pictures were taken on that Cornage. This, you may think like, Oh, this is easy. Well, this is actually seven years of taking pictures on that corner. Just that. And I had the idea way before I actually made that Zen. So I would recommend specificity. But let's just say you already have a theme because if you don't have a theme, well, then the answer is simple. Shoot more pictures. Go out there, shoot more, and the theme will emerge or approach it from the other side and sit and think about the theme before you go out. It's up to you, there are those are the two ways to approach it. I tend to go for the first one. So I go back to my archives because it's so vast and I know there maybe not countless, but a lot of themes are there that I haven't even explored yet. And I don't know if I'm going to continue making zines forever, probably not. But there are a lot of themes, but you could approach it from another angle and be very specific about very intentional about the theme of a scene before you go out and make pictures. So maybe you love dogs. You're just going to photograph dogs or maybe just one breed of dogs or maybe just photograph an area just around one bridge in your city that you like, whatever it is, but be specific. 3. II The Process - Ideas and Preparation: Let's talk about the idea. Where did it come from? I always knew what zines were, but I saw a lot of zines that were made in an amateur way. A lot of those zines were not good in terms of quality, in terms of quality of work, but also the quality of the zine itself. So I didn't consider it for a long time. And then one time I went to a portfolio review in Miami. And the photographer that was reviewing my work, she said, Oh, it seems like you like to shoot a lot of lonely people. You have a whole theme here. You could make an essay out of it. Back then, I didn't think about a Zen. I just thought about that because I wasn't aware, and that's the interesting part about photography that the artist oftentimes doesn't realize that he's shooting something very specific because I shoot subconsciously. I don't go out in the streets with a specific agenda or a theme, most of the time because right now I'm actually working on a book on New York's Subway. So I would like to increase my time in subway. I just need more subway photos, and that's what I'm doing right now. But in general, when I go out in the streets, I don't go out with any specific idea of what I'm going to shoot. I just open up to the streets and they give me whatever they have to offer that day. And as you know, New York has a lot to offer. But in this case, I looked at my own work and I thought, She's right. I do seem to be attracted visually to lonely people. And that became an essay. It was published in Lens culture a while back. I went a little bit viral. But it wasn't enough for a book. I don't know how many photos I had exactly, but let's just say I had 20 photos of 20 good photos. I had more, but 20 solid quality photos that I wanted to show, but 20 photos is obviously not enough for a book. So here comes the idea for a Zen. The way I see Zens is essays. They are visual essays. For me, the way I make my zines, each zen has a very specific theme. They are all street photography. So this is already a pretty strong theme. I don't just throw anything there, my portraits, my landscape photography my go pro photography or drone actually, some drone photography is in there, but it's very much in the line of street photography. So I have narrowed down very specific themes. One is it's New York, another one, it's all black and white, and then another one is a specific theme. So my first zen was New York and snow. My second zene was New York Subway, and my third zen was Coney Island and so on. So each one of those Zens and there are 18 of them right now, have a very specific theme. Loneliness at the time, seemed like a wonderful theme. It ended up to be my Zen number five, so I didn't start with that zen, but that's when the idea started. I looked at my work. I saw an essay, a very clear essay, thanks to that photographer who told me, you have something here, something interesting, something very specific and specificity in arts is very important, and you could make an essay out of it. I did I like that it was published in Lens culture. It brought me a lot of nice emails, people emailing me saying that they feel the same and they resonate with the work. And this was all great. But ultimately, it was all on a screen. It was all online, and I wanted to take it further. And 2019, the beginning of the year, I make my first zine. So that photographer showed me the path to creating my first zen, even though my first zen was actually on New York in winter. It's called New York in Snow. But like I said, the idea came from that photographer. And from then on, I realized that I have a lot of zenes to make. I have a lot of zenes because I have a lot of themes. I'd been shooting in New York for years at that point, probably six or seven years. Now it's over ten years. So I sat down looked at my archives, vast archives of street photography, and it turned out that I have so much to show and that the themes are very clear from New York kids zen that never happened yet, maybe one day I'll make that to New York in summer, New York in snow, New York in winter. Prospect Park, one zen, very specific zen on one park in New York, the second largest park in New York that I lived close by and I loved and I still love. That's when the idea started. I thought it would be a great way to show my work and here the entire challenge starts. The challenge has many obstacles. It's not going to be easy at first, but it's also much easier than making a book. Another thing about zines is that you're maybe preparing to make a book by making zines. Making a zine is a great preparation. It's like a warm up, it's like a training before a big game. The stakes are low, the budget is low. You have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain, and it's fun and it will prepare you to eventually maybe if that's what you're thinking, if that's what you want to do, make an extensive body of work, a book. But a zine is a great start. And I actually did make a book back in 2023 last year. I published my first monograph, New York Unseen. And the way I look at it to a certain extent is that it's a collection of my zines. Of course, it's not exactly that. I didn't just put all of my zines. A book has a different process, and there's a different way of making a book, and there are more people involved in making a book that I would argue is another advantage of making a zine. You can do it entirely yourself. It's not very time consuming. I usually make a zin in one day. Um in one day, I mean, putting the scene together, but selection of the photos is another part of the process, and that could take longer if you have an archive like me, which is very big, thousands of photos, and if you really want to make sure that you're not missing any of those good photos, then the first phase, yes, would be selecting the photos that could take long. But once I have my selection for a certain zine. The actual process of making a zine and sending it out to my publisher doesn't take more than half a day or maybe a day. So that's great. With a book, Oh, with a book, it's a different story. You have an editor, hopefully, and you have a number of people that want to have a say. There's a designer and so on. We're not going to talk about that. I'm going to make a separate workshop on how I made my first book. But today we're going to focus on something that's easy and doable at home within a couple of days. 4. III Selecting Photos: Alright, so let's assume you already have a theme. What is the first step? First step is, of course, to go to your archives and see if you have enough photos. How many photos is enough? Well, it depends how big you want your zine to be. I told you at the beginning that zines in general tend to be smaller. So this is a five format for Europeans and for Americans, this is 5.5 " by 8 ". It's a perfect size for a zen to be honest. In my opinion, I would not want to make my zines bigger unless it would be a landscape photography zen which would also obviously be in color. Then maybe maybe I would consider making it bigger because it makes sense, right? But other than that, I think this size, so a five or just like a school notebook size is perfect. It's actually probably smaller than a school notebook. Like I said, 5.5 by eight or six by nine. Somewhere there, there are envelopes that are exactly six by nine that I use. It's good because it's smaller, lighter, easier to ship. But how many photos are enough photos? Well, that obviously depends totally on you. I try to keep my zines to 32 pages max. I think I may have made one zine that was 36 pages, and by the way, you have to think in four because each spread when you make a zine is actually four pages starting from the cover. We'll cover this later when I show you how I actually make zines in Adobe design, but it goes in four just by design. So most of my zines are either 28 pages, 24 pages, some of them are 32. And like I said, I think I may have made one that's 36 pages, but that presents some issues because the zines are getting bulky. They're harder to ship, they're more expensive to ship. You know, if someone orders two zines, suddenly, it turns out they don't fit into one envelope, so you have to send them in separate envelopes, which doubles the cost of shipping and so on and so on, or you send it in a bigger envelope, but then you have to get the bigger envelope, and it's also going to be more expensive anyway. So I try to keep it light. And that's actually good because it ensures that the quality is there. You don't just like, you know, with any photo work, including books or anything, you don't just want to publish as many photos as you can. That's not what it's about. It's exactly about the opposite. So limiting your work because less is more. It's always better to leave people wanting more than people not wanting to see anymore because they're already bored or tired, right? And honestly, if you have a specific theme, even if it's New York Subway, and yes, I do have plenty of photos. Like I said, I'm currently considering or preparing to make a whole book on subway so when I was selecting photos for that zen, it was difficult because I had a lot of good photos, but at the end of the day, I published a zen that was probably 32 pages, and I'm very happy with it. And because I published it a long time ago, I don't remember the dilemmas. Oh, this picture didn't make it, and that picture didn't make it. Today, when I look at it, I think it's tight. It's good quality. There's not a single picture in there that I look at today and think like, probably should have left it out. No, that's the idea. Publish your best work. So how many photos are enough photos? I would say anywhere 15-25 photos because keep in mind that some of the photos actually take two pages. So it's a double spread. It's just one photo, but we'll take two pages. So if this zine, particular zine which is the latest zine Gleason's Gym, has 24 pages, then there are probably fewer than 20 pictures in it. So bottom line, less is more. It's a golden rule for photography and for life in general. Keep it tight. You don't want to go back to that zen in a couple of years and think, like, Oh, this picture doesn't belong here, which may happen anyway, because as you progress as a photographer, you simply get better. So in a way, you want that. You want to go back in five or six years, especially if you're an emerging photographer and notice the progress and think, like, I wouldn't have published that picture today, but that's good because that means I'm better today. But for me right now, where I'm at in my career, I think I've reached a sort of a plateau where unfortunately, I don't get any better. No, I'm kidding. Hopefully, I do, but the difference is not that significant. So whether I published in 2019, or yesterday, the quality of the photos are not going to be that different or not going to be different at all, or in some cases, I actually think I did better work six years ago than I do now in some cases. So that's not going to be an issue. But if you are beginning photographer, yes, that may be an issue, and you may have issues with editing because that's a whole different story in itself, how to edit your work, or how not to get attached to certain pictures. Oh, I love this picture so much. But you're the only one who loves it. No one else understands what's going on. Why did you choose that picture? When I was making my first book, I had a few of those instances with my editor when he straight up asked me, like, why do you like this picture? And I was like, so in love with this photo. He's like, This photo has to be in the book. And he was like, Why? Which could be disappointing, but not for me. I took it as a great feedback. That's why I hired him in the first place. I needed that person to tell me, No, please. Like, or at least reconsider. But I felt so good when I took the picture and this and that. And he was like, but what's interesting in that picture for you? And then you realize that sometimes sometimes I pushed, and I said, No, no, no. This photo, I see your point, but this photo needs to stay. But more often than not, I said, he's right. Let's take it out. Less is more, I would say, 15 to 25 pictures is a good starting point. 5. IV Designing the Cover: When I start designing my zines, the first thing I do is I choose a cover. One, because it's the most exciting part. The cover is always the most exciting part. It is supposed to be the best image of that zen or at least the most interesting. Sometimes the best image is horizontal, so it's not going to be good for a cover for this purpose for a vertical cover. So maybe it's second best. But a lot of times whatever is on the cover is literally my favorite photo. In that zen. So that's exciting. I design it in Photoshop. I have a template. It's pretty easy. The font is obviously the same. Not necessarily the same size because different titles have different number of letters in it. So let's just say, if I have a title like Gleason's Gym. It's a fairly short title, and it fits really nicely. But if the title is Coney Island Beach and Notice, it's not a zen on Coney Island. I thought it was too general to just publish a Coney Island Zen because I lived there for three years, and I have thousands of photos from Coney Island. So again, I wanted to be specific, and I made so far, I think I made three zenes. One is Coney Island Beach, which is one of the latest zenes, but I have a zen on Coney Island in the summer and Coney Island of season as well. Maybe maybe there's going to be another Coney Island zen sometime down the road. So I designed the cover, and I decide on the photo. If I can decide on the photo, if I have a couple of candidates and all of them are so good and I just can't decide, I will sometimes upload the proposals on my Instagram. On my street photography Instagram and ask my audience, my followers what they think would be the best cover. I usually give them four options. In the past, people actually commented a lot and they were, you know, not arguing, but they were voicing their opinions. Like, I think number two because it speaks more to that theme or I think number four, because it's so powerful. And some people will be definitely number one. You can't go with anything else but number one, and other people like number four, so sometimes it actually ends up not to be very helpful because you have different opinions, and you end up with, like, just as many people who love number one as people who like number three. But most of the times I have a pretty good idea what the cover will be, which photo I like. This is how I start. And from there, I have a fairly small group of photos, right, because even if it's 50, but then the final selection will be 30, right? And then I will discard some of them in the process of making the zine as well because they won't fit or for other reasons. So it's not actually hard to make a zine. It's not hard to sequence them because they're not a lot of photos. And that's why making a zine doesn't take a lot of time. Once you have the photos, the selection of photos that you want to use, it's not going to be very hard for you to put it together because you're not making a book. You're not choosing from hundreds of photos, you're choosing from 25 photos, maybe 30. It's not that difficult. But of course, there are certain things that you should consider while sequencing photos, and that's what I want to talk to you about right now. 6. V Designing Zines: Okay, so you decided you want to make a zine. You realized you already have a theme. Congrats. That's a great start. You realize that you have enough photos to make a zine, you don't need to go out and shoot more. So the next step is sequencing. In other words, putting the zine together with the material that you have. Let's just say that you're making a zine on Central Park in New York, a zine that, by the way, I haven't made yet, but I may because I think I have enough photos from Central Park to make a zine one day. But for now, I haven't made it. So let's just say my next zine Zen number 19 is about Central Park. How do I approach it? I have the theme. I go into my archives, select all the photos of Central Park that I think are good. Now, not all the photos of Central Park that I took. I took a lot, and a lot of them are not that good. A lot of them are not that interesting. So I go back to my archives from the beginning. I moved to New York in 2014, but I was also here for a while in 2012. Maybe I have some Central Park photos from 2012. We're making a zen on Central Park. You selected 50 photos out of, I don't know how many. If you live near Central Park, this is an example again, you will probably have hundreds of photos, right? But then you boil it down to 50 photos that you think, these photos are good enough to make it into the final version of the zine, but they won't all make it because I only have space for 20. So the next obvious step is you boil those photos down to 20. It's up to you. You have to take a number of things under consideration. You have to see how the photos fit into the design. So if most of your photos are horizontal photos, they will most likely take double spreads horizontal photos don't really look good on a single spread. If a Zen is that small, don't think I have ever done that in any of my zenes. When I have a horizontal photo, it's usually either a double spread. It's easier for me because a lot of my photos are vertical. So it works great for me. Maybe it won't work for you. But this is another horizontal photo that's double spread because I prefer for this photo to be big and I want people to enjoy it big. If I put this photo on just one page, tried it. It does not look good. Here's another example of a double spread. That's what horizontal photos do to you. This photo, this is interesting. This photo is actually a horizontal photo, more like a square. This one here, but I decided to crop it as a vertical photo because I I want this photo to be in the ne, but I didn't have enough space. So I had to compromise. I was like, Okay, this is the most important part of the photo anyway. So I'm just going to make it into a horizontal I'm sorry, I'm going to make it into a vertical photo as opposed to publish it in its original form, right? So another horizontal photo, I guess Coney Island is all about horizontal photos, okay. You have two verticals here. So that's what you have to do. You have to decide how many pictures can make it to the final version of the zen and how do they fit with the design. 7. VI Sequencing: Alright, so you have the cover. It's time to sequence the photos. Like I said, it shouldn't be very difficult because you don't have that many photos to work with. But there are certain tips that I would give you. Tip number one, if the strongest image of the Zen is your cover photo, the second or third photo should also be one of your strongest photos. So that whoever opens the book, the Zen starts with a strong image. The cover image needs to be strong because whether you'll be selling it online or in person, which I actually do, I go to Zen fests. The cover image is the thing that attracts people. Start strong with the cover, the second or third image, also strong, and then you need to close the Zen with a strong image as well. By closing the Zen I mean the last image, but also the second glass. So this is the cover for my New York Love. This is Zen number 17, published in February 2024, just in time for Valentine's Day. I think I don't know if it's the strongest image, but it's definitely top three strongest images in that scene, in my opinion. Then this double spread is also very strong, very quiet, very tender. It's an interesting position for a photo because here you have the cover, and then you have this part, which is more rigid. It's thicker because it's still the cover, and then the actual zen begins here. So it is a particular meaning or significance that that photo has, and I always make it a double spread. I never, never, ever put a single photo here and a single photo there. It doesn't work. I also often put some quotes in my zines on the first page, just like here in that Gleason's Gym zen. So I will put a quote that's somewhat relevant to the zine. And then I end the zine with a photo that is also usually one of my favorite photos. And then the second last, again, it's always it's always a double spread. The second last photo is always a strong one as well, because just like with the book, you need to open strong. You need to attract attention. You need people to be like, What's that? And then you need to finish with a strong image to leave a good impression. It's that simple. Another thing to consider when you're sequencing photos, and especially if you do it in color, is that the zen is consistent in terms of colors as well. Um, you know, my job is very easy because it's all black and white. The only thing I have to take care of is that the black and white tones are consistent. And that in itself is some work. I use a certain way of processing my photos, converting my photos into black and white. So they are all consistent. The paper is consistent. All of those zines were printed on the very same paper, and luckily, the printer I'm using never changed it. They never discontinued the paper I'm using. I'm using mat paper that I think is great for what I need for my New York Chronicles stuff. It is unfortunate when you work with a publisher and then after a while, they discontinue the paper, for example, and they don't do mad paper anymore. Now you can only get satin paper or glossy paper, which really changes everything for me. I would literally have to find another publisher if one day they decide that they're not doing mad paper or they're doing thinner paper. They don't do that thick paper that I love. For whatever reason, I mean, the reason is always the same money, right? Suddenly, it starts making sense for them financially to do it. They don't have enough orders. They discontinue the paper or they switch to glossy paper. It's a problem for me. Luckily, that didn't happen, but it could happen. And even trickier is when you want to combine black and white and color photography. This is something we did in my book, New York Chronicles. I was opposed to it at the beginning, but the publisher sort of insisted and they convinced me. In the end. In the end, I thought, Okay, well, those color photos are also my photos, so it's not like I'm not proud of them. I just don't think that they necessarily work so well with black and white. And the end result is actually pretty good, but it took some work to marry color and black and white photos. And if you're inexperienced, and if your color photos are all over the place in terms of palette of colors, and then you suddenly want to slip in black and white photo, this could be an issue. It doesn't have to be an issue. Some black and white and color photos work just fine because they connect on other levels like a theme or even the lens that you're using. If they're taken with the same lens, there is some thread that connects them, right? It's easier to make it work but in general, I would say it's a tricky thing. But even if you're making a zine just made of color photographs, make it tight. You know, you don't want photos that are slightly desaturated and living on the same page with super contrasty and super colorful photos. This just gives off an amateur vibe. So if you're not into that, if you want to step up your game and, you know, show that you're not an amateur, be wary of that. Either do a zine that's all in color and those colors somehow talk to each other, or avoid it altogether and do it black and white. And the hardest part of it would be to join black and white in color. Absolutely doable. I'm not discouraging you from doing that, but I'm saying it's tricky. It's going to take some work, and it's going to take some time to make it happen. It's just trial nurse, you know. So that's another thing to consider. A great tip when sequencing is try not to put similar photos together. It's counterintuitive. It may sound like, Oh, this makes sense. There's a photo of snow on the left hand side, and so we need to put a photo of snow on the right hand side. And while this works, sometimes, this cannot be your go to modus operandi, the way of creating a scene, in general. I ran into a little bit of an issue with my editor because I had a while I was making the book, I mean, I I had a certain design of my book made by a professional editor, and then they had some of their own ideas, and they made a different design, and it turned out a lot of what they did was just doing that, grouping pictures based on themes. So if I had seven pictures of kids in that book, they put them all together. So, suddenly, you're browsing through the book, and it's like kids, kids. Oh, more kids. Oh, kids again. Kids, and it just doesn't work. It's much more interesting to actually put contrasting things. So a kid and an older person, the same bridge or the same park in snow and the park same park in the summer, right? Of course, if you have double spread, because that's what I'm talking about right now, marrying pictures on one spread, if it's a double spread, problem solved. But at least partially because then you have to also make sure that these pictures whatever follows and whatever precedes makes sense that they have a certain thread. Of course, again, my job is easier because if the whole Zen is about Coney Island beach, then guess what? They're all pictures of the beach of Coney Island. Some of them are in the summer, some of them are in winter, but at the end of the day, the theme is strong. So it doesn't present that much of a difficulty for me to marry them. But if your theme is broader or more general and that's why I say if your theme is general, it's going to be a problem, not only because it's less interesting, but also because it's harder to put all those things together. If you're making a zine about New York and some of them are black and white. Some of them are in color, it's going to be a problem. It's going to be difficult especially if you're not experienced, to make it work so that you look at a zen as if you were reading a short story because that's what I think of my zines, they're photo essays, basically. So you're not jumping from random photo to another random photo, what's going on here? A Zen, a book, any kind of book needs to have a narrative, needs to have a flow. And if the flow is broken, you'll notice as a viewer. And the more experienced you are at looking at photographs, the more you will notice. Why are those two pictures together? So I would discourage you from putting pictures that are very similar on the same spread. Again, there are cases when that works, but in general, don't do it. If you have a picture of a man With an umbrella on your left hand side, don't pair it up with a woman with an umbrella. Something more interesting would be an older man with an umbrella versus a young girl with an umbrella. Okay, that's better. I still wouldn't do it. At least there's some friction, there's some interesting contrast, even if ever so slight. But a more interesting pair would be a man with an umbrella and a kid in a fountain during summer. You have the theme of water, but it's not that little. Maybe it's raining in the first photo. So the water is there, but it's kind of I don't want to say subconscious, but it's subtle. And then you have a kid in the middle of a summer without his clothes and a fountain, maybe you have a bunch of kids. That's also interesting. You have one subject here, but you have seven subjects in the other photo, and that creates friction that is interesting, something that makes your brain go from one level to another and like, Oh, that's interesting as opposed to like, Oh, kids, kids, more kids, happy kid, crying kid, and so on. That doesn't work. That's another tip. Make it interesting by not using the same theme on the same spread or not grouping pictures that have the same theme in just one chunk or one section of your in. Or a book. So if I have a lot of if the Zen is already on kids, if the Zen is New York kids, then of course, it'll be just kids in that zen. So that presents both a challenge, how to make it interesting, but also it makes it easier in a way because people know what to expect, right? But if the Zen is Coney Island Beach and suddenly you have seven pictures of kids on the beach that follow each other, kids, kids, kids, or I don't know, if you have three pictures of lifeguards. Well, why would you do that? Why would you group that? The same applies to horizontal versus vertical. I made that mistake at the beginning of my Zen career, and my ex girlfriend who was also a photographer, pointed out it to me. She said, Well, you have seven horizontal pictures in a row, back to back, horizontal horizontal. She's like, That's boring. Why? Why don't you break it up with a vertical one? And she was right. And today, I never make that mistake. I do consider it a mistake. Unless all your photography is just horizontal pictures, that happens as well. My photography is heavily skewed towards vertical pictures. So in a lot of magazines, you have vertical, vertical vertical, but then I always try to break it up with horizontal because I always have horizontal pictures, whether it's just three or five, even if it's 15% and the rest is vertical, make it work, break it. In other words, just make it interesting. Another good tip would be to simply give the design time. I said, I make my zines in one day, and that's usually the case, but you don't have to. You can make your first draft, leave it, come back next week, reshuffle. The more time you give it, the stronger it will be. This is what happens always with any kind of work. If you give it more time to mature, you have a better, deeper perspective. You come back to the same work and you have different ideas. And I'm not saying about spreading it over months because that's also not good because then you lose the focus, and then a lot of times you'll come back to something you started a few months back and you can't reconnect with it at all. And you think, Oh, I need to start from scratch, so something to consider. But yeah, give it time, a couple of weeks, a couple of days. Come back. You'll have new ideas, fresh ideas. You'll see, Oh, this photo doesn't work. Oh, how about this? Reshuffle leave it, come back again. Also, you can seek feedback from your friends, family, somebody you know. Ideally, somebody who knows about photography, who's well versed in photography, but not necessarily. It all depends how serious you want to take it, but, you know, you can ask your best friend or someone who's also into photography, what they think about it. It doesn't mean that you have to agree with them. It doesn't mean that you have to change your cene because they said this and that. That's another thing to, you know, be aware of. The reason you know, someone said, Oh, I don't like this or I don't like that, doesn't mean that you immediately have to go and change it. Consider it, give it time. And speaking of seriousness, if you really want to go serious on sequencing your zine, you could use a technique that people use when they make their books, and I used it when I made my books, but I don't use it when I make my zines because I don't think it's necessary, but you could do it. And that is, if you're struggling with sequencing your zine on a screen, you could always print the photos in small format four by six, maybe five by seven, have them printed, put them on your wall or on the floor, have a wider perspective. On the whole group of photos and then start playing with it. And yes, it's easier to sequence photos like that. It's just that it's a little bit of hassle because you have to print them out. That takes a couple of days, some money, not a lot, but, you know, and then you have to go back and do the same thing, you know, in whatever software you're using, whether it's Adobe in design or Photoshop. But it is a better way to look and sequence photos to actually have them printed, stick them up your wall and somewhere where you can see it often. And just by looking at it like a slow moments of your life of your day, when you're not doing anything in particular, when you're kind of idling, you look at it and it's like, Oh, how about this? Here's an idea, which is something you can't really do on a computer because you don't have that wide perspective of things. You could also try that. Another great tip that I was given by my editor was to play with the sizes of photos. So if you have a spread, the two photos on each side don't have to be the same size. This is a good example. The right hand side, smaller photo, the left hand side, a full spread. I think it's more interesting, simple as that. Sometimes having photos of the same size works. Sometimes it's preferable. But in my experience, just by changing the size, again, you mix things up. You make it less boring. You make it more creative. Of course, it has to have a reason to be like that. And in this case, the main reason is to juxtapose two things that are maybe similar in theme, you know, Coney Island Beach. But the size is different. It puts things into different perspective, makes you look at them differently. It's just something about one photo being smaller than the other that makes a lot of books just interesting. And yet another idea is to just have one photo on a spread. So basically, have this photo and have a blank page here. To be honest, I think I've tried it once in my zines and it didn't work. That white page just looked a little bit odd. It kind of almost looked like something went wrong, like, it's a printing error. And it didn't work. It wasn't strong, but I did that, or we did that in my book many times. And we did that when we thought that the photo is so strong that it just deserves to have the whole spread, even if it's vertical. If it's horizontal, then of course, it's easier because you're probably going to make a double spread out of it. But if it is a horizontal photo, it makes it stronger. If the photo is really strong, like, you know, top ten of your photos in that book, sometimes giving it that space, that negative space makes it all the more powerful. I don't know if it's something to explore when making zines, but why not? You know, try it. I don't usually do this. I tried it, didn't work. And I also usually have so many photos that it kind of looks like it seems like seems like a waste of space. I was like, why would I leave that page blank if I can fit in one more photo there, really good photo, right? But yeah, yeah, play with it. It may work for you. And in general, if there is one rule or one tip, one piece of advice that I would give you when making Zens is over and above all, have fun with it. That's what Zens are for. Like I said, it could be seen as a warm up before making something bigger like a book. Zens are your training field. Zens are when you yourself, train yourself and your e to be an editor, when you try things out, because the stakes are low and because you're not risking a lot of money and you're not risking a lot of time. You can make mistakes. You should make mistakes. That's how we all learn. This is your playground. Just have fun with it. When you print a Zen, and then it comes in post and you see it and you realize, this is not working. This spread here could be done differently. Or, guess what? It could be done differently the next time. You can literally make adjustments and print it out again, the second edition of that Zine will be even better, but it doesn't have to be perfect from the start. It usually isn't. And if that's the kind of attitude you're going to approach making Zen with, you're just going to have fun. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. It's not about making a ten out of ten portfolio. It's not about impressing national geographic. It's not about being really serious about it. It's about being imperfect and learning. Above all, learning. 8. VII Publishing: So one way of producing your zine is to make it yourself. You either make it with your own hands and put it together, or if you're a photographer, you print it on your printer, and then you put it together with a stapler or a thread and a needle, and then you have to make enough zines to meet the demand. It's going to be time consuming, but could be fun if that's what you're into. I don't have time for that. I prefer to delegate that task to a professional printer. I spent a lot of time looking for a printer, a publishing house that would suit my needs. I live in New York City. You would think that there are so many options, and indeed, there are more options than in most other places, I'm sure, but even so, it wasn't that easy for a number of reasons. First of all, I was looking for a publisher that would be willing to print small amounts of zines. I have a fairly large following, but people on my Instagram don't actually engage that much. So I knew I wouldn't be selling hundreds of zines. It was very obvious. And especially if this is your first zen, you need to feel what the demand is. You don't really know unless you're a super popular photographer, and you have thousands and thousands of followers, and they DMU every day. When is the first zen coming out and you have 179 DMs asking about that zine? Well, yeah, then great. Congratulations. You're going to make it. You're actually going to make money on your zine and then you can assume, I'm going to sell 200 zines. But when I was making my first zine, I had no idea if I'm going to sell 222 or 100. I was not expecting to sell 100, and I was right. I did not. I was hoping for more than two zines, but I didn't know that. Before anything else, like I told you before, I wasn't treating it very seriously in terms of money or a project. I was not looking to make money on it. I just wanted to have fun. And sure, sell some zens if I can, see what happens. But I wasn't, you know, it wasn't like a business project. I'm going to make a lot of money making my zines. No, I was actually expecting to fail financially, except it wasn't a fail for me because that was not the purpose of me making zines. If you don't want to make money, if that's not your main goal to make money, then even if you sell seven zines, it's still okay because you have other goals, and the reason you made the zine is to have fun and to see your work printed. So there was no pressure, but even so, I still didn't want to by default, use a printer that told me that they only print above 100 copies. So it's either 100 copies or it's nothing. That was not going to work for me. So that pretty much eliminated the majority of the printers out there on the market. When I contacted them, they had limits that I think most of them are like the minimum 100 copies, right? No, it's not for me. If you're a popular photographer, sure, fantastic. You're going to save money, you're going to make money. I was never going to sell 100 copies. So I found a printer. Here it comes. I'm not going to withhold it from you. This workshop is supposed to help you. So I'm not sponsored by them. They don't know that I'm recording this workshop. The printer is mix them. Mixm.com. I chose them because first of all, they allowed me to order ten zines. You can even order one, which is also very important because most of the printers will charge you a lot of money if you just want to print one test zine and you should. You shouldn't just blindly order 100 zines and let's see what happens. I hope they're good. That's risky. Just order one. Actually have it shipped to your house, see it for yourself with your own eyes, feel it. Is the paper okay? Is the quality of the print okay? Are you happy with it? And once you have that one sample Zen, you can proceed to ordering more. That's what I did. But a lot of printers wouldn't give me that option, or sample Zin would be so expensive, it would be like $35 with shipping. It's like, you could, of course, say, Okay, it's just a one time thing. I can spend $35 and not worry about it. Yeah, you could, but it didn't sit well with me, especially the then I found mixe and it was much, much cheaper. Although the shipping is always a problem because initially they actually they're a British company, so they were based in the UK and the first zines that I ordered were shipped from the UK only later on maybe a year later, they also started operating in the US I believe they're in Illinois. So not New York, but close enough. And now my zines are being shipped and being produced and shipped in Illinois, United States, which brings the cost lower. Another thing that convinced me to use them was the quality of their paper. They have an uncoated mat paper, which I think is ideal for my New York photographs. It's just ideal. It's just how I like it. I don't like my photos to be very contrasty. I would never choose a glossy paper for that kind of work. And the paper that they had, I fell in love. The first time I saw it, I knew this is exactly what I need. I hope they never discontinue that paper. I want to always print on that paper. It has a raw feeling. It's perfect for Zen, as well. The mat quality of it, it gives it lower contrast, which I like. I know a lot of you guys, a lot of people don't like lower contrast. A lot of people even tell me, why are your Blacks so gray and not black because I like it. It's done on purpose. It gives it a sort of a vintage look, and it's just what I need. So that's why I chose mix them. The paper was right. The platform was easy to use. The prices were okay, really okay. They deliver fast, and over and above all, when I got my first zen from them, it was just perfect. I was smiling. So when you're looking for a publisher, supposing that you're not going to print yourself, the things to consider is, does that publisher have a simple single zen that they can send? Ideally, for free, they're probably not going to do it. So at least let the single test zen be reasonable in terms of the price, right? Another thing, they have the right size? This is an easier thing to achieve because usually printers have all the sizes that you want, but you'd be surprised how many of them actually didn't have a smaller size and they only had a four bigger format size, which was never an option for me. And then another thing is, of course, how much is the shipping? Sometimes the price of your Zen is actually pretty good and you're happy about it, and then you go to checkout and then there's shipping, and you're like, What? I'm paying double the amount just for shipping. And that of course, depends on the number of zines you order. But with mixum I have the flexibility. If I run out, I can order more. It's not like I have to order 100 more, right? Let's just say one issue sold out, and actually, most of my issues sold out by now, but it took years to sell them out or months. Some of them sold out immediately, sort of. And I don't mean immediately, like the next day. I'm not that kind of photographer. I'm not a kind of popular photographer, unfortunately. It would be nice to, you know, upload a Zine to your Instagram, and next thing you know, it's all sold out within, like, 7 hours. That happens to a lot of people, not to me. Sand. Even if they sell out, I can print ten, 20 more and I don't have to print 100 more, which is important. Bottom line is wherever you live, try to find a publisher. I'm assuming it's going to be online, but who knows? Maybe you actually find a publisher that has a physical office in your city that would cover all of those things. They can provide you with a sample zen. They have paper that you like. They can print 20, 30, 40 zines as opposed to 150, of course, they're affordable. These are the things you have to consider. 9. VIII Shipping: And as far as the size of the zine, I told you at the beginning that my favorite size is this, which is slightly smaller than a notebook that kids use at school. It's small enough that you can almost put it in your pocket, at least in some pockets in your jacket. So that's kind of nice. And I ship them in those envelopes that are six by nine. They are cheaper to ship because they're smaller and also the zine is not very heavy. And this is important because in some cases here in the US, if it's any bigger than this, then it becomes a package, then it's no longer a letter, and that elevates the cost significantly. So for me, it was very important to keep it to six by nine because that allowed me to still ship it as a letter as opposed to a package, and I saved a lot of money. But that being said, to be honest, even so, I don't know if you're aware of that. You are if you live here in the States. Mail is expensive. And especially international mail. And that's why I see a lot of American photographers not shipping internationally because they're afraid of the cost because the costs are ridiculous. When I was shipping my book internationally, the book itself was $45. And then it was a little bit more with my signature. I was selling it on my online store. They are sold out by now. So the book was $45. You could go to Barnes and Noble or buy it online for $45. But then if I wanted to ship the book internationally to Europe, it was anywhere $35-65. So there were still people from Australia or Iceland. I think also Alaska, although that's the US, so I guess that wasn't that expensive. I think it was Australia. Somebody ordered a book, a signed book and the shipping was double. Meaning, the signed book, I think, was $65, and the shipping was $65 as well. So they paid double just for the shipping. And in that case, if you're a potential customer, you have to ask yourself, do I really want to buy that book from the photographer from his online store? Yes, it's going to be signed, but I'm paying $65 for shipping, where I can buy it on Amazon and if you have Amazon Prime, shipping is free, or shipping will be $10, and you're buying it for $45. These are the things to consider, but we're not talking about books right now, Zens, especially if you send just one Zen because there are a lot of orders that are two zines or three zines. I also did five pack zines promotions where you could order five zines. But then I stopped doing that because it was difficult to ship it. The cost went incredibly up. But if you're sending a single zine in a small envelope like that, that should not be a problem. And I think if you live in Europe, it's going to be affordable. It's going to be cheaper than in the States. But for me to ship zines to Europe, which I do a lot, actually, most of my zines right now, most of the orders are from Europe. If I wanted to go to the post office, it would not make any sense at all because I sell those zines for $15 right now, and if I wanted to ship it to any country in Europe, the shipping would be 11 $12 for a single zen, which I think is pretty ridiculous. I know it is what it is. You can't do anything about it, but it's still Wow. Really? People buy a zine for $15 and they have to pay $12 for shipping. So what I did, I figured it out. I had to. I had no choice. And it works. I don't know if it's going to work in your country. Hopefully, it works in the States. I put the zines in an envelope like this, and then I buy international stamps and put it in a mailbox. Or what I do very often is I see a mailman walking down the street. They're working, they're distributing mail. I'll just come up to them, hand it to them and say, Can I leave it with you? They'll say, and they'll put it in a separate bag, outgoing mail, and it works. But each one of those stamps currently is $1.30. We're only talking about international right now because shipping within the United States is fairly easy and fairly cheap. But I also do it by myself. I don't leave them at the post office. So we're talking about $5.20. That's the cost of shipping. It works. People get those mails. So instead of paying $15 for shipping, I do this, and I pay $5, and that's exactly what the shipping is on my website. If I ship it within the United States, it's considerably cheaper. So you have to figure it out for yourself wherever you live. I only learned about the shipping. This is also interesting. I learned about the shipping after I made my first zen. So I already had the zines. I already had my first orders, and I was so happy. I went to the post office, Dadada let's mail those to, you know, Poland or the UK. And then the woman behind the counter said, like, Yeah, that's 11 or $12 Paasin. And I was like, No, no, no, no, no, no, that can be. And so I had to find another way. I did find another way, and it worked. Maybe you'll have to do the same. 10. IX Selling&Distributing: Okay, so you found the right publisher. You ordered, they came in mail. You open the zines. They're good. You don't have to send it back. You don't have to fix anything. They're ready to be sold or distributed. And this is what this chapter is about selling and distributing. As far as promoting my zines, I actually don't except for my social media. So I have an Instagram account. The New York Chronicles. This is the Instagram that shows my street work, and that's pretty much the only place where I advertise the zines. That's why I don't actually sell a lot of zines. A whole issue usually is 30 copies. No more than that. You may be surprised, but I don't sell more than that. I don't use any marketing. I don't use any ads. I'm sure I probably sell more if I was using Instagram ads, but I don't want to go into that. I think the cost maybe it wouldn't be worth it as well in terms of cost because you would spend as much money on promoting it as you would on selling it. Like I said, for me, Zens have always been just a fun project that I'm not trying to make money. I have zero pressure making money out of it, and of course, the effect is that I don't sell a lot of zines, but I don't mind that. I only post on social media, but of course, if you want to take it to another level, you would probably use ads. Of course, there's also networking. Going to Zen first to Zen festivals, spreading the word, meeting other people that make zines, getting into some sort of Zen groups, Zen communities, whether it's online or in real life, is also very helpful. I go to Zen first as much as I can. I've been to two already this year. And it's been fun. They're usually very low key. It's not like a book fair or anything. It's usually somewhere, you know, in Brooklyn. But you meet a lot of interesting people. Some people come back to buy my zines. They already know, Oh, you're the guy, you're the guy black and white photos of New York. Yeah, I want to get another one. It doesn't happen very often, but when it happens, it's really nice. So, you know, again, it's up to you whether you just want to keep it low key. It depends on your following. If you have large following, it will obviously make it very easy for you to distribute. All you have to do is post, right? I have a medium sized following, but there's not a lot of engagement. So when I post things, there's not a lot of reaction to it. So my audience is very quiet, very low key, but they still see when I publish a zine. Then another thing I do is I will send a newsletter to all the people who already bought my zine. I have their email addresses, just letting them know that another zine is out. And obviously attach a link to my online store, and that's it. There's nothing more complicated to it. I can't say that, you know, I'm selling hundreds, but I'm selling enough to be satisfied. Other ways of distributing would be, like I said, doing it personally. But let's face it. Today in 2024, the way to do it is online hopefully you have a website and you can make it happen over there. If not, if you're just on Instagram, you can have people pay Pal you or VNMO VN Mo is a paying app in the US that I don't believe exists in Europe, but I'm sure there are other apps. You can sell directly through your social media without actually having a system set up like a website but it's better to have a website. It looks more professional and it just makes the whole process easier as well. But of course, on the downside, you'll probably have to pay some fees to your website provider like Squarespace or whatever else. There's always pros and cons, but overall, that's how I do it. I have my online store on my website, locords.com slash STORE. I have different categories. One of the categories are Zens they're $15 and then $5 for shipping. And yes, I have to pay some fees to square space for each transaction. It's not a big deal. It's not the end of the world. And I ship the zines myself. 11. Class Project: And now for the class project, make your first Zen. If you already have an idea what your first zen could be, start creating it now following the steps discussed in this workshop. First, as we said, dig into your archives and make the first selection, then trim it down to more or less 20 photos for the final selection. Spend a good amount of time sequencing photos in the Zen. That is the most important part. Use whatever software you're familiar with. I'm not going to get into the technical side of designing a Zen because that would be a whole separate workshop. Create a simple layout and save it as a PDF file. Try to make the Zen short and sweet. Remember, less is more. Once you have the PDF file, send it to me on lukcortas@gmail.com, or post some screenshots of the PDF here on the platform in the project section. If you want to go the full stretch and actually print your ZN, that's even better. I would love to have a look, and we'll definitely give you some feedback. If you don't already have a clear idea what your first Zine could be or have an idea, but don't have enough photos, go out and shoot with the intention to make your first Z. Come up with a theme, an idea, make it specific. Think how when where you'd like to shoot it. Ask yourself, what is it that you want to show and how to go about it. Remember, don't rush. And remember, over and above all, this is supposed to be a fun project. Take it easy and enjoy the process. Good luck. I'm looking forward to seeing your zines. O. 12. X Final Thoughts: I hope that the four stages that I talked about, the idea for Zen, the process, publishing and selling or distributing make it clear. You could use it as your template. You could do it in your own way, of course. But the main goal is to have fun and to have your work published. See your photographs as actual prints, which then may lead to you thinking about a book, Zens are a fun way to promote your work as well, send them to galleries, send them to editors, leave them behind when you're attending portfolio reviews. Or take them to a Zen fest and that's a great way to meet new people, to see how other people make their zines. I assure you, there are a variety of methods and exchanging ideas is always a good idea. Building a community. Go and have fun with it. Of course, if you have more questions, you can comment below or you can DME, find me on social media. I'll be happy to answer your questions. I've been making zines for five years. It's been fun, and I'm going to continue to make zans not necessarily from New York. Maybe I'll start a new series with a new theme, but I'm definitely still enjoying it, and I hope you will, too. Have a good day, and let's make some zines.