Why you should turn your Substack into a zine

but also why you shouldn't

Zines¹ (which if you are in the zine community you have heard defined ad nauseum) are small independent publications. Traditionally photocopied and assembled by hand, zines had a huge boom in the 90s, but their origins date back to “pamphlets” and the rise of the printing press.

Zines largely fell out of favor as the internet rose to prominence both because the anonymity of zines became harder to maintain and sharing slices of life from around the globe became easier to access. By the ‘10s, many online distros (zine distributors) shuttered their sites with only a few brick-and-mortar locations hanging on.

Then we collectively rediscovered that we wanted our privacy again² and zines have been experiencing a comeback.

Zines from the late 90s to early 00s (source: me)

Simultaneously, Substack and longform writing has been growing in popularity. Instead of quick takes, more people are looking for deep dives; instead of social media and digital goods, we are looking toward a more tangible world. With fears of censorship growing, the importance of physical media has been emphasized. Re-enter the zine.

Why Am I Writing This?

I saw two Substack posts lately that lead me to writing this: 1) a man sitting on a park bench reading printed out copies of his favorite Substack’s new posts; 2) a Note from a person wishing their favorite Substack was mailed to them like a newspaper.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “this I can help with.”

One Subtack debacle lead me digging this out of my drafts and actually posting it: the plagiarism scandal that’s been rippling through Substack over the past week. Quite a few people have expressed concern about their work being stolen. Having your writing surreptitiously made into a TikTok or added to a YouTube video should be on that list as well³.

Thoughtful, well-research Substacks are increasingly being paywalled. I don’t know about you, but I struggle to ask people to pay for something that doesn’t exist, to pay for “access” to a website. There are too many websites that are already paywalled, and I believe that good ideas, well-researched, thoughtful ideas, should be widely available.

But I also believe that people should be paid for their time and hard work.

Zines from 2025 (source: me)

Where Zines Come In

I think one relatively easy and lovely solution to these issues would be to make your Substack into a zine. Let’s say you publish two researched articles per month. Putting those two articles into a word processor or Canva and making them into a zine would take some extra time, but not a huge amount. Every other month you can print the zine or send it off for printing, and then you could mail the zine out to your paid subscribers⁴.

You get paid for your work, they get something tangible.

I’ve also seen folks on here write about things that are so personal that it’s amazing, and that they are often subjected to rude comments as thanks for their candor makes me wince. Zines don’t have that problem since they don’t have a comment section, making zines a perfect place for your very personal anecdotes, ones you may not want to share online for myriad reasons.

An added bonus: AI can’t synthesize your zine into its algorithm.

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Make Your Substack into a Zine

And here’s why you shouldn’t make your Substack into a zine: because the zine community is great and small and has a culture. A massive influx of people might disrupt that culture in a negative way. I want zines to grow again, to the Factsheet 5-filling days of the late 90s, but I want them to grow slowly.

So check out the zine community and see if you would be right for it. I can’t bring myself to subscribe to a paid Substack, but I can and do buy zines all the time. That’s me, and that might be you, and if it is, zines might be the place for you, too.

Finally, Here’s Some Resources

A zine about the zine community (it’s free).

A guide to zine sizes and that types of zines work best for said size.

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I hope you enjoyed this missive and if you are interested in turning your Substack into a zine but don’t know where to start, please feel free to reach out with your questions, I am always happy to help. A big part of the zine community is elder zinesters helping new ones and I take that very seriously; my inbox is always open to you.

1. It’s pronounced zeen like “magazine” because “zine” is short for “magazine,” there! I said it!

2. I theorize, too, that many old school zinesters (like myself) became teachers (like myself) and introduced zines to students once again (like I did), fuling a new generation of zines. PS: Zinester teachers, should I share my lesson plan?

3. A few weeks ago I saw a YouTube video have overlapping talking points and jokes with a Substack article I had read a few days prior. Was one lifting ideas from the other, or were both taking jokes from the same, third source? Or, had the references used become part “of the discourse” already, source too diaphanous to pinpoint at all?

4. Yes, Substack doesn’t support physical rewards, but you can send out a subscriber survey asking for a mailing address relatively easily. Substack seems to be the writer’s version of Patron, so I think support for physical rewards could be in its future. PS: If 100% of your content is paywalled, just have a Patreon, they take a much smaller cut of your pledges anyway.