In this chapter I wish to concentrate on the more technical aspects of fanzines. This entails the production methods involved, the methods of distribution available to fanzine producers and issues such as advertising and copyright. However, I wish to first look at content and format in their various forms in fanzines.

Content

The diversity of content is one of the most striking features of fanzines. Whilst, as I noted in my introduction, there is a perception that fanzines deal with one particular band or personality, the majority of fanzines are exactly the opposite of this. In fact, the majority of music fanzines do not even limit themselves to just covering a variety of music. It is commonplace for a fanzine to also include articles on films, books, short stories and pieces on the zine producer's life. Art and drawings are also an important part of many fanzines.

As one example of the variety of content present in fanzines, I will now have a brief discussion of issue six of Astrochimps, produced by Simon Hampson. The zine starts with an introductory paragraph, announcing this as "the latin issue" of Astrochimps. There then follows on the next two pages several lists that Simon has put together, ranging from "my favourite words, phrases or others" to his favourite albums and concerts of 1999. There are then a number of music reviews, in the middle of which is placed a piece on the different colours of denim available and television personality Rolf Harris. After this are four pages of articles on seemingly random topics, following which are pages of cartoons by a friend of Simon's, with more music reviews and pieces on television personalities placed between them.

Pages two and three of issue six, 'the latin issue', of Astrochimps

What may seem to be a random assortment of articles is however united by each piece being what Simon himself chooses to write about. Without an editorial board or any necessity to respond to the demands of the market, fanzines have an almost complete freedom to print whatever the producer wants to put in their own publication.

This lack of constraints upon the writer is the biggest determinant of fanzine content. Commercial magazines have to be aware of many factors; as well as the magazine editors and publishers and the demands of the market, also their competition and advertisers. Articles must primarily be written with their audience in mind. The majority of fanzines have no conception of 'audience' (in the traditional sense), and, of those that do, an even more limited number write with the audience in mind. The content of fanzines is primarily prompted from what the writer themselves is interested in; it is merely hoped that after the fanzine has been printed, there will be a significant amount of other people sharing the same interests that would be interested in a publication covering them.

These comments must however be qualified. Firstly, fanzines are very well aware of other similar publications available. There is rarely a sense of competition, however. Instead, a feeling of community between similar publications is more prevalent. Indeed, it is common for a number of fanzine publications to feature articles on a small number of bands, particularly those that are willing to give interviews and have a general interest in gaining publicity from fanzines. There are also a number of bands whose following seems particularly suited to the creation of fanzines, leading to a large amount of fanzines focused on one particular act, whilst many other bands are largely ignored. This is, in part, a reflection of the bias of fanzine writers being, as previously noted, predominantly "white, middle class and educated" (Mitchell online reference) - there are very few articles or fanzines, for instance, about hip hop or rap. It must however be noted that some fanzine writers do recognise this discrepancy; as one writer comments, "how many Manic Street Preachers zines does the world need?" (response to But First The News questionnaire)

Secondly, a limited amount of fanzines have become established to such a point that it is necessary for them to regulate their content in order to continue their high readerships. It is interesting that the two biggest music zines that I have found whilst doing this research, the American Maximum Rock and Roll and the British Fracture are both punk orientated. Both of these fanzines have been able to attain high readerships and widespread distribution through a successful sense of image; if they were to change their content by, for instance, including articles on pop bands or acts signed to major labels, this image would be greatly damaged, with a resultant drop in readership. Of course, this is entirely hypothetical, as the people responsible for both fanzines are entirely committed to their current, purely punk, content, but it does illustrate how it is at times necessary for even a fanzine to be self-regulatory.

There is also one other thing that has an impact upon fanzine content; commercial magazines. It is difficult to say whether commercial magazines are in direct competition with fanzines; their contents often differ considerably, with fanzines providing coverage of "stuff that would normally be ignored" (response to P'tahk questionnaire). However, the content of commercial music magazines, and what is perceived as a lack in it, has a strong influence on fanzines. Bands not getting mentioned in commercial music magazines, whether for reasons of space or because of their limited appeal, is the reason that, firstly, many people are motivated to start their own publication, and secondly, these fanzines are able to continue because of other people wanting this information that is unavailable elsewhere. As Xana Charnock of The IndiePendent writes, "[I] was fed up of not finding any of the gigs I went to reviewed in the weeklies" (response to questionnaire). Therefore, if the mainstream and professional press won't mention what you're interested in, the only way that such coverage can be ensured is if you do it yourself.

Interestingly however, the bands covered in The IndiePendent include some of the most commercial that are featured in any of the fanzines that I obtained. Amongst interviews and reviews with lesser known bands are pieces on Travis and Coldplay, two bands that have had several singles in the music charts and which are featured by the mainstream press on a regular basis. The IndiePendent does however hope to provide a different perspective on the bands from a fan's view; Xana asserts that, in regard to the mainstream and fanzines, "both have their pros and cons, and there is a place for both" (response to questionnaire). The underlying point here is that even where the commercial press and small scale fanzines share the same subject matter in content, there is room for both types of publication, and different information can be gained from each.

It should also be mentioned that the content of some fanzines have particular content that could never truly be reproduced in any and mainstream magazine. Hobble Oblong, for example, is a collection of photocopied questionnaires filled in by the members of various bands. The questions covered are somewhat more eccentric than those usually asked to such personalities, such as "what do you think about mules?" "Sum up your political stance in one word" and, perhaps most bizarrely, "Draw a shark wearing a fancy hat". However, the questionnaires do provide a certain insight into the personalities involved, and make Hobble Oblong an entirely unique publication.

Another example of an entirely different kind is Veronica, which combines music articles with pieces on feminist and liberal politics. One two-page spread pastiches a script from Australian soap opera Neighbours, placing between the lines information about the state of Aborigines and Australia's treatment of them.

Format

There are a number of different presentation formats available to fanzines. Although some are A4, the majority of them use an A5 size to provide the fanzine with greater bulk. Some also utilise colour covers in order to make themselves stand out more from the primarily black and white photocopied covers.

The motivation behind the fanzine's publication is the main determinant of its format. Some take the form of newsletters; Fifth Season, for example, is composed of one two-sided sheet of A4 and provides CD reviews and gig listings. Others, which are intended to provide greater coverage of a cultural group, such as Maximum Rock and Roll, Fracture and Dogprint, run to 160, 104 and 96 A4 pages respectively. The number of pages can however be misleading when dealing with fanzines due to the many possibilities of layout. Pop Art, for instance, has between five and seven reviews on most of its 36 pages, being much more densely packed with information than various other fanzines.

Of course, some fanzines are not interested in 'information'; some fanzines are based entirely around humour. Planet Boo is four A5 sides of humorous articles - it is not intended to function as news, but rather as pure entertainment.

Production Methods

The original punk fanzines had one of the most distinctive designs ever produced in any area of publishing; their "cut and paste" layout appropriated from mainstream media but also replaced traditional use of typefaces and paragraphs either created with typewriters or simply handwritten and stuck directly onto the page of the zine.

However, many other types of design exist for fanzines, especially in the current age of readily available desktop publishing software.

DTP is making an impact on fanzine production. As the technology becomes increasingly within everyone's reach, a larger number of fanzines are embracing its opportunities to create their own publications. However, the original concept of putting a zine together with your bare hands, using as little technological assistance (with the exception of photocopiers) is still of great importance within zine culture.

Of all the music zines that I looked at during my research, about half used cut and paste techniques in their production as opposed to DTP or being word processed. However, those which have been created entirely with computers still have important distinctions from commercial magazines.

Firstly, it is generally a financial necessity for fanzines to be reproduced with photocopiers as the cheapest way to copy small runs of publications. This does of course have an impact on the appearance of them, particularly on the quality of photographs and, with colour photocopying being significantly more expensive, often limits the publication to black and white. There are however a few notable exceptions to this; of the fanzines I surveyed, three used colour although each in quite different ways. Firstly, Juicy, although printed in monochrome, alternates white and yellow sheets to create an unusual and distinctive effect. But First The News is unique in giving people ordering the fanzine a choice between paying one pound for the black and white version, and one pound fifty for the colour version. This was apparently a decision made when the first issue was being created and many of the pictures just looked like a "puddle of black ink" without colour (response to questionnaire). However, the choice is still left open to the person ordering it as to whether they want to pay an extra fifty pence to get comprehensible images. Finally, Angels Under Starlight has another, very different, approach; each one is coloured in by hand with felt tip pens.

It is also noticeable that many of the DTP produced zines do not want to make themselves look commercially slick. Even though actual typewriters have played no part in the production of a zine, typefaces such as courier are often used to give the impression that the fanzine has been produced in the same way that zines originally were.

Unsurprisingly, there is a connection between the zines that are consciously constructed as 'unprofessional' (in the best sense of the word) and the belief that commercial magazines and the mainstream music industry is insufficient in some way.

Maximum Rock and Roll is quite possibly the largest fanzine in the world. Its circulation is around 10,000 and, as of February 2001, had put out 213 issues. However, despite it changing form and growing (in both circulation and size; issue 213 was made up of 160 A4 pages) since Maximum Rock and Roll's inception in the late 1970s, it still strives to contain as much of its original character as possible. As one of the editors, Michael Thorn, states, "MRR was started to cover the music that no one else wanted to touch - punk". The image and status of punk has changed a lot over the last twenty years, but Maximum Rock and Roll tries to maintain its position of importance within the punk scene by staying non-profit and independent. It furthermore reinforces this through its design; whilst it is necessary for the zine to be "readable, without it being too sterile looking", it is also necessary for "making it look "punk"" to be in the editors' minds whilst working on the layout (response to questionnaire). Remaining true to punk values is one thing, but just as important is representing the zine's ideology in its presentation in order to convince readers of its authenticity.

However, as prized as the idea of cut and paste and the original presentation of fanzines is, home computer technology is having more and more of an impact upon fanzine production, with possibly devastating results, as will be looked at more deeply in my chapter related to the growth of the ezine. Although I have here talked about desktop publishing, it should however also be noted that is more common for fanzines to use simpler word processing templates. This is becoming so commonplace that publications "put together in Microsoft Word and printed A4 on a colour printer" can be described as being "the future of self-published fanzines" (Diskant Zine Reviews, http://www.diskant.net/zine/reviews/zinerevs.html).

It should also however be noted that some fanzines publishers do utilise DTP to a far greater extent to create pages that are as carefully laid out as anything from a commercial magazine. This is not restricted to fanzines dedicated to more mainstream music either; the fanzine Dogprint, for example, covers a range of independent and generally punk releases, but its presentation is a long way away from the original cut and paste aesthetic. This can be seen from the cover and double spread from issue ten shown below. The one concession made here to the traditional form of the fanzine is the use of a typeface that mimics that of a typewriter, even though the technology used in producing the publication was far more advanced.