Budgeting

Zine specs

• Larger zines are not only more expensive, they may also cost more to ship out
• Non-standard sizes may cost more to produce
• Each extra page costs more too
• Color pages cost more than B&W; some printers will give you different pricing for color vs B&W pages, but some will not
• Thicker zines will add to the weight of the package you are shipping
• Estimate your book weight using this tool

Contributor numbers

• Every contributor you include means another contributor slot you would ship a full bundle to
• Writers take up pages, but sometimes this is a good thing, because artists only take up a 1-2 pages but most buyers expect zines in the 60-100 page range.
• Merch-only artists also cost bundle slots -- consider combining artists with merch and giving them a bigger share of profits instead.

Merchandise offerings

• Most merch will have a MOQ (minimum order quantity) which means if you only sell 12 of a bundle that contains enamel pins, you may still be on the hook for buying 100 of them (plus the mold fee!). Be sure you know what these MOQs are and include them in the budget accordingly.
• Heavier merch will also add to the shipping weight.

Shipping

• As a rule of thumb, your largest bundle should be <1lb
  • US Media Mail is often a workaround used by zines to ship packages for less, but unless your package can pass as a book-only package, it is subject to inspection and can be returned back to you. I have had some, but not all, zine-only packages returned because they counted as "comic books" instead of books. Use media mail at your own risk.
  • US First Class packages only go up to 15.99oz before you get to Priority Mail pricing.

Fandom size and activity

• There's a lot of nostalgia for old fandoms and a lot of passion for small fandoms, but these make it harder to generate enough of a groundswell of excitement. You're only ever going to get a percentage of your audience to buy a zine so the larger that base audience is, the better your sales will be. Think about this when you plan.

Market saturation / competition

• Before you start a zine, definitely check to see what's been done before. Similar themes (or big ships) may be popular enough that people won't mind getting more than one of them, but take into consideration how long it's been since the last one, and if there is something else about your zine that sets itself apart from what's already been done

Theme appeal

• The broader the theme, the more likely you'll find people who are interested in it -- on the flip side, you might have a niche topic that has a rabid enough fanbase who will support it no matter what, too. The important thing is that you have a sense of where your theme lies on this spectrum of attractiveness.

Value proposition

• What makes your zine a must-have? People will purchase if they think it's a good deal, or a novelty, or made well enough

Make a copy of this template and remove/add additional rows and columns as needed.

This is a two-part template I use to manage zine budgets. The first part (Cols A-K) I use primarily for planning bundle pricing and costs. For me, it's a good visual to see how much the production cost of each bundle really is, so that I can price accordingly. As a general rule of thumb, your bundle price should be at least 3x the cost of your merch. But you are balancing your profitability with the marketability of your pricing. Zine buyers are used to buying zines at $25-50. If this puts your bundle price at a very high cost, consider dropping merch items instead! And once preorders begin, I use the first part of the template to track sales per bundle.

The second part I use for the actual budget, as well as to track budgeted vs actual revenues and expenses once things start rolling in. This is more bigger picture and helps identify all the "hidden costs/expenses" in your budgeting phase, like ordering a few extras of things for replacements, contingency shipping, and shipping the items from suppliers over to your shipping person's place.