Hands-on Publishing: The web didn't kill zines -- it only made them stronger
?By Danielle Maestretti, Utne Reader

Zines are still cool. Like 'em or not, zines have held fast to their place in the far-underground depths of the independent press, which helps keep their hip credentials intact. This makes sense when you consider their origins: Zines as we know them were shaped by punk-rock fans in the 1970s and 1980s. Frustrated with mainstream music magazines' inattention to punk music and culture, they created their own 'fanzines' to cover the scene.

The zine 28 Pages Lovingly Bound with Twine is cool partly because it does not aspire to coolness. In fact, it's downright dorky at times. There's no particular mission or subject area, so content varies and randomness abounds. Christoph Meyer, the man behind the twine, admits he 'stumbled across a nice title' that hasn't confined him to any particular realm of discussion. 'As long as I feel like self-publishing,' he says, 'I can put whatever the hell I want in it-fiction, everyday stories, visual stuff, comics, whatever.'

The flexibility allowed by self-publishing makes for some amazing zines; it also means this category is particularly tough to judge because it's difficult to pit zines against one another. Just as they have largely fended off commercialization, zines have also managed to resist definition. There is wide variation among them in every aspect imaginable: subject area (or lack thereof), publishing frequency, size, appearance. Many zinesters and librarians cite some basic criteria-small print run, handmade and self-distributed, low-tech, produced as a form of expression rather than a source of profit-but these vary depending on who is making the list.