The Best Zines and Independent Publications Worth Finding

Zines occupy the space between social media posts and published books: personal, physical, and deliberately limited in circulation. The format has experienced a renaissance as creators seek alternatives to algorithmic platforms. These publications represent some of the most exciting creative work happening in print.

Racquet Magazine covers tennis with the design sophistication of a fashion publication and the literary ambition of The Paris Review. Feature profiles are interspersed with essays on cultural significance, photography that treats courts as architectural subjects, and art commissions. Proof that any subject becomes fascinating with the right editorial vision.

Gossamer is a cannabis culture magazine that treats its subject with the same editorial care that Wine Spectator brings to wine. Features on growing techniques, strain profiles, and the surrounding culture are presented alongside fashion editorials and essays on creativity. The design is gorgeous.

Apartamento is a Barcelona-based interiors magazine that photographs real homes rather than styled showrooms. The spaces featured are lived-in, imperfect, and full of personality. Each issue feels like visiting a friend's apartment in a city you've never been to.

The Gentlewoman profiles one woman per cover with an editorial depth that makes standard celebrity profiles look superficial. Interviews run thousands of words exploring subjects' professional lives and creative philosophies. The design by Jop van Bennekom is clean and confident.

Apartamento has published from Barcelona twice a year since 2008 and describes itself as an everyday life interiors magazine, which is fair for a title that will photograph a sink with the washing-up still in it. The Gentlewoman launched in 2010 as a sister to Fantastic Man, edited by Penny Martin. Biannual is the tell: these are made slowly, deliberately.

Prices sort this category cleanly. A photocopied zine at a fair is £3 to £8. An indie magazine like Apartamento or The Gentlewoman is £10 to £20 an issue. Racquet is around $20. None are cheap per page, and all are cheaper than the coffee you drink reading them. In London, Magculture on St John Street in Clerkenwell and Donlon Books on Broadway Market are the two shops worth the journey; Good Press in Glasgow does the artist-book end properly.

For DIY zines, check out local zine fairs. Printed Matter in New York, Quimby's in Chicago, and Atomic Books in Baltimore stock hundreds of self-published works covering everything from personal memoir to political theory. The discovery process of flipping through unknown publications is irreplaceable.

If you cannot decide, Stack decides for you. It is a subscription service that posts a different independent magazine every month for around £9 an issue, chosen by an editor rather than an algorithm, and you find out what it is when it lands on the mat. It is the most efficient way to work out which corner of this world you actually care about.

Making one is the point of the format. A single sheet of A4, three folds and one cut gives you an eight-page zine with no staples, and that is the entire barrier to entry. Past that, risograph is the standard: a stencil duplicator laying down one fluorescent ink at a time, cheap in runs of 50 to 200. Hato Press in London and Dizzy Ink in Nottingham print short runs for people who have never done it.

https://www.printedmatter.org/