SO YOU WANT TO RUN YOUR OWN FANZINE ?.... by Jon Rose ...This means either one of two things - either you've got loads of free time, or you're completely hatstand ! The thing is, without a great deal of forward planning, a fanzine can totally dominate your time. Having said that, once you've had the satisfaction of seeing an issue all your own work completed, you will feel very pleased with yourself. So, before you all try to beat Phil & gang at their own game, a few words of wisdom (Ha! Ha!) to set you on your way. 1) WORK IN A TEAM. Although doing a fanzine all by yourself may seem fine in theory - you get all the credit - in practise it is far easier to enlist the help of some friends. You can then spread the workload & give all the grotty jobs to someone else ! 2) TO PRINT OR NOT TO PRINT. Before you start any writing, you should decide what format the fanzine is to take & what topics you want to cover. If you go for a fanzine covering everything from arcade games to technical pages, it would be useful to have one, or at most two, people covering each section. You'll need a news editor, a technical editor, a hints & tips bod, an adventure addict & also some reviewers. The reviews can, time permitting, be done by the appropriate section editors - for instance the Adventure editor would take care of all the Adventure reviews. The bonus of doing a fanzine that covers everything is that if one section is a bit thin one issue, you can fatten out one of the other sections to make up for it. General features are always a good 'space filler' & can be fairly easy to write. The disadvantage of this type of fanzine is that they take more time to put together than a less general fanzine. You'll also find that the workload isn't always evenly distributed, so you'll need to make sure that everyone does their bit to help out. The single subject fanzines may be easier to put together but the fanzine may seem a little thin some months. Favourites among fanzine writers are Adventure-specific fanzines. Indeed, there are so many now, you'll have to think carefully about what style you want your fanzine to take. Paper- based fanzines can be slightly cheaper to produce, especially if you have access to a photocopier. A minus point is that you need to add graphics & screenshots very carefully. Unless you can draw REALLY well, you'll need a good art package & printer to do graphics on. Screenshots can be either photographs or printouts taken using a Multiface type doobrie. Forget any ideas of using full colour screenshots unless you have the funds to support full colour printing. Paper fanzines are perfectly OK if done well, but can look awfull if you rush them. Providing you're sticking to the SAM & Spectrum, putting the fanzine onto disk or tape is a good idea. Using this format, the results can be tremendous. Because you can reproduce screenshots exactly, the 'look' of the fanzine improves immediately. Note a couple of things about screenshots. Only use 'static' screenshots, as use of moving sections of a title may be an infringement of copyright. Also, if you're doing an Adventure fanzine, try to include graphics screenshots if they appear. Text only screenshots can get very boring very quickly. For SAM & 128k Spectrum owners, a tune warbling away in the background can give an extra touch of class. Do get permission to use the tunes, though. The fanzine I used to work for had written permission to use the tunes 'in case anyone asks'. If you do have a tune, give the option to turn it off ! Don't forget the inlay card. Just imagine walking into 'Bloggs Software Emporium' to be faced by shelves full of blank cassette inlays - wouldn't have the same impact as a full colour inlay would they ?. It doesn't have to be full colour - one independent software producer has perfectly good hand drawn black & white inlays. Whatever you do, NEVER send out cassettes or disks with handwritten labels - not very professional, and first impressions are very important. Make sure that your fanzine style isn't too derivative of other publications. You can't help looking slightly like another magazine, but don't copy another magazine's features or sections outright. People will notice, and your credibility will take a nosedive. Don't worry too much about having a fanzine on tape or disk which multiloads, but give the reader the option of loading individual sections in any order. After all, you're using a multiload because you've got so much to pack in... 3) ADVERTISING Hmmm...Adverts are tricky. You can either keep sending 'freebies' to other major magazines & hope they'll mention you enough to get people to buy your magazine, or you can advertise in the 'small ads' sections of the major magazines. Don't even consider taking out full page adverts in the major mags unless you have money to burn - they are very expensive, and you may not be able to cover their cost in orders. Also you might like to pester your local independent computer shop to see if they'll stock copies. You may be surprised, especially if they get free advertising out of it. Run an advertising section in the fanzine for your readers, and you may be able to pay for your advertising this way. Don't advertise anything before it is ready. I'm sure you've all read letters in magazines from irate readers about the non appearence of titles - would you want that written about your fanzine ?... 4) PAY YOUR BILLS Make sure you pay for everything as you go along. There is nothing worse than finding your carefully collected subnscription money is used up in unexpected costs. Also paying for things immediately means that when you do decide to close the fanzine down any money left over is profit for you to keep. As for things like V.A.T. are concerned, it is best to get the advice of an accountant, but you don't have to register unless you're earning something like `25,000 a year, which is highly unlikely with a fanzine. 5) REMEMBER YOUR READERS Although you might think your fanzine is the best thing since the last PIXIES album, your readers will probably pick you up on something. Always treat what they say with politeness & if you have a valid reason for doing things a certain way, tell the readers - gently ! One of the easiest way to lose readers is to never admit you're wrong - NO ONE IS PERFECT !! It's as well to remember that readers are potential contributors, the nore contributions you get, the easier your workload. 6) DISTRIBUTION This is a real pain ! You can either see if a commercial distributor will look after things for you, taking their cut of your profits on the way, or you can decide to do it all yourself, keeping all the profits, but having the hassle of doing all your own posting. It's down to expense & you can best decide what you want to do. Another option is to see if a major magazine will take you onto their cover, but make sure the contract covers everything, including payment. 7) DUPLICATION This is only really a problem if you choose to do the fanzine on cassette or disk. Paper based fanzines are easily duplicated on a photocopier, or even printed by a friendly local newspaper printer - do be prepared to pay a little more for this though, and do expect to have to get a 'minimum run' printed. Newspaper printers are only really geared up for doing large numbers of copies. Of course if you have a printer, you could always do the duplicating with the printer, just as long as you have a way of laying it out on screen before hand, and you don't mind buying the printer paper. Cassettes & disks are more difficult, as the duplication has to be perfect. You can get a commercial duplicator to do the work, but again you'll find that they will only do a minimum of about 400 copies - fine if you've got 400 readers, but a expensive way to collect blank tapes otherwise! Also, commercial duplicators are less likely to do dud copies, cutting down on returned cassettes / disks. As far as copies which won't load go, it is bound to happen. Especially in the case of early +2's, no two cassette players will be the same. A word about the +2a & +3, These two machines cause no end of loading problems. Do try to make sure that your fanzine works on all the Spectrums, from the early 48k machines, right up to the +3. Oh, you'll definitely get complaints if you're using a background tune on +3 versions. Just explain that it really isn't your fault that Amstrad cocked up the +3's sound circuitry ! Also if you're doing a fanzine for the SAM as well, it's a good idea to make sure that all the fanzine actually works on a SAM !. 8) BASIC OR M/CODE While it is possible to write a fanzine in BASIC - I've tried it myself - for a professional look to your fanzine, machine code is what you really need. You can always try to use a utility to write the fanzine with. Bear in mind that you are limited to the capabilities of the utiLity, though. One of the best fanzine writing utilities was written by members of the old 'E.T.M.' team, and it appeared on the cover of 'SINCLAIR USER' last year. It allowed you to mix text & graphics, just leaving you to link all the files together in some way. If you want to write a BASIC fanzine, it would be better to do a Spectrum 128k or SAM only title, as you can use the larger memory as a 'store', loading things from within the program rather than continually loading from tape / disk. 9) LOOK AT HOW OTHERS DO IT Don't be too proud to order copies of other fanzines to see how other people have accomplished things. Do remember not to copy what they've done, though. The best examples of tape & paper based fanzines are, respectively, 'ADVENTURE PROBE' & 'E.T.M.' ( Who, me biased ?). Unfortunately 'E.T.M.' is no longer available, but I have a full set of back issues if anyone is curious. You are quite welcome to borrow them on the strict understanding that you will not copy anything from them, and will not distribute copies to friends. 10) DON'T TAKE IT TOO SERIOUSLY Fanzines are never likely to make extortionate profits, so it isn't worth letting the fanzine dominate your waking hours. Do have fun writing about things in your own way, and allowing yourself to get carried away in reviews, but never work so hard that you forget to do things like eating & sleeping ! Above all treat it as a hobby & always tell yourself you could stop doing it tomorrow if you wanted to. 11) SUGGESTIONS FOR HELP A few suggestions for utilities and equipment to help you produce your fanzine... ART STUDIO - a superb art package for the Spectrum, and I'm sure FLASH will do the same job for the SAM. E.T.M. fanzine Utility - probably the only fanzine utility for tape based fanzines. Tasword 2 / 128 - The best word processor for the Spectrum, now available on the SAM I think. (Yes, although OUTWRITE may be preferred by Sam users - Phil.) Multiface 128 - a superb piece of hardware which takes the pain out of extracting screenshots. STAR LC24/200 - An excellent 24 pin dot matrix printer, which together with the colour kit bundled by Datel Electronics is the best printer for paper based fanzines.