The Zine - Online or Print
In 2009 I started my first little zine. Back then I still did art full time and kept up with my artist friends and such. The zine was online, just a self hosted Wordpress site (It's all I knew how to do.) on a $5 a month cheap host. I would do a few posts here and there and try to get artist friends to check it out but we were all busy at the time so it ended up being just me art-blogging. I called it Dioxazine after the purple paint. So of course it was a white background with purple lettering. I made the logo and a twitter for it. It was all set up but with zero traction. I tried doing a weekly art chat via Skype and G-Talk. But nothing ever took.
Then, about a decade later. I was no longer doing graphic design or drawing or painting anymore. But I was getting into games and hobby type stuff. So I figured I'd attempt to resurrect the zine, but this time with gaming stuff. 
This one wasn't going to rely on trying to get others to join. This was me making little comics and commentary on hobbies. I kept the name because painting models still used purple ink and I still had all the accounts. But this one was going to have a printed option. Figuring out InDesign took a few days but I managed to get a real printable PDF file up online for folks to read or print out on their own.
But not long after I made the Zine I self published a novella and started a new office job. Then covid hit. So yeah, things got all messed up.
I've been writing since but not with the concept of a zine. If anything because when I was looking to sell copies of Dioxazine I was instantly hit with the cost of shipping. Printing a few pages of paper with staples is nothing compared to requiring someone to shell out $5 minimum to have the booklet shipped to them. Was my little zine worth 6-10 dollars to a customer? Absolutely not.
I started doing the little newsletter bit that I've talked about before. We were all using Tinyletter before Substack ate everything and ruined it. Anyway, the majority of people out there in the world don't have access to physical zines. You have to read them online or buy them in a very niche bookstore or art market.
Unless I lived in Austin/LA/NYC/Portland etc, I wasn't going to get anywhere with zines in person. Doing everything online was the best reach for both me the creator and the folks trying to read it. I gave up on the concept due to time and lack of ability on my part to be a part of any real community where I could be a voice of inspiration or expertise.
And that's a whole bigger thing, not being a professional at anything. I've only ever lasted 3 years at any one job due to having kids or having to move. But anyway, I'm decent enough at enough stuff to count as being a hobbyist at least.
Then today I get an email update from something I follow talking about how Japan has a huge zine culture. Apparently it's been going on a long while and doing pretty well. Makes sense when, as I understand it, most konbinis have access to a printer/scanner. But even then there seem to still be meetups and a culture surrounding the art of making and distributing them.
Again, the only way I can even think of distribution in the US is by mail. We're just too spread out in general, even in cities. We don't have trains or busses, the majority of us can't safely travel by bike or foot anywhere. So shipping it is. A few weeks ago I found out about an artist who does a mail order zine as an art piece. She makes them using an expensive Risograph printer which gives the printed booklets a much better feel. They are $8 which isn't bad at all, but I can't figure out if you have to pay shipping on top of that or not.
So would a monthly subscription service work better for a zine? Collect them like Pokemon cards and swap them with collectors and get the artists to sign them in person at events? Lol. Fight the scalper bots to keep that one guy in Miami from having 50 copies on FB marketplace?
I've often mulled the idea of an online shop for ebooks that is off-Amazon. (That's not true because I would have to host the site db with AWS but you know what I mean.) There are some already for things like indie D&D modules and 3rd party ttrpgs. But those have exclusivity rules where you can't sell anywhere else, including print copies. So no shows/markets/events.
But to have like, some sort of online zine hosting website that was user friendly and auto created a PDF for readers to download. It would be impossible to monetize and therefore fail but the idea is fun to mull around. Maybe just a site for zine creators to index their zine and link to a place to buy or find one. I dunno. There is no way to find all these authors or convince them or potential readers to use it.
So which do you like? Printed zines or online ones?