zine

An abbreviated form of "magazine" (no apostrophe needed, please), zines were first widely seen under that name in the form of printed fanzines associated with the comics and SF fandom communities, produced starting around 1930 (but growing in popularity especially through the '60s, '70s and '80s) through inexpensive small press publishing options such as mimeograph and Geststner machines and, eventually, late nights at Kinko's. (There are predecessors through the entire history of publishing, but the distinguishing quality of zines are that they are labours of love from hobbyists for communities sufficiently minor that their niche interests (eg. the category of personal zines, or "perzine"s, that were essentially print precursors of we[blog]s) would not be getting catered to by the mainstream magazine industry, though sometimes the lines are blurred as with "prozine"s that had paid advertisers and got newsstand distribution.) (Mist alumnus [The Extremist] has been running the [Great Worm Distro] service for zines since the turn of the century.)

Especially in the wake of the [desktop publishing] era, virtual publications like newsletters began styling themselves as zines without all the muss and fuss demanded from wrangling paper, staples, toner and postage. Since the text was being typeset and laid out on a computer anyway, why not cut out the middleman and simply distribute it, instantly, online, through an e-mail list via [Majordomo]? These zines were typically [tfile]s, laid out and distributed as simple [raw text]. Some digital zine scribes styled their output as e-zines - it might be useful to consider all digital zines e-zines, with the broader term "zine" reserved for the analogue version. (And some publications straddle both worlds: bOING bOING was established as a paper zine in 1988 and ran for 15 issues before pivoting to existence as a "webzine" in 1995, achieving a stable holding pattern, where it has more or less remained ever since, as a group weblog in 2000.)

The tfile variety of e-zines (which doesn't cover all of them, but probably most of them) differ from e-mags and diskmags as the latter are typically programmed and distributed as compiled executables with bonus multimedia content -- custom fonts, colourful menus, fades and other vfx, and sometime bespoke soundtracks. These flourishes fall beyond the purview of zines.