Thanks for a great article, Lillian.

As someone who wasn’t (and isn’t) a part of the Zine culture you’re describing, I wonder exactly what circumstances combined to allow the culture to form.

I gather that many Zines were produced using pens and typewriters and depended on photocopiers to create multiple copies to distribute, so clearly access to photocopying by individuals was key.

The postal service provided (and still provides) a relatively-inexpensive way of getting paper items from one person to another, so clearly the individual’s ability to send mail was important.

I wonder though how the communities formed. How does a potential reader become aware of a publisher in that culture? On the Indie Web it seems that search engines are a kind of glue that binds together the decentralized web. The ability for one person to respond publicly to another is a further discovery mechanism. I wonder what you would consider the parallels in zine culture.

Thanks again!