we built these zines for screens. glowing rectangles, thumb scrolls, 2am reading in bed. that’s the native habitat.
but plenty of you want the paper version too, something to hold, dog-ear, leave on a bathroom floor. good news: you don’t need a special print file for that. the same pdf you already downloaded will do it.
here’s how.
what you need
- the zine pdf you already downloaded
- adobe acrobat reader, the free one. not your browser’s built-in viewer, not preview if you’re on a mac. the actual app.
- a printer
- regular letter paper, 8.5 x 11
- a stapler
the steps
- open the zine in adobe acrobat reader.
- hit print. (ctrl/cmd + p)
- find the page sizing & handling section and select booklet. reader handles the page order and the sizing on its own, however many pages your zine runs.
- if your printer does double-sided automatically, choose “both sides.” if it doesn’t, print the front sides first, flip the stack, then run it through again for the backs.
- before you print, switch the printer’s color setting to grayscale (or black ink only), and the quality to draft or economy. grayscale keeps it true black and white and stops the printer from mixing in color ink to fake a richer black. draft mode just uses less ink per page. small settings, real difference.
- once it’s printed, put the sheets in order, fold the whole stack in half together, and staple through the crease, once near the top, once near the bottom. not one staple in the middle.
that’s it. fold a regular sheet of letter paper in half and you land on 5.5 x 8.5, which is exactly the size these were always meant to be.
a note on ink: sometimes printing these zines will use a lot of ink. some of these zines don’t have this problem. but others lean hard into black, big dark spreads, heavy pages, ink from edge to edge. if that’s the one you’re printing, grayscale mode won’t save you. it changes the color the printer uses, not how much ink actually lands on the page. those zines are going to drink your cartridge no matter what you pick. some zines are just born expensive. print accordingly, take your laptop to the library for free printing, or keep that one on a screen.
