The Purple Guide to Learning Zine Making in 10 Days
A doable, day-by-day starter plan to make your first real zine — and decide if this hobby is for you
by Alumigogo Books
non-fiction
Ten days, one real zine, zero fluff. A concrete starter plan for total beginners.
About this book
You've seen zines at indie bookstores or on Instagram — little folded pamphlets full of comics, poetry, photography, or random thoughts. You've thought about making one, but the internet gives you a thousand options: stapled vs. folded, digital vs. analog, risograph vs. photocopier. So you do nothing, and the idea sits in a bookmark folder for six months.
This guide is for that feeling. It's a ten-day plan that treats zine making like what it is: a hands-on skill that takes practice, mistakes, and a few honest attempts. Instead of an exhausting masterclass, you get one small, doable task per day — folding paper on day one, gathering gear on day three, learning a layout technique on day four. By the end, you'll have a physical object in your hands, not just a browser tab full of notes.
The tone is encouraging but honest. Nobody can teach you to be a zine genius in ten days — this guide doesn't promise that. It promises a structured first taste, a clear picture of whether you want to keep going, and at least one finished zine that might be lumpy, uneven, and exactly the kind of thing you were hoping to make.
Reader Reviews
Carol Taylor
★★★★★I bought this on a whim because I've wanted to try zines for years but always froze at the blank paper stage. The first day task — folding one sheet of paper into a tiny booklet — was so simple I actually did it, and I ended up with something real in twenty minutes. The rest of the days built on that, and by the end I had a rough but genuine little comic. It doesn't lie about the effort involved, which I appreciated. The layout stuff was a bit fiddly for me, but the explanations were clean and I never felt lost.
Richard Hill
★★★★★Decent starter guide, and the ten-day structure kept me from quitting. I'll be honest — the first chapter felt a little too basic, like being walked through folding paper by hand when I already know how to fold paper. But by days four and five, the page-numbering and dummying explanations actually saved me from a real formatting disaster. I made my zine, though it's uglier than I'd like. It's fine for what it costs. If you're a total absolute beginner, this works. If you've already made anything with paper, you can probably skim the first two days.
Joseph Taylor
★★★★★It's a solid plan, but the guide is very honest about how modest the results are — which is good, but it killed some of my excitement. My zine came out functional and pretty scrappy. The first-day win (folding a booklet) was genuinely nice, and the day-by-day structure helped me build a habit. The troubleshooting chapter on day six saved me when my ink smudged. I just wanted something a little more inspiring; it's fine as a practical tool, but don't expect to feel like a creator after ten days.
Amy Young
★★★★★I've tried learning hobbies from YouTube tutorials and always end up in a spiral of watching videos instead of doing anything. This guide broke that cycle because each day handed me one specific thing to do. Day one was literally just folding paper and writing a few random words on the pages — I felt silly, but I finished it. The chapter about gear (day three) was exactly what I needed because I was about to buy a $300 printer; the budget tier talked me down to a $15 ream of copy paper. My final zine is a clumsy little thing with a crooked staple, but I made it, and that's more than I ever did before.