SAWASDEE ZINE DEMO SAMPLE (二零一八年的四月)

I am excited, as I have completed the zine design and the flow of my new coming dual zine for this year, the picture that shown above is the wrap design. The title of the new zine is "SAWASDEE ZINE", it is about the street of the Bangkok city. Since 2016, my debut dual zine "Home Town" had published, I have decided to make a series to cover my street photography of various Asian cities. In fact, in 2017, I was planned to publish the "SAWASDEE ZINE". However, after trying a couple of design and flow, I was not satisfied. I can't make up my mind at that time, I feel something is missing. Therefore, "Day by day, Night by night" project was carry on first, and published in 2017. But The folder of the half cook "SAWASDEE ZINE" project is kept on my desktop since then until today.

I visited Bangkok again recently, my plan to revive the "SAWASDEE ZINE" project was succeeded afterward. By combining the recent and past photographs of Bangkok street, I finally satisfied with the new design and flow.


The second picture showed above,  the two dummy zines are laying down side by side. Two covers connect to form a complete image. If you look closely enough, the two zines have different reading order. One is left-to-right and another one is right-to-left. Ok, I shall stop explaining it further here. I'll leave it to you to discover. Please stay tuned if you are interested.

Thanks for watching, Love and Peace.

二零一八年的四月，我過的蠻充實的。同事約去曼谷走走，我順便補拍曼谷的照片，回來第一件事，就是把《SAWASDEE ZINE》完成。

自從在2016年發布我的處女座《Home Town》小誌後，我就決定要繼續以雙誌的格式去發行我的亞洲城市街頭攝影小誌。其實第二本小誌本來應該是《SAWASDEE ZINE》，但嘗試設計了幾個版本後，還是對當時的設計與編排，無法滿意，好像缺少了什麼。所以《SAWASDEE ZINE》就被擱淺了。取代而出的就變成《Day by day, Night by night》了。

二零一八年四月，我終於完成了《SAWASDEE ZINE》的設計與編排。以上的照片顯示的只不過是我自己測印粗燥的樣本。第一張照片就是小誌的包裝套樣本，第二張則是兩本並肩的小誌樣本。它們收錄了2015年和2018年我在曼谷與周邊所拍攝的街頭照片。這是我到目前為止設計得最好的小誌了。近請期待，它們很快就會面世了。

謝謝觀賞，願世界和平。

Survey Results about Photo-Zine

Upon designing my second personal photo-zine, I made a survey form. To learn about, whats are the community of photo-zine looking for. The survey form consists of 7 multiple choice questions. I emailed to the people I know, who loves photo-zine like me, I posted to the photo-zine/photo-book community Facebook page too. Until today, I got 22 responses.

By looking through the results in pie charts, It kinda gives me some insights of what the collectors and the publishers' thoughts. And I think the results may be beneficial to all of the photo-zine makers too, therefore I decided to create this post to share the results here, and gives some of my thoughts based on the results. Do leave comments for me if you have your thoughts to share with me.

days of making photobooks

I had made a lots of photo book for myself, before I decided to give a go to self publish one. Today, I had successfully published 「Penang Record 2015」and recently a photo zine 「 Home Town」. And now I recalled, how far the journey was, to have a courage to self publish a photo book. I remembered at that moment I decided to publish one, I persuaded myself, “Give a go or give up!” And I give a go.

在我還沒有開始發行攝影集之前，我為自己製作了很多攝影集。今天為止，我成功自己發行了『Penang Record 2015』和剛剛才發行的『Home Town』攝影誌。現在回想起來，我到底走了多長的路，才鼓起勇氣去發行我的一本攝影集？記憶猶新，當我決定製作要發行的攝影集時，我是這樣告訴自己的。『豁出去或放棄！』，我豁出去了。

where to promote your photo books and photo zines?

Intro 序

You finally did it, you are so happy you had self-published a photo book or a photo zine. You posted them on facebook, you get a lots of likes and supportive comments from your fb friends and all, but you hardly sell them out. You may even have an website setup, with paypal business account and shipment calculation services ready, but still you don’t really sell them out except from some of your close friends.

You know your book or zine is not bad and with a reasonable price, you know the next thing to work out are marketing and distribution. You are not a professional marketing person, most of the self-publishers are not professional marketer don’t they? and you have not much budget on marketing too. So where should you start promoting your book and zine?

Not long ago, I self-published a photo zine, it's called Home Town. This photo zine compiled with my street photographs from 2014 to 2016. It was my debut zine, and I wanted to promote it so I get to reach out to the people who are interested in it. I begin to research about the photo book and photo zine market over the internet. I realized I should list down all my research findings so that I can keep track them so that future day I can refer them back, and also it benefits the next newcomers too. I’ll keep this post update, and I look forward to your comments too, regarding on any opportunities and alternative ways to promote our self-published works.

你終於做到了，你非常高興因為你終於出版了一本攝影集或攝影誌。你把消息放上臉書，你得到很多讚跟支持的留言，但你並沒有把書賣得很好。你可能已經建立了賣書的網站，有了paypal商業戶口和郵費計算功能，但你並沒怎麼把書賣出，除去幾個跟你熟悉的朋友之外。

你知道你的攝影集或誌還蠻不錯看的，價錢也公道，你知道接下來你必須去用功在經營與行銷上了。你不是行銷專家，很多獨立出版人也不怎麼樣對吧？而已你並沒有過多的預算在行銷上。那麼，你應該從何開始去推銷你的書呢？

不久前，我自費出版了一本攝影誌，叫作『Home Town』。此攝影誌收藏了2014-2016年間所拍攝的街頭照片。那算是我的處女作，我想推銷它，讓更多對此攝影風格感興趣的人找到它。我開始搜尋關於攝影集跟攝影誌的市場網路。我覺得我應該把它們一一列出來，以待未來的日子裡可以繼續參考，並且也可以幫助下一位獨立出版人。我會繼續不斷的更新此篇章。當然我也期待你的留言，請告訴我更多可以讓獨立出版人推銷書本的機會與方法。

Why making zine?

I decided to go with zine format for my photography works, but why? If you don't know what is zine, zine is a self-published reading material usually produced in a small amount, small in size, less pages and small-circulation. The regular form of a zine is, staple bind a few piece of A4 papers, and fold them to make a A5 size booklet. Zine can be in variety of formats, such as printed or hand-written text, comics and photographs. The person who produces zine call themselves zinester. Zinester have a saying, "Zine making for love, not money", that quote strike me. Yes, I did it because I love doing it, the keyword "Love" is a very important element in zine making.

我決定我的攝影集用zine的形式詮釋，為什麼？ 如果你不知道什麼是zine，zine 是一種小型的自製出版讀物，體積小，頁面少，流通量也低。製作zine可以很簡單，把幾張A4尺寸的紙釘了、折成A5尺寸的書就可以了。zine有很多形式，可以是文字的（印刷或手寫），漫畫或攝影。zine製作者稱自己為zinester。zinester有種說詞『製作zine，為愛，不為錢』，它打動了我。沒錯，我製作zine因為我享受其中，“愛”是製作zine的一個重要元素。