Sharing this as well to share my experience as a mod;;

I was a mod for a zine with a rare pair from a popular fandom, it was so rare that basically most of the fans of this pair were contirbutors already https://twitter.com/pejaposarambi/status/1168268695837249542

The project itself was ambitious, something I didn’t expect also of myself;; It was a zine with 2 themes/aus and it included artwork, fic, and comics which resulted in 96 beautiful pages

I had experience with layouting books and organizing people so that was the easy part

The hard part was actually the printing.. I shelled out my own money for printing before preorders and it wouldn’t have been a mistake if the printers didnt fuck it up -____-

They promised 20 perfect bound books in time for a local event of the fandom to boost orders—

—but they sent me 20 perfect bound books all with 20+ pages missing the night before the event. I was so devastated that I wasn’t able to sell any copies that weekend even if they took the books back from me for replacement

What’s more is that they didn’t even compensate me for it, tbh I would have just not paid for it but I couldn’t look for another printer at such short notice since the zines were due to get shipped right after the event

So they replaced the books with 10 staple bound books—

—and enough perfect bound books for the contributors

The printers still said that I should pay full price bc of the contract

I feel bad that the contributors were offering to help, but I wanted to take full responsibility since it was my mistake after all

In the end, the sales of the zines went to just the production. And until now I’m still paying the printer (since I only got stable income recently) even if their mistake cost the sales of the books

It’s really saddening but I couldn’t bear to face those who contributed...

I love this ship so much and I love the creators that took their time to contribute to the zine and its one of the book layouts I did that I’m so proud of.. but Im frustrated I cant find the courage to admit this problem to the others wc resulted in none of us getting compensated

I just hope this same problem won’t happen to anyone else!

Please please please make sure to check your suppliers before pushing through with them and trusting them with your work

And to those planning to make zines, don’t be disheartened. Learn from our mistakes to do better!

An update to this thread!

I finally paid off my remaining debt to the printer just today! After almost 2 years;;; So I feel a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders ;O;/

Can't believe I got myself in this mess bc a mod/main contributor ran off with my money + printer fucked up the books wc resulted in the books not getting enough PR to be sold :(

But still... that doesn't change my love for Emimike

Hope I can reconnect with the contributors