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Hello there!

ZineMap has been around for 9 months and you’re reading the first newsletter! I’m planning to send these every two weeks to share what’s been happening around the map lately, though since this is the first one it’ll probably be a bit longer than the rest.

I keep saying ZineMap has been a full-time thing for me just matter-of-factly, but even I didn’t fully understand how or why or what, really? My partner says she would not have guessed that if she didn’t see me working on it literally all the time. It’s nice to have an eyewitness. But also, I think this newsletter might help me make sense of that a little more. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

New Interviews!

Interviews take a lot of time from prep and research to editing to getting everything publishing-ready and looking good on the site (around 15–20 hours each, longer if translation is involved), but they’ve also been the most inspiring part of this project! I get to talk to people who have been building and running a piece of infrastructure in the zine space for years and ask all the questions about how it started, what goes into it, how they’ve managed to sustain it over time, etc. I also feel like this editorial side of the project gives ZineMap some much-needed context and depth, so it doesn’t feel like just a Google Maps for all things zine.

I published two new interviews in the past two weeks: one with April Gertler from FLYLEAF Book and Zine Festival (happening 20–23 August in Berlin), and another with Deniz Beser from Fanzineist Vienna (happening 22–24 May 2026 in… you guessed it: Vienna). It’s especially fascinating to talk to folks from places with relatively less representation on the map (currently that’s the non-predominantly English-speaking parts of the world), both to see how things are done differently, and to understand the communities they emerge from and in turn shape. But I also love doing these in person, so the next piece is one I did most recently with Aphrodite D. from School of Zines (of which I’m an alum) here in Sydney, where I spend most of my time now.

A Zine Fair!

I tabled at Strange Folds Zine Fair on April 11 in Wollongong. I was there last year too and didn’t have proper promo materials for ZineMap back then, so I improvised and cut up a page from my sketchbook "take-one"-poster-style with my tablemate’s scissors (thank you Diana) and watched people carefully tear off the flimsy pieces that said: "zinemap.com is a cool site I saw at Strange Folds and I will remember to check it out when I get home." This year I had a whole section of my table for ZineMap \o/

It was so great to be there. One zinester told me they found ZineMap on Google while searching for local zine fairs, and that’s how they ended up at this one! I also met Luke from @luketribedotcom whose zines I’d previously come across on ZineMap and who was tabling there too. This was the first time I’d discovered a zinester through ZineMap and then met them in person at a fair!

A Presentation!

Luke also saw me at a Graphic Storytelling Social event that technically falls a little outside this 2-week frame but I want to mention it because it’s the first time I presented ZineMap to a public audience! I felt really grateful to get to share this work among such an amazing lineup, and with folks at UTS who believe zines and comics are important and have a place in academia. I thiiink they might publish recordings of the talks somewhere at some point. Luke also said I didn’t do too shabby a job with the talk, which was so comforting to hear. Thank you Luke.

A Strategy Meeting!

Meg O’Shea, who also presented at the event, met up with me for coffee and spent a couple of hours helping me think through the bigger questions around ZineMap like framing and funding, which gave me so much clarity and energy. Thank you Meg. It was also just incredibly helpful to lay things out and talk them through with someone deeply embedded in the scene, given that the only people I’d talked to at length about ZineMap before that were my partner and my therapist, neither of whom has ever looked at my Jira backlog or analytics dashboard. Meg also suggested I reach out to people in different roles across the zine ecosystem for blurbs, so I’ve started doing that too and got some amazing ones that I'm excited to share!

User Research!

I spoke with 3 people from the ZineMap survey this past week. These are folks who opted in to chat at the end of the survey, and I've been setting these up at a pace I can handle (so if you said yes and haven't heard back - it's not you it's me!) I learn so much from these conversations about how people are actually using ZineMap, what’s working, what’s missing, and how ZineMap might better support their local scene. This week I talked to someone who travels full-time who shared how they used the map to find zine fests and workshops as they travel around the States, and a zinester from India who told me about the very vibrant zine scene there. Also a zinester in the UK flagged that the site isn’t very dyslexia friendly because of the white background and suggested an off white or cream so I prepped a few color theme options and met them for feedback. Accessibility improvements are coming in the next update!

More Site Improvements!

And here comes the dev/change log :)

• Added a geolocate button to the map navigation so you can jump straight to your current location. Shoutout to @jksc.stick from Tasmania for suggesting this so they don’t have to spin around the globe every time.
• Fixed event dates showing up wrong in profiles for people in certain time zones. Thanks to @zinestein for flagging this!
• Updated the library access tags by adding “Staff-assisted access” and “Restricted to affiliated users” after feedback from Zinecentralen – Kulturhuset Library about making access conditions more specific.
• Revamped the admin panel to make the submission review workflow more structured and easier to manage, and to support multiple admins, because ZineMap now has…

…A Map Steward!

@augustpersonage has brought a huge amount of care to ZineMap since day 1 (!), from contributing pins and notes to spotting issues and sharing thoughtful feedback, so I’m really happy to now have them on the behind-the-scenes side of things helping look over new listings before they go live! It’s also a bit of a milestone for ZineMap as the confirmation page that you see after you drop a pin now says "we" instead of "I".

Some Map Stats!

In the past two weeks, 46 zinesters joined the ZineMap community to map the global zine scene! 10 new shops, 2 new libraries, and 24 new events were added to ZineMap, bringing the total to 507 pins on the map! Another 12 zines were added to the site, and 7 people added themselves to the zinester directory.

Thank you!

Whether you’ve added a pin, shared the map, filled out the survey, sent feedback, or are just reading this now - thank you for being part of ZineMap!

If you have feedback, suggestions, or anything you'd like to tell me, feel free to send me an email! I may not always respond right away but I always love hearing from people using the map.

I’ve also set up a Ko-fi goal to help cover this year’s tooling costs. If you’d like to chip in and help keep the project running, I’d really appreciate it.

More soon!

- CJ