The other day I was asking Jordan about the relationship between Zinetopia on BackerKit and Zine Month. Since he was involved in the formation of Zinetopia, he had an interesting perspective. We both agreed that it's hard for this sort of history to be transmitted in the community, so I wanted to put it somewhere, here. I've added some historical context for a more full picture of this annual tradition in the TTRPG hobby world.
On November 1st, 2018 Luke Crane, then head of games at Kickstarter, published an official announcement calling it, "Zine Quest, a Tribute to RPG Zines". It emphasized the importance of zines in the TTRPG hobby since its beginnings in the 1970's, referencing the classics Judges Guild and Alarmus & Excursions. There is a quote from prominent TTRPG historian Jon Peterson describing zines as the "primordial soup" of TTRPGs. They also released guidelines including a requirement that all projects needed to be zines. As a brief aside here right up front, I should mention that Crane has since been fired over his willing involvement in some drama that is much to involved to get into here. This history isn't intended to idolize Crane or anyone else involved.
I won't add much more, and leave you to Jordans account, but I will sprinkle in some facts from the Zine Month website which will be shown in italics. I should also mention that Crowdfundr has also hosted a Zine Month event of their own called Tabletop Nonstop since 2023.
BackerKit doesn't have any serious connection to or any say in Zine Month. It's still the same decentralized, ad hoc, "do what you want/are able to" organization.
Last year, I noticed the high number of ZiMo projects aiming to fund on BK, so I recruited Tony to help tell them that they should do something for the month of February to centralize the marketing and clicks for these projects, whether they wanted to use the name Zine Month or not. I argued it would be a win-win. Their response was to make a new entry in their -topia event series for February, calling it Zinetopia.
Any RPG zine project anywhere releasing or raising funds in February can say that they are doing so as a part of Zine Month.
Zine Month was created by Charlie and Alex C, Bella/Nuclear Obelisk, Sam Sorensen and later joined by Tony Vasinda as a reaction to Kickstarter ignoring their Zine Quest community one year, not mentioning whether they would hold it again until I think less than a month before, not providing any marketing in the lead up, and just expecting people would come back no matter what, whether KS cared to hold an event or not. A lot of small creators didn't like that their chances of funding each year were so tied up with KS's whims through Zine Quest.
So they started ZiMo to specifically counteract KS's share of the market, encouraging people to raise their funds and release things anywhere under the ZiMo banner and supporting each other to counteract the lack of KS marketing. They had the following aims:
Education: provide information about where creators can host their zine, from pre-order sites, digital distributors, or crowdfunding platforms.
De-Monopolization: Creating additional avenues of how projects are funded and spreading awareness of where projects can be found and financed will create a healthier community.
Democratization: The indie TTRPG community is a global one and everyone should have a fair opportunity to have their ideas and creations shared, not just the financially successful ones.
Doing a Zine Month project on KS was not allowed for the first year or two. Then people felt it was against the purpose of it to restrict where people could crowdfund, so that restriction was lifted.
ZiMo is the small-time, anyone-can-do-it counterpart to KS's Zine Quest, trying to break its hold on the zine market since a lot of creators didn't like KS for [take your pick of legit reasons].
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