Wicked Wixen is a Drarry zine moderated by OkaySky, Anzukero, and Acedthis.Wicked Wixen is a magazine company run by Draco Malfoy & co after the war, which focuses primarily on things that interest him. If you have the kind of money that the Malfoy family has laying around, why wouldn't you use it to fund a self-indulgent monthly magazine?
Pre-orders have all been shipped out, and we are reopening our shop to offer some leftover items! The aftersale shop will close on November 24th and may reopen in the new year if there is still stock available.
What is a zine?
A zine is an unofficial fan-made publication compiling textual and visual contributions from fan creators. The word “fanzine” is often used for zines that are specifically made of fan creations of an existing series or piece of media.
Schedule
The following schedule is tentative and subject to change based on contributor & moderator needs, production time and delays, etc. Any concrete changes to the schedule will be communicated as we know about them.Interest check: September 25 - October 23
Contributor applications open: October 30th 🎃
Contributor applications close: November 30th
Contributor acceptance emails sent: December 7th - December 12th
Contributor concept submissions due: December 28th
First contributor check-in: January 31st
Second contributor check-in: February 28th
Final contributor submissions due: March 31st
Pre-orders: April 30th - July 4th
Zines ship to customers: September 1st 🚂
Contributor Selection
Once contributor applications open, we will be seeking approximately 15 writers and 15 artists at most; any more, and the project will become much too large for our mod team of 3 to handle! If we do not receive enough applications to completely fill the roster with 30 creators, then we will simply have a smaller zine than expected and allow our existing creators to make multiple submissions if they would like.When applying to contribute to the zine, all applicants will be required to provide examples of their work. We are requesting that at least one of the examples be Drarry or HP content. For artists, we ask that these examples be of fully rendered, complete art pieces, not sketches or WIPs. For writers, we ask that these examples be under 3k words, as our mod team will need to read your samples or be familiar with your work already, and we need to make sure you are capable of sticking to a word-count limit since the zine will have a limited number of pages.Please note that you do not need to be well-known in the Drarry fandom to apply, nor should your skill level be a deterrent from applying to contribute. You miss every shot you don’t take, and you may still be good enough to make the cut even if you don’t think you are! We encourage anyone who is interested in contributing to apply for the zine.
Pricing & Shipping Costs
Given that Wicked Wixen will be a printed book with merchandise items included, we are unable to offer it for free, nor can we afford to offer it below cost. Zines are often expensive, and shipping costs for a package containing multiple items are much higher than those of a letter, especially overseas.Thankfully, one of our moderators (@okay-sky) has professional connections with a printer that can create the printed zines at a low cost, and is also able to get a discount on shipping, so we should be able to keep our costs low. We are taking your feedback into consideration also about the types of merch will will be producing, so you won’t have to pay astronomical costs for merch that you don’t want.As international shipping is often the most expensive, for transparency’s sake we would like to advise you that our packages will ship from the United States. For countries overseas, and especially those with VAT, please keep this in mind.A low-cost alternative to purchasing a physical zine and paying shipping costs is a PDF copy of the zine. As there is no manufacturing cost associated with a PDF, we will be able to offer these at a significantly lower price than the printed zines.
Contributor Compensation Plan
In the contributor section of our interest check, we outlined our plan to compensate our participants for their time and efforts. Here it is again:
Our initial plan for contributor compensation is as follows: Any profit made from the zine will be split equally among contributors, with the option to either:a) Receive your contribution as cash via PayPalb) Use your profit to “"purchase”“ additional copies of the zine or merchandise at costc) Donate your portion of the profit to a charity of your choosing, such as AO3’s Organization of Transformative Works or the Trevor Project
We understand that there may be some concerns that paying contributors violates copyright laws. Unfortunately, all fan-created content, regardless of if it is provided for free or monetized, is technically illegal and not covered under fair use and thus violates copyright laws. Generally small fan projects are not targets of litigation unless the copyright holder is against ALL fan works (we’re looking at you, Anne Rice), or if the project is very large and generating lots of revenue. This same mindset is what allows fandom creators to sell prints, stickers, buttons, etc at cons or in online shops with little fear of repercussions. For more information about the legality of fan content in general, here is a well-sourced Wikipedia page dedicated to legal issues with derivative works such as fan fiction.Our plan for Wicked Wixen is not to generate a profit, but rather to approximately break even. The nature of producing physical content and shipping it to customers is that we cannot exactly break even no matter how much we plan ahead, as costs will fluctuate and there may be unexpected delays or issues with defective items that we will have to pay for. We will either lose money (and require monetary contributions from the mod team or contributors just to cover costs, which we will do our absolute best to avoid), or will have just enough left over to split it among the contributors so they can obtain copies of the zine or extra merchandise at-cost without needing to pay out of their own pocket. We want to be able to give each contributor a copy of the zine and one of each piece of merchandise without having to pay for it, as a thank-you for creating the art and writing that makes up the zine. For contributors who do not want their own physical copy (or who know that shipping to their country will be prohibitively expensive), they can either take their compensation as cash or donate it. Any money left over beyond that will let our contributors get extra copies of the zine or merchandise, again without having to pay for it, or take the equivalent money in cash/donation as above.Taking all of the above into consideration, this is our financial plan:
Prices will be set just high enough to plan for the worst case scenarios (replacing items damaged in transit, defective items the manufacturer has to re-make, etc) so that the mod team will hopefully not have to take money out of their own bank accounts to fund production. I.E. break evenIf we do not have as many unforeseen costs as expected, the extra revenue will be given to the contributors to do with as they wish. Historically, most zine contributors either want more copies of the zine/merch, or want to donate it to a cause important to them. Contributors are certainly welcome to take their portion as cash, and should not be judged for it, as they are essentially being commissioned to create art or fic for the zine, but the nature of fandom spaces is that cash payouts are in the minority.The mod team will not be paid for their role as moderators. Moderating a zine is an act of love for the fandom that takes a lot of time and dedication, but we are not doing this to make money. If one of the mods also contributes to the zine as an artist or writer, they will receive an equal portion of the profit as any other contributor to do with as they wish.
Print Quality
The quality of a zine is important to many zine readers, and our mod team agrees that it is a top priority. The physical copies of the zine will be printed at 600 dpi and will be inspected for any defects prior to being shipped. A high-quality glossy paper is being used for the pages to increase the luxury feel and prevent tearing.