Zine Sizes Explained: Twenty Real Zines From A6 to A3
Most zines are A5: 148 x 210mm, the size you get when you fold a sheet of A4 in half. It became the default because it is cheap to print, goes in a coat pocket without fuss and fits every zine rack, but it is one size among many, and the right one for yours depends on what goes inside, how people will carry it and what you plan to charge.
Below, the common sizes sit side by side in millimetres and inches. Then each one appears on a real zine that has come off our press, with its page count, binding and paper next to the photographs, so you can see the choices other makers settled on. Further down there is a table of what each size costs to print and what independent shops sell it for.
Zine sizes at a glance
Sizes are written width first, then height. So 148 x 210mm means A5 portrait, and turning that sheet on its side gives you A5 landscape.
| Size | Millimetres | Inches | Make one at home by | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A6 | 105 x 148 | 4.1 x 5.8 | Folding A4 twice | Pocket zines, poetry, monthly titles |
| A5 | 148 x 210 | 5.8 x 8.3 | Folding A4 once | Almost anything; the classic zine |
| Between A5 and A4 | 170 x 240, 172 x 245 and similar | 6.7 x 9.4 | A custom trim, so ask a printer | Music and photo zines that want more room |
| Square | 210 x 210, or up to 297 x 297 | 8.3 x 8.3, or up to 11.7 x 11.7 | A custom trim | Photographs in both orientations |
| A4 | 210 x 297 | 8.3 x 11.7 | Folding A3 once | Comics, magazines, big pictures |
| A3 | 297 x 420 | 11.7 x 16.5 | Folding A2 once | Posters, newspapers, gallery reviews |
Looking for A7? At 74 x 105mm it is too small for us to staple or bind, and our smallest booklet is A6. An A7 zine is made from a single sheet instead: printed flat on A4, then slit and folded into eight little panels. Soofiya's Auntie Fatima zines, further down, are made exactly that way.
Five things to know before you pick a size
- Your home printer's sheet isn't the limit. At home you fold A4 to get A5. A print shop prints on bigger sheets and trims them, so we can make a zine at any size from 105 x 148mm up to 297 x 420mm, portrait or landscape, without sticking to the A series.
- Portrait and landscape bind on different edges. Say which you want when you get a quote. An A5 landscape zine is stapled along its short side, which changes how the pictures and pages need to be laid out.
- Small pages leave less margin for error. Give every outside edge of your file 3mm of bleed, and keep page numbers and words at least 5mm inside the trim on all four sides. If you're framing pictures with white borders, make them at least 8mm wide so a fraction of trim movement doesn't show.
- Size and page count work together. Staples hold anything from 8 to 72 pages, always in multiples of four. Perfect binding starts at 32 pages including the cover, and a spine of about 5mm gives a printed title comfortable room. A bigger page holds more, so the same content fills fewer pages at A4 than at A5.
- Think about the post before you fall for a size. A5 and A4 zines both fit Royal Mail's Large Letter size, which allows up to 353 x 250mm and 25mm thick. An A3 zine has to go as a parcel unless you fold it.
Pocket size: A6
Small zines cost little to post, hand out easily and get read in one sitting. They suit short work: a run of poems, a comic, a set of drawings, a monthly round up. A6 is the smallest size we bind, whether with staples or glue.
Next Wave: A6 for a cassette club that posts every month
Silas at Chalkpit Cassette Club couldn't decide between A6 and A5 for the magazine that travels with each monthly tape. We told him A6 is the more pocketable of the pair while A5 gives more room for content, and he chose A6. At this size Mike prefers a lighter cover, because 170gsm falls back onto the pages instead of springing open in your hand.
Size: 105 x 148mm (A6 portrait)
Pages: 16, stapled
Paper: 170gsm uncoated cover, 120gsm uncoated inside, full colour
How we printed Next Wave
Sylvia: The Essentials, an A6 lyric book with a glued spine
The lyric book for the recording of Sylvia, A Musical Revolution, was first quoted as a 12 page stapled booklet, until the full lyrics at 10pt came to about 100 A6 pages. After checking the type scale in our free sample pack, the team stayed pocket sized with 8pt type and wider margins: 48 pages inside, perfect bound with a 4mm spine. Keep words 8 to 10mm from the spine on a book this small, because 2 to 3mm disappears into the gutter.
Size: 105 x 148mm (A6 portrait)
Pages: 48 inside plus the cover, perfect bound with a 4mm spine
Paper: 250gsm uncoated cover, matt laminated; 120gsm uncoated inside
How we printed Sylvia: The Essentials
Auntie Fatima by Soofiya: A7 from one flat sheet, no staples
We don't staple anything smaller than A6, so A7 has to be made another way. Each Auntie Fatima zine is printed flat on one A4 sheet of 100gsm Papago Pink, in black ink on one side, then slit and folded down to eight A7 panels. It is the classic one sheet mini zine, and our step by step folding guide shows the same method.
Size: 74 x 105mm (A7), folded from one A4 sheet
Pages: Eight panels, no staples or glue
Paper: 100gsm Papago Pink, black ink on one side
How we printed Auntie Fatima
Just off A5: narrower, squarer, shorter
Take a few millimetres off A5 and a zine starts to feel like a pocket paperback or a little photo book.
Leon Foggitt went compact too. Peregrinos, a custom trim photo zine about the road to El Rocío, is stapled on silk with no lamination, so the ink on its red cover cracks along the fold and lets pale paper fibre show through, a rawness that fits a story of dust and hoofprints.
Je M'appelle: 127 x 166mm, kept the same for every issue
Smaller than A5 and closer to square, 127 x 166mm is the custom trim New York photographer Joshua Jordan keeps for the whole Je M'appelle series, so each issue lines up with the last. Staples suit it too: with no glued spine to swallow the middle, a portrait can run straight across the fold.
Size: 127 x 166mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: Stapled booklet
Paper: 300gsm silk cover, matt laminated; 130gsm silk inside
How we printed Je M'appelle
Cipher Press: a chapbook at 129 x 198mm
Cipher Press printed its short story anthology as a chapbook, narrower than A5 and a little shorter, closer to the way a pocket paperback sits in the hand. Sixty four pages of black text on 100gsm uncoated are wire stitched inside a full colour cover.
Size: 129 x 198mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: 68, stapled
Paper: 200gsm uncoated cover, 100gsm uncoated inside
How we printed There Will Always Be Nights Like This
A5, where most zines begin
A5 works portrait or landscape, with staples or glue holding it together, and it is the size zine shops expect. Four very different zines show how much range it has.
Sick Love, Glasgow Edition: A5 portrait, stapled
Trackie Mcleod's documentary zine of Glasgow is A5 at its plainest and best: 40 pages, silk paper so the photographs stay crisp, a matt laminated outside, then two staples.
Size: 148 x 210mm (A5 portrait)
Pages: 40, stapled
Paper: 200gsm silk cover, matt laminated; 130gsm silk inside
How we printed Sick Love
On A Sunny Afternoon: A5 turned on its side
Rotate A5 and a pier, a horizon or a wide street scene gets the whole width of the spread. Zach Sawyer's photographs of a single Florida fishing pier run full bleed across 36 landscape pages on uncoated paper.
Size: 210 x 148mm (A5 landscape)
Pages: 36, stapled
Paper: 300gsm uncoated cover, matt laminated; 115gsm uncoated inside
How we printed On A Sunny Afternoon
In Bloom: just enough pages for a spine
At 44 pages in total, In Bloom was only just thick enough to perfect bind, with a 3mm spine, and the University of Kent students behind it wanted that paperback finish for a zine they would hand to the people in its photographs. Hyla Etame's verdict when the box arrived: "very professional and bright, and we're proud of it."
Size: 148 x 210mm (A5 portrait)
Pages: 44, perfect bound with a 3mm spine
Paper: 300gsm silk cover, matt laminated; 130gsm silk inside
How we printed In Bloom
Beach Days: a run of 50, stapled, with a soft touch cover
Yannick Schutz priced both staples and a glued spine before choosing a stapled A5 run of 50 copies. Soft touch lamination over an uncoated cover gives his surf photographs a cover you want to pick up.
Size: 148 x 210mm (A5 portrait)
Pages: 40, stapled
Paper: 300gsm uncoated cover, soft touch laminated; 120gsm uncoated inside
How we printed Beach Days
Between A5 and A4
A few centimetres past A5 gives photographs and type more room without the bulk of A4, and a zine at one of these sizes looks different from everything else in the rack.
Morning Coffee: 150 x 230mm, a small stretch upwards
Piotr Gruszecki's first zine is two millimetres wider than A5 and twenty taller, which gives his portrait photographs of a London café a little more height. Sixteen pages, stapled, with gloss on the outside and uncoated paper within.
Size: 150 x 230mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: 16, stapled
Paper: 300gsm silk cover, gloss laminated; 120gsm uncoated inside
How we printed Morning Coffee
So Young: 172 x 245mm, fifty issues and counting
So Young has stayed slightly wider than A5 for issue after issue, enough extra room for music photography without the formality of A4. Issue 50 ran to 60 pages of uncoated stock, stapled like every issue before it.
Size: 172 x 245mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: 60, stapled
Paper: 200gsm uncoated cover, 120gsm uncoated inside
How we printed So Young issue 50
Swimmable Cities: 170 x 240mm with a 6mm spine
Louisa Minter-Kemp's Nature Zine sits at 170 x 240mm, bigger than a pocket guide and gentler than a full magazine. At 88 pages the perfect bound spine comes out at 6mm, wide enough to carry the title along its edge.
Size: 170 x 240mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: 88, perfect bound with a 6mm spine
Paper: 240gsm uncoated cover, 120gsm uncoated inside
How we printed Swimmable Cities
Square zines
A square page doesn't favour portrait or landscape pictures, which is why photographers reach for it. Squares can go up to 297 x 297mm, stapled or perfect bound. Craig Payne's Ashdown Forest, for one, is a stapled 290mm square. The thing to know before you design is cost: a 210mm square costs the same to print as A4, and anything bigger moves up a price bracket.
Inner Space: the biggest square at the A4 price
Dusan Maletic asked about going up to roughly 250mm square, then settled on 210mm, the largest square that still costs the same as A4. He kept the staples too. Mike rates the size as cheap to print and flexible to design, and the slim spine kept the zine light enough to send across the Atlantic.
Size: 210 x 210mm
Pages: 32, stapled
Paper: 250gsm silk cover, matt laminated; 170gsm silk inside
How we printed Inner Space
30 Days Vol. 1: square and perfect bound
Ian Worth's zine of the southwest Wales coast went perfect bound at 62 pages, printed litho on 170gsm silk, with his name and the title running down a 5mm spine.
Size: 210 x 210mm
Pages: 62, perfect bound with a 5mm spine
Paper: 350gsm silk cover, matt laminated; 170gsm silk inside, litho printed
How we printed 30 Days Vol. 1
A4 and its near neighbours
A4 suits comics, magazines and photographs that need to be seen large. It is a bigger thing to post and to stock, so its pages need to earn the space.
Confessions of an Ex-Zine Editor: colour outside, black inside
Alison's perzine spends its colour on the cover and prints the 28 pages inside in black, which keeps an A4 zine affordable. The laminated 300gsm silk gives the big page enough backbone to stand up on a fair table.
Size: 210 x 297mm (A4 portrait)
Pages: 32, stapled
Paper: 300gsm silk cover, matt laminated, full colour; 115gsm uncoated inside in black
How we printed Confessions of an Ex-Zine Editor
Endless, Dawn: glossy A4 with a glued spine
Sultan + Shepard's book for their music runs to 68 glossy A4 pages with a glued spine, somewhere between a coffee table book and a keepsake for fans.
Size: 210 x 297mm (A4 portrait)
Pages: 68, perfect bound
Paper: 300gsm gloss cover, matt laminated; 170gsm gloss inside
How we printed Endless, Dawn
LDN on 8: 210 x 270mm, a little shorter than A4
Paul Rider asked for the same size as Drag, the magazine he had printed with us the year before: 270mm tall, just under A4. Our studio notes say the custom size makes the roller skating zine look and feel cooler, and its 96 pages give a 7mm spine.
Size: 210 x 270mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: 96, perfect bound with a 7mm spine
Paper: 250gsm uncoated cover, matt laminated; 120gsm uncoated inside
How we printed LDN on 8
Ninja Peanut: a tall 191 x 282mm
Jake Tilson made this series during lockdown for his daughter, starring the family cat, with Japan running through every issue. The long page is an unusual shape, stapled, with gloss laminated covers and uncoated pages inside.
Size: 191 x 282mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: Stapled booklets
Paper: 250gsm gloss cover, gloss laminated; 170gsm uncoated inside
How we printed Ninja Peanut
A3 and bigger
At A3 a zine becomes something you can pin to a wall. It costs more to print and post, so it needs a reason, and these two had one.
Peak Issue 2: A3 sheets that become A2 posters
Peak's 76 pages are folded A3 sheets nested one inside another with no staples at all, so each sheet slides out and opens into an A2 poster. It is printed on 120gsm uncoated, heavy enough to pin up and supple enough to wrap round the rest of the issue.
Size: 297 x 420mm (A3 portrait)
Pages: 76, folded and nested, unbound
Paper: 120gsm uncoated throughout
How we printed Peak Issue 2
Review Volume 5: 289 x 380mm for a gallery
JGM Gallery's big review runs to 68 self cover pages at 380mm tall, stapled, on 100gsm recycled uncoated, a light sheet that keeps a page this large easy to turn.
Size: 289 x 380mm (custom, portrait)
Pages: 68, stapled, self cover
Paper: 100gsm recycled uncoated throughout
How we printed Review Volume 5
Shelf prices and print costs, size by size
We read the shelf prices of 820 zines, art books and magazines in 16 independent shops, among them Good Press in Glasgow, Village in Leeds, Antenne Books in London, Rare Mags in Stockport and Printed Matter in New York. Wherever a UK shop listed a zine's size, we grouped it by that size and took the middle price. Next to each sits what 100 copies cost to print with us.
| Size | Middle shelf price | Usual range | 100 copies printed by us | Print cost as a share of the shelf price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A6 | £6 | £4 to £10 | About £1.22 each (32 pages, stapled, uncoated) | About 20% |
| A5, stapled | £7 | £5 to £8 | £1.88 each (32 pages) | 27% |
| A5, perfect bound | £14 | £10 to £22 | £2.46 each (44 pages) | 18% |
| Between A5 and A4 | £17 | £12 to £22 | About £2.52 each (170 x 240mm, 32 pages, stapled, gloss) | 15% |
| 210mm square | £15 | £8.50 to £18 | £3.06 a copy, 32 stapled pages | 20% |
| A4, stapled | £10 | £7 to £11 | £3.06 each (32 pages) | 31% |
| A4, perfect bound | £22 | £18 to £32 | £8.28 each (100 pages) | 38% |
| A3 | Too few on the shelves to call | Priced on request |
Our prices are full colour, carry no VAT and include courier delivery to your door. They use silk paper throughout (300gsm for the laminated cover, 130gsm inside) unless the row says otherwise. The square row is for 210mm; bigger squares cost more. The A6 shelf figures also cover any smaller zines in the sample, and square and A4 stapled had only a handful of listings each, so treat those rows as a rough guide.
Three things stand out. Perfect binding roughly doubles what an A5 zine sells for, from £7 to £14, while the print cost per copy rises by 58p for a slightly longer zine. Square zines and the sizes between A5 and A4 sit at £15 to £17 on the shelf, around double A5, though many of those were longer or perfect bound; our reading is that shoppers see them as objects rather than pamphlets. A4 stapled is where printing takes the biggest bite, because shops price it at around £10, so colour on the inside pages has to earn its place; that is why Alison prints hers in black.
Shops keep a share of every sale. Good Press in Glasgow keeps 35% of the cover price on consignment, and trade terms like those of Antenne Books give shops 40% off, so on a £7 A5 zine you would keep somewhere between £4.20 and £4.55, still more than double the £1.88 it cost to print.
Size sets the print cost, and the print cost shapes the price. Our zine pricing guide follows a 32 page A5 zine from our price card to the till and counts what is left at each stop.
Zine size questions
What is the standard size for a zine?
A5, which measures 148 by 210mm. A6 and A4 are the next most common, and plenty of zines use a custom size in between.
What size is an A5 zine?
148mm wide by 210mm tall in portrait, or the other way round in landscape. In inches that is 5.8 by 8.3. You can make one at home by folding sheets of A4 in half.
What size is an A6 zine?
105 by 148mm, or 4.1 by 5.8 inches: half of A5, about the size of a postcard.
How big is an A4 zine?
210 by 297mm, or 8.3 by 11.7 inches, the size of a sheet of printer paper.
What size is an A3 zine?
297 by 420mm, or 11.7 by 16.5 inches. We can staple it or nest the folded sheets loose, as Peak does, and it is priced by quote.
What paper do I need to make a zine at home?
A4. Fold several sheets down the middle, tuck one inside the next and staple along the fold for an A5 booklet with four pages per sheet, or fold and cut a single sheet into an eight page A7 mini zine.
Can you print any size of zine?
Yes, within limits: the smallest is 105 by 148mm and the largest 297 by 420mm, either way round, and custom trims such as 170 x 240mm are welcome. Squares go up to 297 by 297mm, stapled or glued, though anything over 210mm square costs more to print.
Can you print A7 zines?
Not as a stapled or glued booklet, because A6 is the smallest zine we bind. An A7 zine works as a single sheet instead: we print it flat on A4, ready to slit and fold into eight panels, like Soofiya's Auntie Fatima zines above.
Does a bigger zine cost more to print?
Yes, per copy. 100 copies of a 32 page stapled zine cost £188 at A5 and £306 at A4 or 210mm square. Bigger squares and anything at A3 are priced by quote.
Found your size?
If one of these zines looks like yours, our zine printing prices cover A5 stapled and perfect bound runs, and the quote form takes any size in this guide. Once your PDF is ready, send it over and a real person looks through every page before it goes to press.
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