How to figure out page order for printing zines

How do you arrange zine pages so they print in the correct order? There are lots of ways to do this, depending on the size of your zine and the number of pages. Here’s one method for quarter-page zines.

Shout-out to Ryan at Pocket Thoughts. His method for printing quarter-page zines is the first one I learned. What I have below is similar to the way he does it.

Here’s how I determine page order for printing zines

This example is with a quarter-page zine where the cover is blue cardstock and the interior pages are standard white copy paper.

Printing a quarter-page zine on 8.5 x 11-inch paper means that you have 4 zine pages on the front of the sheet of paper and 4 zine pages on the reverse side of the sheet. So that you don’t have (unintentional) blank pages, your total number of zine pages should be a multiple of 4.

I make a paper dummy (aka mock-up) to figure out the page order. The process might be difficult to follow in writing, so I made a video explaining my method. The rest of this post is the method written out.

To make the mock-up, I use scrap paper that’s the same size as what the actual zine will be printed on (8.5 x 11 sheets of paper). If you’re going to have a different paper for the cover, you can use a different color of scrap paper or just mark the paper somehow so you know that’s the cover.

Cut the 8.5 x 11-inch pages in half horizontally.

Then fold the half-sheets vertically and put them together as a booklet. You should have the same number of pages as what you want your finished zine to be. Zines with 16 pages are common, so that would be the covers plus 12 interior pages.

Don’t staple the pages since you’ll be taking them apart anyway.

Label the front cover, back cover, and interior pages.

Take the pages apart, unfold them, and lay them out as if they were 8.5 x 11-inch sheets of paper. You’ll have groupings with 2 half-sheets. Then you can see how the zine pages should be ordered for printing. Flip the half-sheets over to see which zine pages would be on the reverse side of the page. This will show you how to arrange zine pages for double-sided printing.

Depending on the number of pages in your zine or if you want to use a different type of paper for the cover, you may end up with a half-sheet on its own. In this case, for the print layout you can copy and paste the top half of the sheet to the bottom half. So on the 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper, the top half would be the same zine pages as the bottom half.

Take notes so you remember the page order. These can be rough since they’re just for reference when you’re arranging pages in layout.

I use “1A” and “1B” to indicate that’s one sheet of paper, front side (1A) and back side (1B). Then “2A” is the front of the second sheet of paper and “2B” is the back of the second sheet of paper.

As long as you figured out the sequence correctly, you’ll be able to print and assemble your zines in the correct page order.

Let me know in the comments if you do something similar for figuring out the layout of your zines or if you use a completely different method.