An ezine is a periodic publication distributed by email or posted on a website. Ezines are typically tightly focused on a subject area.

Ezine pronunciation and derivation

From time to time differences in pronunciation arise, probably due to lack of careful thought about its origins.

The word "ezine" or "e-zine" is a contraction of "electronic magazine". That suggests that the correct pronunciation should be "ee-zeen" rather than "ee-zyne" or "ee-zign" (as in "design").

This is further supported by traditional usage in terms like "fanzines", a long-established form of periodical, especially in the science fiction community.

Ezine history

CULT OF THE DEAD COW claims to have published the first ezine, starting in 1984, with its ezine still in production more than 20 years later. While this claim is hotly debated, ezines certainly began in the BBS days of the 1980s. Phrack began publication in 1985 and, unlike CULT OF THE DEAD COW which publishes articles individually, Phrack published collections of articles in a manner more similar to a print magazine. The collaborative fiction ezine DargonZine had its origins on the BITNET academic network in 1984, and continues to be published to this day.

In the late 1990s ezine publishers began adapting to the interactive qualities of the Internet instead of duplicating magazines on the web. Some of these attempts included Kafenio (ISSN 1108-6866) and Zone451 (now renamed JustSayGo and first published in traditional format in 1995). Themestream (2001, now defuct) was another attempt at generating content by opening its pages to everybody who cared to write and get paid by the click. Webseed tried to take up on the idea but to the contrary of Themestream created individual zines. This experiment was terminated shortly after the dot-com crash though some of the ezines created are still on the market such as NatureOfAnimals or FranceForFreebooters.

The tendency seems to be that the new concepts of the ezines go more towards interactive content and those using old fashioned layouts are slowly ceasing publication, such as zinos. These changing trends are in part due to escalating problems getting ezines past ever-more-vigilant spam filters and to the increasing popularity of weblogs (blogs). Many established ezines have now become little more than teasers for web-based versions, or for blog versions that provide greater interaction.

• Skive Magazine
• Sole Proprietor Magazine

See also

• Cyberzine
• Digital edition
• Diskmag
• Online journal
• textfiles.com
• Underground ezine
• Webzine
• Zine

External links

• John Labovitz's E-Zine-List
• Zinester's Ezine Directory