DIY or Die: Self Publishing Thrives at the 2025 Lambertville Comic and Zine Conference
The 2025 Lambertville Comic and Zine Conference was held at the ACME Screening Room on Saturday, July 26, 2025.
The annual Lambertville Comic and Zine Conference drew DIY artists, writers, and creators, as well as comic and zine fans from around the tri-state area. Over 25 vendors were in attendance to show, share, and sell their original creations.
Attendees were zine and comic book readers, writers, artists, and lovers of alternative or subculture genres who were looking to buy from their favorite makers, and discover new work. The event was free, and open to the public.
What’s a Zine?
Zines are short, independently-created publications and that are typically about subjects that get overlooked or ignored by commercial media publications.
The organizers described the conference as a gathering of “cottage industry, esoteric, sub underground & d.i.y comics, zines, art, and other physical media.”
If you’re a certain age, the idea of zines might evoke chapbooks, lapel pins, music posters, tie-dyed shirts, or underground VHS and cassette tape swaps.
Before the internet, zines about literature, art, music, and movies were how culture consumers discovered work that existed beyond the mainstream.
Why Zines Matter in a Digital World
The desktop publishing boom of the 1980s essentially transformed the mimeograph machine into a digital printer. In the 1990s, Napster, My Space, Real Player, and BitTorrent made streaming and downloading the norm, which forced traditional literature and music publishers to shift business models.
Today, companies such as Spotify, BandCamp, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, and Substack have positioned themselves to act as middlemen who distribute content that might have never been published—or that otherwise would’ve been shared through alternative methods such as zines.
The “democratization” of media hasn’t been without its hiccups. Commercial distribution platforms are corporate entities that can help artists, but they can also hinder them through moderation, censorship, or controlling algorithms.
Conference co-organizer, T Penn, explained: “Zines, cassettes, and independent publishing circumvent algorithms. For example, some websites limit how long your songs can be, or they decide if it’s even music or not. If you just hand a comic or recording to someone, you don’t have to deal with those limitations.”
Selling, Networking, Connecting
Items for sale at the conference ranged anywhere from free to expensive. Original works of art, for example, were priced higher while stickers, magnets, buttons, folded paper zines, tiny drawings, small paintings, t-shirts, cassettes, LP records, CDs, and other items were priced in the $3 to $25 range. Many of the creations were micro runs that were printed or duplicated in small batches.
Below are some of the artists that tabled and shared their work.
Anita Hayden
Anita, who defined a zine simply as, “an accessible piece of artwork that an artist can create and share,” drove from Yardley, PA to participate.
For sale at Anita’s table were original graphic lino prints, postcards, magnets of cats with button eyes, tiny 2x2” and 2x4" artworks featuring cute rabbits, cats, owls, chicks, and rodents, and foldy zines with titles such as “Kiwi the Cat,” “Different Worlds,” “Cave Creatures,” and “Encouragement Buddies!”
Anita said that making zines is, “an easier way to share my artwork and also share my comics that I write. It’s less complicated than normal printing, because it’s more accessible and able to be shared at a lower cost.”
The conference, for Anita, was “a place where artists can meet each other, sell things, and connect with the local community.”
Learn more about Anita Hayden’s work:
instagram @anita_nother_coffee
instagram @ahdesignsandart
T Penn
T is a local musician who’s been publishing songs from his collective, Human Adult Band (and related artists) through his label, d.i.h.d. records, since 1999.
For sale on T’s table were t-shirts, LPs, CDs, and cassettes with hand-drawn graphics and imagery that featured titles such as “Hearing Damage Sessions,” “Last of the Movers,” and, “Live in Lambertville.”
T values the very local and personal nature of self-published or micro-published media, because it creates an art experience that you can hold and look at.
“Mainstream media and larger avenues—the things that everyone hears when they turn on tv, radio, or social media—have so much reach,” T explained, “and that squashes the self/indie stuff, making it harder to find this information. If you dig for it, it’s there. Freeform college radio is a great alternate route of communication, like indie music spaces where they’re not playing covers.”
Learn more about T Penn’s work:
website dihd.net
bandcamp dihdrecords.bandcamp.com
instagram @humanadultband
Gwenn Seemel
Gwenn is a Lambertville artist who has been painting colorful artworks, writing books, and publishing a blog and website by hand for over 20 years.
For sale on Gwenn’s table were original artworks, prints, postcards, stickers, and self-published books with titles such as “Crime Against Nature,” “Crime Against Nature: the coloring book,” “Everything’s Fine,” and “Baby Sees ABCs.”
Conference attendees signed up to join Gwenn’s subscription-based sticker club, which mails out a new, unique art sticker every month for a small donation.
Gwenn tabled at the conference, because, “too much creativity these days is behind a screen, or on a screen, and heavily curated for marketability. The zine conference is a celebration of all of the other kinds of creativity.”
Learn more about Gwenn Seemel’s work:
website gwennseemel.com
sticker club gwennseemel.com/stickers
A. T. Pratt
A. T. is a cartoonist, professor, and paper engineer who traveled from Brooklyn to table at the to Lambertville Comic and Zine Conference.
For sale at A. T.’s table were colorful cut out comics that opened into complex and surprising three dimensional pop-ups and fold outs with titles that included “I Love NY Matinee,” “Ink Toby,” and “Miggy Mouse's Sweets & Treats.”
A. T. defined a zine as, “printed material with more than one page, or really any independent publication,” but ultimately his definitions for both were broad.
“I try to make each one a new weird different shape,” he said, speaking about his work. “So even saying that a zine is like more than one page stapled is not true, because then you’ve got your accordion zines and your foldy—so you don’t need staples. I think more than one page is essential, because you don't just want prints, but I’m more interested in publications and comics narrative, and how a publication is sequenced and designed.”
Learn more about A. T. Pratt’s work:
instagram @atpratt
website atpratt.net
Jacques Davide
Jacques, who is often seen making art in Lambertville, defined a zine as, “A homemade periodical where the creator has total control over the content.”
For sale at Jacques’s table was original comix art, including his new character, “Pardon the Wanderer” along with his other titles, “The Magic Slices,” and “The Cavity Cavaliers.” Jacques was also promoting the comic-anthology, “Hunch.”
The Lambertville Comic and Zine Conference, for Jacques, was “a vital place to connect, promote one’s work, and meet others interested in the arts.”
Learn more about Jacque’s work:
website jacquesdavideart.com
instagram @jacques_davide_art_studios
Behind the Zines
Thanks to T, Henri, and Mike for making this year’s Lambertville Comic and Zine Conference happen, and for keeping DIY publishing alive in Lambertville!
* The 2025 conference poster was created by Kyleen / electric heart comics
Keep things interesting. Please leave a tip.