Policies – Zinetastic! – serving the future of publishing and self-expression

If you have any questions about anything on this page or, if there is anything else we can help you with, please do not hesitate to use the Contact Form to get in touch.

Your Account

It is helpful for you to set up an account when you place your first order. This makes it easy for you to return and re-download any digital product from your account library. This also makes it easy for you to check the tracking on past orders. If you would like to have an order you made before setting up an account added to your account, please contact us and we will be happy to try to take care of that for you. If you accidentally enter the wrong login and our security system locks you out, we can also help with this.

Your Email

We send periodic news about things like the release of new issues or parties and conferences and awards shows and other events our partner publications are doing, which you might be interested in. You may opt out of these emails at any time, while still being able to continue receiving email receipts for purchases.

Shipping

We use UPS, USPS, and Asendia to send your orders out. When your order ships, our system will typically email you and also add a note to your order. Asendia is only for certain international orders and you will typically see secondary tracking for your local delivery when you receive Asendia tracking. Asendia also does not update your tracking until after your package leaves the central processing warehouse. You will know you have an Asendia tracking number if it begins with AHOY. Please always feel welcome to reach out if you need tracking assistance.

Estimated Ship Times

Most magazines are in stock and typically ship briskly within four business days, and, on the rare occasions one is a pre-order, it will clearly state so on the order page. Please note that all subscription boxes should indicate on the order page their estimated ship date. These crate products sometimes sell out long before they ship, so these are often pre-orders. Digital items are delivered instantly on purchase. Books, housewares, and apparel typically ship within a week.

International Import Issues

Typically, your order should have no issues going through customs. The only exception we have run into so far is that Spain apparently has arcane regulations that can make it difficult to ship cosmetics there, although books and magazines arrive without issue. If anyone has any advice on how to get approved to ship cosmetics to Spain, please hit us up. Anyway, recipients are responsible for any import fees, taxes, duties, or whatever your local government may wish to collect. Sadly, we have no control over import duties, but, if yours are really high, you might be able to enact change by letting your elected representatives know that paying these fees can be a hardship for citizens where you are. We wish you luck.

How can I get my magazine or subscription crate distributed by Zinetastic?

The quickest way to start a conversation is to reach out via our Contact Form please. It is helpful to include a download link, so we can check out your digital products. For tangible items like printed magazines, printed books, apparel, and subscription crates, if we are interested, we will typically want to see a copy as part of the curation process. You can ship to:

How can I submit content or press releases to the publications distributed by Zinetastic?

Most publications offer an explanation of how they like to be contacted. On websites, this is often on a Contact Us page and, for magazines and zines, this is usually on a page called the masthead. The masthead will typically list information like who contributed to the magazine and how to contact them via email or telephone or snail mail. For the titles which Zinetastic re-ships PR packages and similar items for, please be sure to include Zinetastic when shipping to the address below:

Cookies and Google

Most sites need to collect cookies for proper functionality and we are no exception. We collect both aggregated anonymous data and specific customer data. We do this to have the site function correctly, to deliver your orders, to give credit to our friends and partners and affiliates, and to be able to maintain excellent functionality, including finding and fixing anything which could be improved. On rare occasions, malicious actors may be banned utilizing somewhat anonymous data collection such as IP, alongside identifiable data such as name or mailing address. Additionally, we have recently implemented Google Analytics to be able to better understand how people use this site and make it the best it can be. Google has an extensively detailed privacy policy, which you can see below, along with helpful links to additional information. We honestly don’t understand every bit of it, but it is pretty hard not to use Google for something, so hopefully it is all positive.

Many websites and apps use Google services to improve their content and/or keep it free. When they integrate our services, these sites and apps share information with Google.

For example, when you visit a website that uses advertising services like AdSense, including analytics tools like Google Analytics, or embeds video content from YouTube, your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page you’re visiting and your IP address. We may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalize content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See our Privacy Policy to learn more about how we process data for each of these purposes and our Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising, and how long Google stores this information.

Our Privacy Policy explains the legal grounds Google relies upon to process your information — for example, we may process your information with your consent or to pursue legitimate interests such as providing, maintaining and improving our services to meet the needs of our users.

Sometimes, when processing information shared with us by sites and apps, those sites and apps will ask for your consent before allowing Google to process your information. For example, a banner may appear on a site asking for consent for Google to process the information that site collects. When that happens, we will respect the purposes described in the consent you give to the site or app, rather than the legal grounds described in the Google Privacy Policy. If you want to change or withdraw your consent, you should visit the site or app in question to do so.

How you can control the information collected by Google

Here are some of the ways you can control the information that is shared by your device when you visit or interact with sites and apps that use Google services:

Ad Settings helps you control ads you see on Google services (such as Google Search or YouTube), or on non-Google websites and apps that use Google ad services. You can also learn how ads are personalized, opt out of ad personalization, and block specific advertisers.
If you are signed in to your Google Account, and depending on your Account settings, My Activity allows you to review and control data that’s created when you use Google services, including the information we collect from the sites and apps you have visited. You can browse by date and by topic, and delete part or all of your activity.
Many websites and apps use Google Analytics to understand how visitors engage with their sites or apps. If you don’t want Analytics to be used in your browser, you can install the Google Analytics browser add-on. Learn more about Google Analytics and privacy.
Incognito mode in Chrome allows you to browse the web without recording webpages and files in your browser or Account history (unless you choose to sign in). Cookies are deleted after you’ve closed all of your incognito windows and tabs, and your bookmarks and settings are stored until you delete them. Learn more about cookies.
Many browsers, including Chrome, allow you to block third-party cookies. You can also clear any existing cookies from within your browser. Learn more about managing cookies in Chrome.

Refunds, Returns, and Exchanges

Obviously, for digital items, once they are sent, there is no way to return them. If you ever order a tangible item and UPS or the Post Office has mangled what you ordered, we of course will attempt to replace it. Just contact us with a picture of what happened. If something is ever missing from a shipment (we’re only human), please reach out within a week of receipt and we will send it to you if it is not sold out. Anyone ordering who claims missing items or other issues with what we consider, in our sole estimation, to be unusual regularity, will stop receiving make goods. We are a small business and generally can’t afford to be defrauded or do refunds, so it is our policy to issue no refunds. The only exception to the no refunds policy is if a pre-ordered magazine or subscription crate is more than six months late; while we understand that indie companies in general and zines in specific do not all always stick perfectly to schedules and things can happen, and we try to curate for those capable of producing in a timely manner, we feel that any publication or crate delivering later than that is unacceptable and our customers should not have to bear the brunt of that. Other than that situation, which has happily not ever happened at the time of this writing, no refunds. Any chargeback will be vigorously challenged and we reserve the right to send chargebacks and fraud to collections. But let’s be a happy community and not ever have it come to that please.