Aberdeen People's Press was set up in 1973.

The idea of starting a community paper was first put forward by the Aberdeen Arts and Community Workshop (based on the Powis housing estate) who gave the projet office space to get started. In order to put the projected paper on a more solid footing it was quickly decided to couple it with a printing operation. Money was raised from various sources: contributions from sympathetic academics; a grant from the Student Christian Movement; 'second prize' in the Bit Information Service / Time Out Book of visions competition. An ageing Rotaprint 30/90 was bought in London. And two of the founding members went on a crash two-week course in camera work, platemaking and offset printing at the pioneering Moss Side Press in Manchester.

The first issue of Aberdeen People's Press (12 pages) came out in June 1973 and cost 5 p.

With the setting up of the original print workshop, APP moved out of the Arts and Community Workshop to install itself in the basement of a large house belonging to a friendly (and reasonably well-off psychiatrist) in one of the wealthiest streets of Aberdeen, Rubilsaw Den South. An address which caused no end of mirth in the working class pubs where the volunteer APP salesforce went hawking the paper on Friday nights.

Fortnightly to begin with, then monthly, Aberdeen People's Press published about seventy issues over a period of four years before being revamped as the monthly Big Print. APP also published pamphlets and books on various subjects such as local social history, the oil industry, the anti-nuclear campaign and workers cooperatives. It also published two plays by John McGrath for the 7:84 theatre company.

As a printer, APP worked for a wide variety of community newspapers, militant organisations (of most varieties of left-wing persuasion), pressure groups, tenants associations, women's groups, trade unions and voluntary organisations. Originally staffed by a disparate group of enthousiastic amateurs, it gradually became (not without internal ructions) increasingly professional in its approach, and by the end of the 1970s was a workers' cooperative employing six people, most of whom had become members of Sogat (which had for a long time taken a very dim view of non-union, alternative printshops).

APP closed down in the early 1980s.

Its archives are conserved by Aberdeen University Library.