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This worries me greatly. Not this organisation in particular, but the change in mentality it represents, the attempt to comercialise fanfic.

This bit in particular gives me the heebies:
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There is a very good, very detailed post about it here.

The way I see it, if fanfic ever becomes a source of income, the Big Boys will be on it like a ton of bricks, a ship-load of legality will suddenly appear; there will be sound, financial reasons to stamp on amateur fanfic and fandom as we know it will wither and perish.

I say, treat it like it's made of Ebola - stay away. If no one goes there, it will die.

(I'm no fool, I recognise that things are about to change and there's probably litle we can do to stop it, but we can take some control; the slope should be slippiest at our end, not theirs.)

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I once read a post on some list where a fanfic writer was asking people not to pass around her stories online, saying that she never posts her stories on the web but only puts them in zine forms and sell them because she needs money.

I remember thinking at the time, "If this is how she makes her living, she must be either very talented, popular and rich or living in poverty."

I don't know what a zine is exactly, have never seen one in person and don't know what they look like, how they're made, how much they cost, how the whole thing works.

But from what little I understand about them, aren't fanfic writers who put their stories in so-called zine forms and sell them making money? Very little profit, I'm sure, but still, money is money, isn't it?

I'm NOT accusing anyone or implying anything negative about zines. I'm just curious cuz I really didn't know anything about this zine stuff until recently, and just about every fanfic I read has a disclaimer saying "The characters belong to blah, blah, blah... and I'm not making a dime off this blah, blah, blah."

In theory, the fanzines cover costs and no more - I don;t know if the publishers make a profiut, but if they do it's pretty small. The writers certainly don't make any money out of it.

"I remember thinking at the time, "If this is how she makes her living, she must be either very talented, popular and rich or living in poverty."
I'm confused by what you mean - no one makes a 'living' out of fanfic, it's done purely for the pleasure of doing it and being part of a fandom community. I write for a living, I also write fanfic; one is my job, the other my hobby - they're mutually exclusive.

"But from what little I understand about them, aren't fanfic writers who put their stories in so-called zine forms and sell them making money? Very little profit, I'm sure, but still, money is money, isn't it?"
No, it's not. See above.

Reading between the lines, I can't help but wonder what your interest in all this is, posting anonymously and all? Your ip# says you're in Korea - proxy server, is it?

There are some zine publishers who do make money from their zines, which is a potential liability (literally!) for the rest of us. I know of at least one zine publisher who spends most of her time going to cons to sell zines. Unless she's independently wealthy or has a very rich, induglent partner, she's making money from selling zines.

I'll be honest, zines are not my thing and I know they justify the cover price by saying it 'covers costs'; if some of them are making a profit then, that's, at the very least, legally grey - it muddies the water and queers the pitch for us all. But then, like I say, I'm not a fan of zines. I don't buy them or write for them so what do I know?

But even if publishers are *maybe* making some money, the writers aren't - I don;t see how the writers ever will; certainly not through this organisation which makes me ask, why bother with it, when it has the potential to do so much damage?

I've bought... one zine, I think, although people have given me several others. Zines are still a way to reach a certain body of fen that only read zines, not online, although that number is shrinking rapidly. Fans of zines say that there's more quality *snort* in zines than online. I say you just gotta know where to look. ;-)

I read zines before we had an internet (*feels old*), and at the time, there was a *very* strong code of honor -- and common sense because although zines flew under the copyright radar rather more than online fic, people were fully aware of those issues -- that zines were purely nonprofit. It is true that some people are exceptions to the rule, but the odd exception does not change the fact that most people in the zine world did/do follow that code of honor.

I think there's confusion out there because of people who've been profiting from selling zines at cons(?) - if I've understood the arguments correctly.

I'm 99.999% certain that people who produce zines don't make much, if any, money from what they do. I'm 100% certain the writers don't gain anything monetarily from zines.

I'll be honest, I came into fandom in the internet age and have never really seen the point of zines. I do understand that some people like to have a nicely printed, illustrated version of fic, but in the age of the net, when there's so much fic available for free at the click of a button... It's just not for me, but I know there's still a huge market for zines, my only worry is, if people are making a profit, no matter how small, it becomes legally grey and has implications for fandom as a whole.

There's a strong code of honour in fandom as a whole, it seems to me - though a few idiots occassioanally queer the pitch. It's specifically because of that - the 'amateur' aspect of fanfic - that makes me worry about attempts to commercialise it. I do think it's a dangerously slippy slope.

I'm just thinking that, from what was being posted in that sub-thread, that the rare excepion was being posited as the rule.

I miss zines in the sense that I do not really enjoy reading fic online -- I spend so much time at a terminal as it is! -- and when I first got into online fandom, I was on a university connection that timed out after a couple of hours (wow, that sounds prehistoric, doesn't it? For some reason undergrads got unlimited time but grad students got one hour peak time and another non-peak.) -- so I used to print out fic anyway. Then it occurred to me how many trees I was killing, so I stopped, but as a result I do read less fic now.

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