![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Fandom, Zines & Profit
Yesterday, someone posted a rant on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanficrants. The ranter's point was that a) the fandom doesn't need fanzines anymore and that b) the prices on them are very unreasonable, especially considering that you can post/read fanfic online for free. This post is the tl;dr version of my not very organized thoughts on the post and the discussion:
I am rather new school when it comes to fandom, but that doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal of zines (even though I don't own a single one). In fact, I wish I had the money to buy them, because zines have some advantages. Fanfic on the internet disappears very fast, compared to non-net standards. Give it five years and many URLs will be invalid, the authors decided the fics were crap, or the fandom suffered from a wave of cease and desist letters. When you buy a zine, you get to choose how long you want to keep it, not the person hosting and/or publishing the stuff.
Reading something in print, with a nice layout, a cover and maybe illustrations feels very different to reading on a screen too. I prefer books. I have a number of PDFs on my computer, among others the first book of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. I really want to read them, but it's hard for me to start simply because they're not in dead tree format. I know people who print out their favourite fics. One of my professors, the most internet-savvy of them even, won't read long texts on a screen, because it's just too difficult for her. My mother likes to read my original stories and poems, but she doesn't like doing so on a screen. I think this might be related to the digital natives vs. digital immigrants issue, because I don't have problems reading long and complicated texts on a screen. I still prefer books, though, because they smell nicer, and I can curl up in bed with them. And with them, I can be quite sure that I'll still have them in 20 or 30 years time, unless there's a fire or I decide to throw them away.
Another (possible) advantage of zines is the editorial content which I suppose some of them have: articles, interviews etc. I'm a journalism student, and while I really don't like reading most newspapers, I like interesting and well designed magazines. I'll even read them if the topic is generally not my thing. The Brand eins, for example, is a great magazine with interesting articles and a great design. It's about economic topics, but that doesn't keep them from publishing articles arguing that the panda bear should not be saved (they had really good arguments, too!) or the effect of online culture on modern life. Unfortunately, the magazine is expensive too.
Zines are also generally edited and betaed, because the readers expect that to happen. This has advantages (quality control) and disadvantages (some zine publishers edit so much that the authors don't recognize their stories afterwards). They are also published with a specific theme in mind, which means the reader will probably not be surprised by stumbling upon a Kirk/McCoy story in a Kirk/Spock zine.
So I think that there's still a niche for zines. Not to mention that it would be entirely possible to adapt the format to internet times (I'm not sure to what degree this has already happened). Issues could be provided online and in PDF format as well as in dead tree format or on CD, and it would be possible to include modern media (vids, podcasts) as well. I don't know of any project of the sort, but I don't think it impossible and I would be interested if it was geared towards one of my fannish interests.
Of course, what people in the thread mentioned above criticized the most were the high prices of zines, and the possibility that zine publishers might profit from them. I'm opposed to fans profiting from their fan activities, but I also acknowledge that some fanac might need the money of a third party. Publishing a zine takes a lot of money. I don't think many have that much money to give away. The same goes for publishing dōjinshi. Printing costs money, quality paper costs money, binding costs money. Likewise, imagine someone knitting Gryffindor scarfs and sending them to people who would like to own one but can't knit themselves. Wool costs money, as does the shipping. I don't think people would demand that the fans in question should give away their work for free.
Demanding money for activities like this doesn't mean that the publisher/creator of the fanwork makes money from the fanwork. Of course there are black sheep, but I think many fans are more tolerant towards fanartists demanding money for commissions than they are towards fanfic creators asking for money if they want to distribute their stories in anything other than online format.
The people who really make money in all this are others: The printer, the paper company, etc. And to be honest, online publishing isn't for free either. Maybe it seems that way, with archives demanding no money from either the writers or the readers. But they do have to pay the server costs and maintenance somehow (and the hosting companies make money). There are different models for this, of course: The OTW works with member donations. Animexx uses membership dues and advertisement. ff.net and ff.de use advertisement. On LJ, the users pay for certain priviledges. And there's advertisement.
Publishing and reading fanfic is never for free. The closest to that ideal is the OTW with their voluntary donations. The services are free for everyone else. It remains to be seen how well the system will work in the future, since the OTW services aren't yet out of beta. DW works without advertisement as well. On many other big sites that I know, the readers do pay. Not money, but the maintainers sell their pageviews to the advertisers.
fanficrants. The ranter's point was that a) the fandom doesn't need fanzines anymore and that b) the prices on them are very unreasonable, especially considering that you can post/read fanfic online for free. This post is the tl;dr version of my not very organized thoughts on the post and the discussion:I am rather new school when it comes to fandom, but that doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal of zines (even though I don't own a single one). In fact, I wish I had the money to buy them, because zines have some advantages. Fanfic on the internet disappears very fast, compared to non-net standards. Give it five years and many URLs will be invalid, the authors decided the fics were crap, or the fandom suffered from a wave of cease and desist letters. When you buy a zine, you get to choose how long you want to keep it, not the person hosting and/or publishing the stuff.
Reading something in print, with a nice layout, a cover and maybe illustrations feels very different to reading on a screen too. I prefer books. I have a number of PDFs on my computer, among others the first book of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. I really want to read them, but it's hard for me to start simply because they're not in dead tree format. I know people who print out their favourite fics. One of my professors, the most internet-savvy of them even, won't read long texts on a screen, because it's just too difficult for her. My mother likes to read my original stories and poems, but she doesn't like doing so on a screen. I think this might be related to the digital natives vs. digital immigrants issue, because I don't have problems reading long and complicated texts on a screen. I still prefer books, though, because they smell nicer, and I can curl up in bed with them. And with them, I can be quite sure that I'll still have them in 20 or 30 years time, unless there's a fire or I decide to throw them away.
Another (possible) advantage of zines is the editorial content which I suppose some of them have: articles, interviews etc. I'm a journalism student, and while I really don't like reading most newspapers, I like interesting and well designed magazines. I'll even read them if the topic is generally not my thing. The Brand eins, for example, is a great magazine with interesting articles and a great design. It's about economic topics, but that doesn't keep them from publishing articles arguing that the panda bear should not be saved (they had really good arguments, too!) or the effect of online culture on modern life. Unfortunately, the magazine is expensive too.
Zines are also generally edited and betaed, because the readers expect that to happen. This has advantages (quality control) and disadvantages (some zine publishers edit so much that the authors don't recognize their stories afterwards). They are also published with a specific theme in mind, which means the reader will probably not be surprised by stumbling upon a Kirk/McCoy story in a Kirk/Spock zine.
So I think that there's still a niche for zines. Not to mention that it would be entirely possible to adapt the format to internet times (I'm not sure to what degree this has already happened). Issues could be provided online and in PDF format as well as in dead tree format or on CD, and it would be possible to include modern media (vids, podcasts) as well. I don't know of any project of the sort, but I don't think it impossible and I would be interested if it was geared towards one of my fannish interests.
Of course, what people in the thread mentioned above criticized the most were the high prices of zines, and the possibility that zine publishers might profit from them. I'm opposed to fans profiting from their fan activities, but I also acknowledge that some fanac might need the money of a third party. Publishing a zine takes a lot of money. I don't think many have that much money to give away. The same goes for publishing dōjinshi. Printing costs money, quality paper costs money, binding costs money. Likewise, imagine someone knitting Gryffindor scarfs and sending them to people who would like to own one but can't knit themselves. Wool costs money, as does the shipping. I don't think people would demand that the fans in question should give away their work for free.
Demanding money for activities like this doesn't mean that the publisher/creator of the fanwork makes money from the fanwork. Of course there are black sheep, but I think many fans are more tolerant towards fanartists demanding money for commissions than they are towards fanfic creators asking for money if they want to distribute their stories in anything other than online format.
The people who really make money in all this are others: The printer, the paper company, etc. And to be honest, online publishing isn't for free either. Maybe it seems that way, with archives demanding no money from either the writers or the readers. But they do have to pay the server costs and maintenance somehow (and the hosting companies make money). There are different models for this, of course: The OTW works with member donations. Animexx uses membership dues and advertisement. ff.net and ff.de use advertisement. On LJ, the users pay for certain priviledges. And there's advertisement.
Publishing and reading fanfic is never for free. The closest to that ideal is the OTW with their voluntary donations. The services are free for everyone else. It remains to be seen how well the system will work in the future, since the OTW services aren't yet out of beta. DW works without advertisement as well. On many other big sites that I know, the readers do pay. Not money, but the maintainers sell their pageviews to the advertisers.
no subject
I haven't bought many fanzines in the last five years or so, because they are hardly ever made for the newer fandoms. And I'm not sure I'd buy that many nowadays. The Internet does provide more than enough fanfiction on its own! On the other hand, there is something about holding a book in your hands filled with fanfiction :-). I still think there's a market for fanzines, even in new fandoms.
The prices have always been sort of unreasonable. I'd rather not think about the amount of money I put into buying zines, but then I've spent quite a lot of money on other fannish stuff (tie-in books, posters, action figures, conventions, etc.) as well. There have always been discussions about zine publishers making a profit from it. Yes, there have been publishers who earned so much that they could live from it.
Another (possible) advantage of zines is the editorial content which I suppose some of them have: articles, interviews etc.
I've never really come across fanzines that also included articles and interviews. It's usually just fanfiction with fanart. The early fanzines, before the Internet, also included LoCs (letter of comments) giving feedback to the stories from an earlier edition of the zine. There are so called letterzines, though, which is pretty much just letters from various people discussing fandom. Like an early form of mailinglists. I belonged to one, which was really cool :-).
no subject
I don't know if the prices are that unreasonable. I suppose it depends on what materials you use. High quality paper isn't cheap, and neither is printing and binding it (depending on the used method, in my copyshop it costs 2,5€ for the cheapest binding of 25 pages). Books and magazines are only as cheap as they are because the printers offer discounts for large orders and because the publishers usually test about 100 different papers and choose the cheapest one that still works. I think English publishers often choose cheaper paper, which is one of the reasons why the books aren't as expensive as the German ones.
But some idiots always want to profit. *sigh*
no subject
Well, I guess, people just wanted the fanfiction and nothing else, especially since they were expensive. I sure didn't want anything else.
As for the price, I never published a fanzine myself, but I know that European publishers were usually cheaper than American publishers, even when you consider the overseas postage. And I know that some of the larger publishers had their own copy machine and binding machines, so that would have been cheaper than going to the printers. Even then the prices were very high. 30 $ and more (just the zine without the postage) and then I bought zines at German publishers for maybe 20 DM.
I don't really know how things are nowadays, since I haven't bought zines in a long time. The last fanzines I bought were the SGA zines "Surfacing I & II," which cost me about 80 $ including the shipping. I'd consider that expensive.
no subject
I suppose it would help if the publishers posted the details somewhere.
no subject
Okay, I probably shouldn't complain so much, because I did buy the zines after all ;-). It was obviously worth it for me to buy them, but I still think it's expensive.
I think another issue with fanzines is that usually, the authors are allowed to post their zine stories on the net after one or two years. So a lot of people figure they just wait the time and then get the story anyway.
And sometimes you do take a risk buying zines. You don't know what you get, how good the stories are.
no subject
no subject
no subject
That's the reason I love books. I always smell at them right after I've bought them.
Curiously enough, I prefer reading fics from screen. Probably, it's a way to distinguish them from "normal" books which have nothing to do with fandom.
no subject
I prefer to read fic online and/or in HTML too, but that's because I have really high standards for the stuff that get's printed. If it's not good enough to be printed, I always feel like it's a waste of paper and ink (yes, that goes for professionally published stuff too).