Dealers' Room - Fanlore

The Dealer's Room is the area of a convention where dealers set up tables or booths to sell things.

When zines were more common, slash zines were sold literally 'under the table' at some cons. Slash fans would wander around the dealer's room looking for zine sellers, and then ask them quietly if they had slash zines as well, or they would gently pull aside the convention-hotel supplied long tablecloths of dealer's tables to see if there were boxes of slash zines hidden beneath. Being required by concoms to keep slash under the table was aggravating, because het zines with relatively explicit covers were generally not hidden, even at all-age cons and actor cons. (There is a famous story of Mark Lenard, the actor who played Spock's father, wandering the Dealer's room with some handlers at a con. He came across a copy of the gen zine Spock Enslaved!, with its cover of a nearly naked Spock in chains, and stopped and stared long enough to worry his handlers, before sighing dramatically and mock whispering, "Oh my son, my son".)

However, at fan-run cons current and past, without celebrity guests (such as MediaWest*Con, ZebraCon, IDICcon, etc.), slash zines and slash art could and can be sold openly, in the Dealers Rooms and by "room dealers" (fans who sell their wares out of their hotel rooms instead of in the Dealers Room).