As most of you know, I am not a supporter of people who xerox zines.
| Open Letter | |
|---|---|
| Title: | As most of you know, I am not a supporter of people who xerox zines. |
| From: | Alexis Fegan Black |
| Addressed To: | |
| Date(s): | 1990 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Meta, Zine |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
As most of you know, I am not a supporter of people who xerox zines was a 1990 editorial by well-known and prolific zine publisher and fic writer, Alexis Fegan Black in the zine Vagabonds.
The letter's audience was fans who bought, read, and created print fanzines, and the subject was zine piracy.
Context
See The Revelcon Zine Piracy Letters for context of this letter, as well as ones three years later.
As most of you know, I am not a supporter of people who xerox zines. Zine pirates are thieves and quite simply, the time has come for editors to at least try to make the xeroxer's life more difficult. Over the past few years, all the K/S editors I know have had to dramatically decrease their print run. In most cases, print runs have been cut in half, and the day is coming (sooner than we think) when it will no longer be financially feasible to do zines at all. Granted, part of the "problem" is that the interest in K/S is no longer as high as it once was. But for those fans who do still enjoy the genre, myself included, it would be tragic to lose all K/S zines due to the unethical actions of a few unprincipled fans. For that reason, VAGABONDS has been-printed on a paper which will make xeroxing difficult if not impossible.
Unfortunately, the down side to this is two fold. First, it makes the zine slightly more difficult to read for those with vision problems. But it is at least readable which, hopefully, it will not be in xeroxed form. The second problem you already know: fewer pages for the same amount of money. To those who aren't aware of printing nightmares, suffice it to say that a case of white, 20 lb. bond paper is approximately one third of the cost of the paper you are now holding in your hand. Alas, no one has yet come up with an economical way of manufacturing cheaper, dark-colored paper. My apologies for both inconveniences, however, I see no alternative but to continue producing all new Pon Farr Press zines on dark paper to cut down on the amount of xeroxing going on.
Now this is where you can help. Since zine pirates are now directly affecting you, please help zine editors to put them out or business. If you know someone who is a zine pirate, let the editor know. If you know someone who xeroxes copies of zines for friends, please stop supporting them. Granted, it's cheaper for you to get your zine from your best friend who has access to free xeroxing at work - but when enough people are doing this, it is destroying the editor's ability to produce zines, and to produce them at a reasonable price. If only ten fans out there are each copying ten copies of a zine for their friends, it adds up to one hundred copies overall - and that's what's destroying zines as much as the professional zine pirate you see sitting behind her table at conventions with her smarmy little smile, telling you she's doing a service for fandom. As Spock says later on in this book, "Buzzardshit." The only person the zine pirate is doing a service for is herself and her bank account. We know of one California-based zine pirate who makes her living attending conventions and selling pirated zines. She's never written a story, never edited a zine, never drawn a piece of artwork in her life. She ain't no service to fandom, so don't get suckered in to her wide-eyed innocent routine. She's a thief and she's a liar. End trans.
But as I said above, the pro-pirates are only one part of the problem. I personally know of three San Diego based fans who xerox multiple copies for friends free of charge. Two of them have even offered to do it for me, xerox copies of zines of which I'm personal friends with the editor! Grow up, guys. "Free" is never really free. The price is higher than most fans are willing to pay and that price is the demise of K/S. If you are currently getting your zines from such a person, no one can force you to stop - but there will come a time when you will not have anymore zines to read because K/S editors have all stopped publishing. And no, it's not just a threat. It's very real, and it's already happening.
Another thing that has become common recently is that a few unscrupulous fans who also think they're clever have gotten into the habit of running "zines for sale" ads in letterzines such as ON THE DOUBLE, DATAZINE, THE ZINE CONNECTION and others. The readers are led to believe that they are buying the person's collection when, in reality, they are buying xeroxes of zines still in print. In short, these pirates are of the mentality to tell you it's their collection, "my old xeroxes that I've since replaced with originals". In a few isolated cases, this may be true. But in the majority of cases, it's just more buzzardshit. Recently, I sent away for a "zines for sale" list from a fan at the same time a friend of mine sent for the same list from the same person. To make a long story short, we suspected this person of being a zine pirate, so each of us ordered the same precise zine. And, of course, we each received the same zine a few weeks later. When we confronted this person, she tried to convince us that she had somehow bought two copies of the same zine. Never mind that we later found out that two other fans had also received the exact same zine. Four copies of one zine? C'mon.
My apologies for the overall negativity of this editorial. But as someone who's been doing zines for over twelve years, I think the time has come to stop tolerating zine pirates. I'm tired of putting weeks of blood, sweat and tears into a zine - and especially into a novel - only to see it being sold by some smug little thief at a convention. Dark-colored paper may not be the best answer, but I hope it will at least make it clear that I'm willing to do something. Hopefully, other editors will think of even better ways to thwart the pirates. If so, I'd love to hear from you, since we have to do something - and soon.