Zine profits

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Title:	Zine profits
Creator:	[A V]
Date(s):	May 4, 2002
Medium:	online
Fandom:
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Zine profits is a 2002 post to the Starsky & Hutch mailing list, Venice Place. It is quoted here on Fanlore anonymously with the author's permission.

Some Topics Discussed

• the legalities of fanfic
• the difficulties of printing zines
• some history about print zine production
• fandom and profit
• feeling misunderstood and unappreciated

Excerpts

... it doesn't matter if a profit is made or not, writing stories and

publishing them on the net or in a zine is equally copyright infringement. The disclaimer is the hope that the copyright holder will not prosecute the author, not something to actually get them off the hook for breaking the law.

If no money is being made, TPTB may decide not to prosecute the fanfic author because they couldn't make any money from suing them. However, in the case of fanfiction based on pro novels (rather than on tv shows and movies) fanfic authors have been prosecuted and sued and received cease and desist orders taken out against them.

Is it okay to take someone else's intellectual property and get the feedback

and ego-boo from readers? No, that's just the same thing as "profiting" on a fanzine. But this is not on the same scale as something like Napster where an internet company made copyrighted material widely available for free and thus took money away from the producers of the material because consumers weren't buying the product.

I do not make money on fanzines. As [B] said, you don't retire on zine money or go t the Carribean [sic] on vacation. She explained the reason for pricing the zine slightly higher than just the printing costs very well so I won't go into that.

What bothers me is that there has arisen what seems to be a double standard since fiction became available on the net. If you are new, maybe you don't remember but at first, many authors were very nervous about posting their fanfic online due to possibly being sued by the owners of the copyrights. So far, fans have been lucky that they haven't and as time has passed, more and more of us "old school" fans have ventured to publish our stuff online just like all the new folks. So it comes across that it's okay to publish fanfic on the net where no profit has been made and a bad thing to publish a zine and expect people to pay for it.

Is this the reason that authors aren't offering their stories to zines? Or is it that fans don't see any reason to have to "pay money" for their fan fiction. When it's readily available for free, why spend money just cause it's something you like, is what the attitude seems to be.

Without going into what has been disucssed [sic] (perhaps not in the 2 years you've been on the list, but go back and check the archive and you'll find plenty of commentary on this issue) in the past, I'm going to give a brief history lesson. (Remember, fandom did not originate on the net.)

In the beginning, there was Star Trek. And it was taken off the air after 3 years by the evil Powers that Be. But the fans wanted more. So they created their own fanfiction adventures for Kirk and Spock and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise and the aliens and other cultures introduced by the show. The fans started the zines and the letterzines and the cons and thus kept Star Trek in the public eye until TPTB realized that there was money to be made off the concept of Star Trek and then went on to make the movies and the other series. Without the zines, the ideals of Star Trek would have died out long before the internet was invented.

And then came Starsky and Hutch, the second tv show to generate fanfiction. Zines started being produced before the show ended it's run. (Zines showed up in about 1977 and the show didn't end until '79.) However, without zines, the ideals of the show and the beautiful relationship wouldn't have stayed in the fannish consciousness.

In the old days, zines were not as expensive as they are now -- but then paper didn't cost what it does today and you also couldn't find a print shop to do xeroxing on every street corner. Believe it or not, we had to either find a mimeo machine (which resulted in zines that if you pick them up roughly now, they'll fall apart due to the degradation of the paper and ink) or buy your own broken down old copier to produce them. If they were slash, you also had to find a slash-accepting printer who wouldn't throw your master into the incinerator because it offended him or her.

You didn't happen to see the hundreds of them on my dealers table or the ones Mysti (Agent with Style) or TACS and Laura (AMC Press) was selling there? Many of my zines -- the early Fix issues -- were there selling for their original price of $5 each. Do you have any idea of the work it takes to keep as many zines as SH has generated in print for the new fans coming along? Do you have any idea what my print bill was for that little con with 60 attendees alone because I reprinted every single SH zine I've ever done since 1985 for it? None of that matters to this discussion however, but let me assure you, I'm still living in the same row house I've been in for 23 years and don't have a mansion or a new car because I'm a zine publisher.

I don't do this for kudos. I don't do this for profit. I do this because people love Starsky and Hutch as much as I do and they seem to want to read the older stories even though new stuff is still being written. If I didn't care about this fandom, I would have stopped keeping my stories and zines in print a long time ago. And currently, due to the fact that I've got a lot of other things going on in my life, I've had my zines agented for me by Secret Pleasures Press so there *isn't* any money to speak of being made by me on them now. I get a small percentage of the cover price of the zine, but the rest goes to SPP's printer and to SPP for doing the work for me so fans can get the zines in the mail in a timely manner. (And yes, I'm giving any old orders to them so if you still need something from me, you'll be getting it soon.)

Zine publishers aren't strangers who see a good thing and decide to profit on it. Zine publishers are fans just like every one else on this list. We like to put sheets of paper with stories and art about Starsky and Hutch on them so we'll have something concrete based on the show we love -- not because we see a gold mine for making big money. Whether we make money back on a zine or not is not the reason we continue to do it. We do it, illegal or not, because we love SH as much as every other fan here -- whether the fan writes stories, or has a website or just sits at the computer and reads and gets the enjoyment out of others creative efforts.

You have to realize also that SH has more zines and more old zines than some fandoms because it is a fandom that began before the internet ever existed. I did the first 3 issues of The Fix on a typewriter and didn't even own a computer until then. I was't on line until about six or seven years ago. I'm delighted that SH has an online presence because that means the fandom is still alive and growing, but it distresses me that the fanzine publishers are now being considered criminals and net authors are considered okay. In my humble opinion, the same respect should be given to all authors of fanfiction, whether its in a zine or on the net.

If you think fanfic is illegal, you shouldn't read it, whatever the source. And remember that slash is no more illegal than gen or non-slash fanfic. Just because it's adult doesn't mean it's any more an infringement of the copyright held by the creators.

And if you've never seen a fanzine "up close and personal" then you've probably never noticed that they also include a copyright statement which parallels the net story disclaimers. It states that it is a not-for-profit publication done solely for the fans' enjoyment and not to infringe on the copyrights held, etc., etc.

And one more thing, if you sell zines at a convention in the state of Maryland, whether you make a profit on them or not, you still have to charge sales tax and send that in to the state comptroller.

Why do there have to be "sides"?? Why can't all fanfiction get the same respect and appreciation from readers and other fans?

[snipped]

... this has been discussed many, many times on this list and I'm tired of justifying why I do zines and why anyone should do them. As a SH fan and zine producer, I see the fanzine slowly being sapped of its vitality and validity in the fan community. I guess if nobody submits stories to zines in the future this question will answer itself.