By Slanted Light

Dratted work... and other interesting Pros-y discussions all on the same day! *g*

I love paper zines too, as you know, although I'd also like to see more new ones available for free download/printing online, a la Oblique. I know this is precluded for some of the existing zines because there are authors who will only publish on paper and not at all online, which is a whole other thing, and I have no problem with paying for someone else to do the awkward business of printing and binding for me on occasion, but I also don't see why we can't just print zines ourselves if we're so inclined. If the idea is to share fic, in ways that let us be most comfortable, then I bet there could be a happy compromise there.

But it's the question of payment for these e-zines that throws me, and the fact that printing is actually disabled for them - so actually you're not paying twice, you're actually paying for a less versatile product which you can't print out anyway... So what is it that the distributor is making money for doing? And what is that they're doing above and beyond what the writer is doing?