By Slanted Light

Re: Is it all right if I respond to this?
Whyever not? We won't hold your original fic against you..*g* (I was gonna say "professionalism", but I thought it might be a bit much...) *g*

No, it's actually dead interesting to hear from someone who actually makes a living from selling original ebooks - I had noticed that original ebooks (like original paperback books) are priced way below the price of ezines and printed fanzines, and I've wondered about that - and what the authors make cf distributors (which is 35-40% above what fanfic authors make...*g*).

I can see a reason for a huge difference in paper books vs zines - zines aren't mass produced in the same way, so presumably more expensive to produce. But e-books and e-zines? E-zines especially? Where is the overhead that must be paid for in that case?

I would say it would make sense to charge something for the ezine simply to protect the viability of doing the print zines
I dunno, I actually see a massive difference between e-zines and printed-zines, which means that I'll still pay for a printed-zine that I think is worth it, whether it's also available online or not - it's a whole different reading experience. I like curling up in bed with stories printed on paper, and I always will. So I don't care that the Oblique zines are available online, for example, I'll still buy them if I see them come up at reasonable prices. The key, of course, being reasonable prices... And actually it's likely to make the publisher more money if I can see what things are like online first, because I'm more likely to pay a higher price for something when I'm sure of the quality, when I'm sure that it's going to give me alot of pleasure that, for me, defrays the cost.

From conversations I've seen over the years, I think most people who buy paper zines would buy them whether they were online as well or not - you're either a die-hard for paper-reading or you're happy to read online for free, and I'm not sure there's a huge amount of cross-over either way...

Hmmn - no one in fandom should be losing money is a trickier one, for me. There are alot of people who do amazing things for fandom, without expecting for any recompense at all. I've had people send me dvds, give me zines that they'd finished with, copies of fic that they adored and wanted me to read too - all sorts of things. Our archivists (for all they're not currently as active as they have been in the past!) don't charge money for what they do, the comm mods don't expect payment for their time, and all the people who spend hours over fic/art/vids for other people to enjoy freely, don't generally expect to be paid for that time or the resources that they consume. We're all, in effect, losing money on fandom all the time. Except that we do it because we're paying each other back, enjoying each other's work and effort and generousity. So why do a few people seem to think that we owe them cash on top of it all? Maybe because they're not actually interested in our fandom at all, maybe because they don't get anything else out of it. In which case what they do is blantant profiteering, compared to what everyone else does...