By Slanted Light

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...

This is certainly true. I've never met people anywhere more generous than the people in fandom. I'm thinking, I suppose, about the price of publishing some of these gorgeous zines -- the idea that someone might not be able to afford to continue with something like that. Granted, I don't know why some of the old zines went away...it may have nothing at all to do with financial concerns and everything to do with dwindling interest or real life interference.