By Slanted Light

Sorry for the long delay in getting back to you, over the weekend...

Hmmn - see above in my comment to loyseofverlaine about the fact that zine publishing has to cost big money - I don't think that it necessarily does, it depends on why you're doing it, and how you're set up. I've "published" print zines for far less than some publishers say they have to charge (and they're also available for free download as the Dialj Bounds over at discoveredinalj, so... And it was much much cheaper, per page, to print the zines in the US when I was there - a little zine of about 75 pages was less than £2.00, I seem to remember - and it had a colour card cover, and black wire binding. Even printing the 2007 Christmas Dialj Bound zine (c150 pages) here in the UK, where printing is more expensive, still worked out at just over £5, iirc. So...

I'm not rich (far, far from it) - the vast majority of my zines came from other fans who were clearing space or had moved on giving me zines - or at least charging me just a couple of pounds/dollars for each one, rather than the US£20++ that's often charged - and then postage on top...

I think many of the authors who think "internet is a bad, bad, rude word" are older fans, who haven't grown up with it, and have limited experience using it now - and perhaps bad experiences when they have. Some of these fans are working in jobs or areas where the fact that they write m/m erotica could get them fired and reviled in their very conservative communities - and no matter how easy it is for us to say "use a pseud" that's not always protection - how many people have nosy partners, or have to share their internet access/computer with husband/children etc? And I even know people who would perhaps be okay with putting their fic online, except that some other fans tried to bully them into it, so that effectively they're rebelling... There are reasons other than money-grabbing for not putting fic online, although I totally agree it's a shame that it can't all be freely available!

d) I'm not even an IT student. All it took was to google something like "PDF to doc convert" and 10 minutes.
I know 70 year old women who are dedicated Pros fans, but not quite confident enough to be able to do something like that... Other incredibly intelligent people who can't figure out how to work their dvd player. Come to that, I've not yet braved the world of ipods and mp3s yet, and even though I consider myself reasonably tech-savvy, it's quite a daunting prospect... *g*