Don't Buy the Zines!

Saturday, 14 March 2009 03:59 pm
byslantedlight: (BD Confront (enednoviel))
[personal profile] byslantedlight
Can I just say - gaaaaaah!

Have just been wandering around on Ebay and found some of the most blatant rip-off prices for Pros zines that I have ever seen - please, please please don't pay these prices for zines, especially ones that are still in print!

Links are not to the ebay seller, but...
The Peerless Pair - a fab AU historical zine by HG - is being sold for US$50.00 +p&p. It's available for half that price, brand new, from the publisher! That's being sold by someone called bandit2142 - he's always been overpriced, he's a dealer, and he's totally making money from HG's writing here. Making a profit from someone else's hard work and generously given effort! Leech!

In the Public Interest III is being sold by "Doctor Beth2000" for - wait for this - US$100.00 +p&p! Three of the stories are available in the archives - and I bet the other two are on the UK paper circuit.

Where do these people get off charging prices like that? They're blatantly making money from fic that was given freely to fandom - bastards!

Another one - Bene Dictum: A Dickensian Christmas can be downloaded for free at the publisher's own website - printed off in exactly the zine format, and comb bound yourself if you want it - "DoctorBeth2000" wants US$45.00 for it! The stories are also available for free online at the Circuit, Hatstand and on the ProsLib CD! Gaaaaaargh! I've seen her around ever since I was in Pros, and always overpriced too. I hear that she claims to be selling off her own zine collection - at the risk of sounding cycnical, yeah, right...

You know I love zines - I adore zines, proper paper stories, so much more than reading from the internet and my computer screen, but... please, please, please don't be ripped off by these people! You can defend capitalism all you want to me, and tell me that people won't pay it if they don't want it, and if they do then that's a fair price, but... no. Selling fanfic like that, blatantly making a profit from selling other people's writing when those authors were careful enough to fly under the fandom radar themselves? Just... no!

Grr.

Now back to writing. Which will always be free to Pros fans! *g*

Date: Monday, 16 March 2009 08:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kiwisue.livejournal.com
Fanlore is the fandom wiki run by the Organisation for Transformative Works.

F@nh!story.com is the site run by the person who's been criticised over connecting people's real names with their fandom ones, promoting wank as a way to drive up hit counts and using bots to scrape information (much of it misleading if not downright inaccurate) from fanfiction.net and livejournal.
Edited Date: Monday, 16 March 2009 09:00 pm (UTC)

Date: Monday, 16 March 2009 09:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] byslantedlight.livejournal.com
Ah cheers - I know it's bad to get them mixed up, but they have to have such bloody similar names, and still OTW only seems to have presence in "fandom" circles, so that I'm not as familiar with the names of its various components! I'm trying to be open to it, and I know these things take a lot of time to set up if you're going to do it properly, and I gather that they've already done some good work defending fanvidders via the fair use defense, but... You know, I wish they'd talk about it as "OTW Fanlore" or something for a while, just to help us little fandom-types distinguish and remember... All it's got to do is soak into our consciousness for a while!

And yes - f@nh!story dot com is another disgraceful attempt to leech on what people in fandom do for the monetary profit of the unwary. Cow! (Name not spelled out, by the way, for anyone who doesn't know that story, to avoid her gaining new "hits" and thus pretending to potential buyers for her site that hers is any kind of fandom "authority"...)

Hold Your Breath, Sunshine


A ship is safe in the harbour - but that's not what ships are for.

~o~

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. (Sarah Williams)

~o~

Could've.
Should've.
Would've.
Didn't. Didn't. Didn't.

~o~

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