From: Kathryn Andersen kat@katspace.com
There have been cases in the past of fanfic being repackaged by unscrupulous dealers - Horizon suffered it about ten years ago - but that was paper zines being bootlegged for profit. There's not much profit in online bootlegging, so I can't see why anyone should want to do such a thing. What's the point?
Fame. Getting credit for someone else's hard work. Laziness. Fuelled by a complete lack of shame or conscience. You might as well ask "Why do people put any fan fiction on line, if there's no profit in it?"
Well, maybe I'm just naive, but I've always thought that fan writers do it for the love of it, not for dosh. How many printed zines make a profit, beyond a pocketful of beer money? Not many, I suspect. (I gather Horizon makes some small profit on their zines, but that goes back into the club.) How many zine contributors get paid in actual money, rather than a trib copy? Profit is not the motive, at least in my experience. Publishers only charge for a printed zine because there are costs to cover. Ideally, they would give the things away for free. At least, I would. Am I that unusual (in this specific regard, I mean:) )? Sticking a piece of fic up on the web is about as close to free as you can hope to get. I'd be doing it if I was still writing.
Neil