In message 20495508.1009196864399.JavaMail.imail@doodle.excite.com, linda joyce lindajane3@excite.com writes
As a newbie to the list I can see why other newbie's think it's not fair that all fan fiction is not available on line there seems to be so much I have missed. However as a librarian I also see the point made by Kathryn Andersen and fully support her, you don't see many"professional" writers giving away their royalties by publishing online (and by professional I mean they make their living by it, many fan fic writers are more professional than some best selling authors).
This isn't the only reason for authors to not put their stories up on the web. Kathryn and I do agree about *some* things - and one of them is being disturbed by the tendency of those with net access to consider those without as third-class citizens who need not be catered for - if they consider them at all.
Believe it or not, there *are* people out there for whom it is significantly cheaper to buy zines than to buy Internet access. I know - I was one of them when I first started reading fanfic five or six years ago.
Internet access at home requires a computer, and for many that's a purchase that just doesn't figure on their personal finance horizon. Twenty quid a month on zines that can be skipped in favour of more urgent purchases seems a lot more affordable than five hundred either in one lump sum or in monthly payments that can't be skipped. Phone bills can run pretty high as well - my first three years on the net were with a 28.8 modem on a standard BT or ntl line, at minimum 1p/minute even during off-peak. On a 386 to begin with. This governs my net habits even now that I have a Pentium III on an adsl connection.
Internet access at work? Non-business use of the net access where I worked was a potential dismissal offence. And it didn't arrive until after I had it at home - the snooper software recorded rather a lot of access to B7 sites for the first six months, because as one of about three people on site who knew how to use one, I kept being dragged off by the librarians to give demonstrations of how to use a web browser.
Internet cafe? Forget that, the ones I've used in an emergency (net junkie? Me?) cost five quid an hour, and were on incredibly slow connections. The speed might possibly have not been unconnected with the fact that I was paying by the ten minute block...
All of which is one of the reasons why only one of my stories is available in an online archive (although I do post some to the non-archived Freedom City list). I want print zines to remain available, and one of the ways I can do that is by giving the editors something that the punters can't get online. That way, I do my bit to ensure that enough copies are sold to cover the editors' costs, and the editors will do another issue, thus keeping fiction available to those who can't afford or can't get Internet access.