Don't worry, Citizens, I have calmed down in the last few months...

In message HFJBPDJKCPPINAAA@angelfire.com, Shane Little littles@angelfire.com writes

This decision of yours is interesting. From the sound of it, you're basically ghettoising _all_ stories about gay relationships into slash zines, and I would like to ask you why you do this. There were gay characters in the programme, so it can't be out of respect for the canon; since you yourself are involved in a same-sex relationship, it can't be out of a belief that all fiction involving gays should be kept on the X-rated shelf. Apparently it's just down to sales, and again I'd like more evidence that it _would_ harm sales-- the people who wouldn't buy the zine might be compensated for by the Jane Carnalls of the world: the people who don't object to fiction about gays, but do object to explicit sex.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

You've been complaining that straight women are writing about gay men without the least idea of what it's like to be a gay man. Now you're writing about zine editors without displaying any evidence that you have the least idea what it's like to be a zine editor.

Anthology zine editing is a hobby. It's an expensive hobby. Sales *are* important, because the more copies you can sell, the more chance you have of covering a reasonable proportion of the costs involved in putting a zine together. There are fixed costs involved in doing a zine, as well as the per-copy costs, and they can be pretty high for an anthology zine. Profits? Forget them, at least in this fandom. In the unlikely event that someone actually covers *all* the costs, and then some, the pay per hour rate is going to make third world wages look munificent. There are easier ways of making money.

The experience of editors down the years is that there *are* objections, and resulting loss of sales, to mixed zines. From both camps. It's not just the loss of sales, either, it's having to deal with the bitching from people who think that the merest hint that two men (or two women) could have a sexual interest in each other turns it into a filthy pornographic rag; and at the other extreme, the people bitching about having to pay for this boring gen stuff when all they want is the action. Or the ones who want only slash and gen, none of that horrid het (no, I am not exaggerating, I've had the dealer's table experience of people wanting me to tell them how much space was wasted on het before they decided to buy a zine).

Personally, I'm somewhat bemused by the belief that amateur gynaecology and explicit violence are just fine in a genzine but a passing mention of homosexuality is slash and only to be sold to the over-eighteens, but sticking to that market division is one way for an editor to reduce her stress level. I hope ttba continues, because it's the sort of zine I want to buy, but my own experience suggests to me that I'm in the minority.