From: "Nico Mody-Nikoloff" nico@farsight.co.nz Subject: [B7L] Where to publish?

After all the discussion about on-line stories and zines and their relative costs to different people, (sic)....I'm close to finishing "Vila Restal's E-mails". I'm planning to put them on-line, and was going to put my other stories there too as I finish them.

1. Which gives the widest readership - web pages or zines?
2. What are the pros and cons of each for writers?
3. Which do readers prefer? It's cheaper for me to read stories on-line but

I do find hard copies much more pleasant to read from. However I suppose this will differ by country because of relative costs.

This has been an interesting discussion thread. Just goes to show that one must be careful about making assumptions on even the most basic level, since circumstances differ so much from one area to another.

Being from San Francisco, I have unlimited and fast Net access, both business and personal. I dislike travel, so my access to fanfic magazines has been recent, expensive, and limited to those I have found through Judith's inestimable website.

So I will vote for on-line. It would not, for instance, bother me at all to subscribe to a fanfic library. The energy and willingness of so many people to voluntarily maintain websites for the pleasure of others awes and amazes me. It only seems fair to compensate those webmasters/authors in some small way. Even the "free" public libraries are only as good as the willingness of taxpayers to support them.

For those of you who have posted URL's and other sources for second-hand fanfics, you have my (and I'm sure other newbies') sincere thanks. Contrary to what some might think, such sources are very hard to find. They do not, for instance, show up when I search on Google (the most popular search engine here) for Blakes 7 sites. I would not have discovered the Avon's Club publications without the mention it received on this list earlier this year (prior to their becoming available on Judith's site).

BTW, kudos once more to her for helping to maintain their availability; there are some very good stories in the set.

I also would like to offer my assistance to those dedicated writers who have old B7 print stories that are too much hassle to convert to e-copy -- of course, I'm assuming there's not TOO many of those! But I have free, if slightly indirect, access to a professional text scanner and a high-quality digital copier, as well as owning an extremely good PC with the Microsoft Word program.

I would be happy to assist you in turning them into e-copy. I'm a professional executive assistant (the politically-correct term for a high-level secretary) and proofing/editing copy is all part of my job.

Being a fanfic writer myself (although I write about a character named Julian Kestrel, the late and much lamented Kate Ross's Regency dandy-detective creation), I have the utmost sympathy for those who don't wish to put themselves to a large amount of effort for old stories they spent a lot of time slaving over to begin with. Sometimes one wants to go forward and spend one's energy on new projects and ideas instead! -- quite understandable.

But still, those of us who are relatively new to B7 fanfic would dearly love to read some of those stories which are either no longer available or extremely difficult to obtain. Should anyone be interested in taking me up on my offer, please contact me off-line and we can work out the details.

Since I would be doing this in my spare time I can't promise an immediate turnaround, but there's no reason why a medium-length story (10-20 pages) should take more a few weeks. If the story is short enough, in fact, it would probably be just as easy to retype it, since I also type about 110/wpm. Piece of cake.

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Feb 15 2002 starts the Year of the Horse--Happy Chinese New Year!

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