Someone mentioned wanting to do a study on the effect of PCs on fandom. After VCRs, though, the next technology to radically affect fandom has been cheap photocopying and/or photocopiers. Editors purchasing their own photocopiers has changed the dynamics of fan publishing. Unfortunately. the effects are not positive. This brings up another point that needs clarifying. While some editors are still motivated by the spirit of fandom described in Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women, the trend for the last several years has been for editors to make a killing in the zine market. This ties into the impact of cheap photocopiers. Ten years ago an editor had to get her zine printed. This required bucks up front and the result was a set number of zines that were sold through the mail or at cons. An issue sold out, and leftover money went into paying the printer for the next issue. The first issue of "Out of Bounds" was done in 81. We did a print-run of 400 and charged $10.00 for 170 pages of text (no illos). Today, an editor who has her own copier charges $20.00 for roughly the same page count when the cost of production has been radically DECREASED. Also, they are doing 4 issues a year. Frankly, there aren't enough good stories out there to support all the zines being published. The result is a glut of bad, overpriced zines with editors making a parasitic living off of fandom. K/S zines such as Naked Times and First Time have 30 issues in print because nothing goes out of print. The goal now is to reach page count. Forget editorial standards, rewrites or refusals. When an editor comes up short all she needs to do is put an inch wide border around the text and leave a large margin around the border, increase the type size and voila!. Some editors are advertising word count, now, instead of page count. People I know who wouldn't have dreamed of copying a zine while it was still in in print ten years ago now don't give it a second thought. The thought being "why should I pay XXXXXXXXXXX $22.00 for a xerox copy when I can make my own xerox copy for $5.00?" Cheap photocopying, through, has helped Pros fandom. With thousands of pages of stories circulating, cheap/stolen photocopying made it possible to be in the fandom and pay the phone bill. Lezlie