(long comment is long) Ah, I see. Keeping the profits within certain limits in order not to annoy rights holders seems understandable to me. But it's a whole other thing to make that into an ethics issue and say that you're not supposed to make money off zines because that's not what fans do. (Which is what the person who told you off claimed, right? Whatever the official con policy was.)
At the cons where they sell dojinshi here in Japan, most fans seem to sell their zines at cost, but no secret is made of the fact that a sizeable minority does make a profit -in the case of Comiket, the numbers are published openly in the con's official catalogue. I get the impression that nobody minds as long as those who make a profit are still clearly creating their works for 'fannish' reasons, out of love for the source works. People only get cranky when someone makes a profit by deliberately making popular stuff that they know will earn them a heap of money.
I really like that attitude, and I think this is why I'd disagree with the person who told you off. What matters (to me, on an emotional level) is not just the way you chose to distribute your stuff, but the reason why you made that stuff. If you try to sell me a Harry Potter zine that you made because you enjoy making fanworks about HP, cool. If you don't like HP but try to sell me a HP zine that you made for the sole reason of making money, I'll probably find that a lot less charming. Perhaps I'd still buy the thing, mind, but the sales tactics behind it would make me uncomfortable.
On this topic, I really like this quote from Evangelia Berdou's 'Organization in Open Source Communities: At the Crossroads of the Gift and Market Economies':
“A moral economy is not simply about what limits are placed on how economic motivations encroach upon other social motivations, but about what kind of motives guide the process and outcome. It is about developing an understanding of how the wealth and the opportunities created through the process of peer production can be employed to address the limits of markets and promote the values of mutual empowerment.”
Basically, motivation matters, and also, it may well be in the interests of those who create stuff for non-commercial motivations to promote their creations more effectively. Because, for one, those creations are often things that will never get made in a purely money-motivated market system. The more people hear about and get access to those non-market-motivated creations, the better. I really agree with that.
no subject
At the cons where they sell dojinshi here in Japan, most fans seem to sell their zines at cost, but no secret is made of the fact that a sizeable minority does make a profit -in the case of Comiket, the numbers are published openly in the con's official catalogue. I get the impression that nobody minds as long as those who make a profit are still clearly creating their works for 'fannish' reasons, out of love for the source works. People only get cranky when someone makes a profit by deliberately making popular stuff that they know will earn them a heap of money.
I really like that attitude, and I think this is why I'd disagree with the person who told you off. What matters (to me, on an emotional level) is not just the way you chose to distribute your stuff, but the reason why you made that stuff. If you try to sell me a Harry Potter zine that you made because you enjoy making fanworks about HP, cool. If you don't like HP but try to sell me a HP zine that you made for the sole reason of making money, I'll probably find that a lot less charming. Perhaps I'd still buy the thing, mind, but the sales tactics behind it would make me uncomfortable.
On this topic, I really like this quote from Evangelia Berdou's 'Organization in Open Source Communities: At the Crossroads of the Gift and Market Economies':
“A moral economy is not simply about what limits are placed on how economic motivations encroach upon other social motivations, but about what kind of motives guide the process and outcome. It is about developing an understanding of how the wealth and the opportunities created through the process of peer production can be employed to address the limits of markets and promote the values of mutual empowerment.”
Basically, motivation matters, and also, it may well be in the interests of those who create stuff for non-commercial motivations to promote their creations more effectively. Because, for one, those creations are often things that will never get made in a purely money-motivated market system. The more people hear about and get access to those non-market-motivated creations, the better. I really agree with that.