From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Is the WSFA journal eligable for fanzine Hugo?
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 23:06:03 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ernest Lilley" <elilley at mindspring.com>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Cc: "Alexis Gilliland" <leeandalexis at hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 10:35 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Is the WSFA journal eligable for fanzine Hugo?

> If the Journal is eligible, I certainly think it deserves a nomination.
> Thanks to Keith's work, it's easy for the rest of the world to take a
look,
> and there's certainly a lot of talent going into it.

I hope you're joking.  Do you have *any* idea how many much better fanzines
are out there?   WSFA JOURNAL is a clubzine, serving a largely functional
purpose.  As such it has a dozen "competitors" among the other clubzines,
of which LASFS' DE PROFUNDIS is better-produced and better written, to
provide only one example.   But DE PROFUNDIS has *never* received a Hugo
nomination, and I doubt anyone in LASFS thinks it should have one.  It
would be like nominating the weekly FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS for a major
international newspaper award.

I suggest you check out the scores of fanzines now posted to efanzines.com
to get a more realistic idea of what is being done with fanzines.   This
year's FAAN Award winner for Best Fanzine (*and* Best Designed Fanzine -- a
separate award) was CHUNGA, but its circulation is such that I doubt *it*
will receive a Hugo nomination.  Close to home, the Lynches won Hugos for
their fanzine, MIMOSA (now folded).  Compare MIMOSA with the WSFA JOURNAL.

To be competitive for a Hugo, a fanzine needs a *minimum* of 300
circulation -- worldwide.  600 or more is better.  Most fans outside of our
area have never heard of the WSFA JOURNAL, nor is there any reason for them
to.   Not since the '70s and Don Miller's editorship of the WSFA JOURNAL as
a "genzine" (rather than a clubzine) has this fanzine achieved a
fandom-wide presence.

I take it you never read my fanzine-review column while it was running in
Sam's WSFA JOURNAL (and four other clubzines in the US and Canada).  All of
those reviews -- nearly three years' worth before I gave them up as a lost
cause -- are also to be found at efanzines.com.  (Why a "lost cause"?  The
object of the column was to interest clubfans in fanzines.  But none of the
editors of the fanzines reviewed reported to me *any* queries based on my
column and I realized I was effectively beating my head against the wall.
It felt good to stop.)

The majority of WSFAns have No Interest in fanzines, nor the joys of
producing them.   In this they are typical of clubfans everywhere.  We live
in multiple, only slightly overlapping fandoms, now, and each one is
apparently large enough to satisfy most of its participants.  Those of us
old enough to remember when fanzines were the lifeblood of fandom View This
With Regret.

--Ted White