unjapanologist:

meeedeee:

angstbotfic:

“In 1988, it was estimated that there were 300 publications
that enabled fans to explore aspects of television series, 120 of them
centered on Star Trek, a number that no
doubt underestimates the production
of fan literature because it doesn’t include literature circulated only in
photocopy circuits or the more covertly circulated publications"

– Rosemary Coombe, 

The
Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the
Law, 1998, p. 107

Hahaha. There were more than 300 fanzines by 1988. On Fanlore, we have over 8,000 fanzine pages spanning 1968-today. By 2006, fanzine production slowed to a trickle. It would be wonderful to see someone pull together stats based on what we have on Fanlore, arranged by year and by fandom.

Dunno if the above is meant to be just about the US, but in 1988, one edition of Comiket in Japan hosted 9200 creators of (mostly) zines. And that was just one of the conventions happening in Japan that year, although by far the biggest.