Here's the Aabye's Baby web page today, 9/11/05, www.nhi.clara.net. While I know of one ezine that promotes its permanence, is publishing being devalued when archives are reduced and withdrawn like this? We submit in good faith, without pay, while printed publications die. Are we being duped?

"Changes have taken place at Aabye's Baby.

In August 2001, the editor suffered a computer-crash. Although this was due to a hardware failure rather than an unwelcome intrusion via an unfriendly email, it led to a re-evaluation of the future of the ezine. From its inception, the ezine's email address had been plagued by a large amount of pure spam of all kinds. Also, despite publishing guidelines with clear instructions, many would-be contributors either ignored the guidelines or simply failed to read them.

In October 2001 the ezine was closed to new submissions.
The majority of the pages in the archives were retained.
Many of the pages in the main section were moved to the archives.

No mail addressed to aabyesbaby@ukpoets.net was answered.

In October 2002 the old website became no longer available.

The email addresses werneth@crosswinds.net and newhope@iname.com are now dead.

A new archive containing a selection of the previously archived pages is now online.

No new material will be accepted but biographical notes and links will be updated as appropriate.

All queries regarding the site should be addressed to nhi@clara.net."

I agree that it's quite fuzzy. I prefer print simply because I like to have and hold. Besides, if a zine which has published your work disappears, what is the status of the work? Or, in the case of Aabye's Baby, what if your work is not in the limited archive? Is it still considered as published? Can you re-offer first serial rights in good faith?

But yes, there are some very nice zines. I love Smokelong Quarterly (go look at it - www.smokelong.com - they published a flash of mine in issue 10!) - it's a zine, but they produce a print annual. I would be crushed if ever the site went belly up, but if it does, I'll still have the print annual with my work in it.

I'll keep subscribing to the print magazines, I think!

Ani

I like Smokelong Quarterly too, but my favourite magazine is print only. It's called Transmission. Do subscribe. My story, 'The North Is So Much Better For Youngsters Today' will be in the January issue.
Ian

I'd heard of Transmission but never visited their site before. Thanks for the link. It looks excellent. I've just bookmarked it. And congratulations on placing your story there.

Ani

We should not be surprised when, for a number of reasons, an ezine bites the dust (or the sand).

There is a growing number of such outlets that can spring up overnight and operate without any controls; I do not mean censorship but controls that result from market forces which, hopefully, means from consumer demands.

If an ezine fails because of malicious hackers and so on, then this only underlines the need for International action against these scumbags.

The one regret with the proliferation of ezines is the risk of increase in poor quality writing dropping down to meaningless political statements, lavatory-wall poetry and profanities of graffiti language - and we all know what this will do to standards of written English.

Len