Bill and Ann Hupe

Bill and Ann Hupe were both fan writers, but they were best known as fan publishers, and then re-publishers and agents for other fannish presses.
Abode of Strife was the first of several titles the Hupe's published themselves, starting in 1983. By the early 1990s, they added agenting for hundreds of zines for other fans and publishers. 
Their involvement in fandom was massively influential in terms of expectations, policy, and scope due to the size of their empire, their personal industriousness, their visibility at cons, and ability to put print zines in the hands of fans. Bill Hupe was also a large voice in the 1993-94 zine piracy conversations. 
Bill and Ann Hupe abruptly gafiated zines and fandom in spring/summer 1996.
They personally passed on their catalogs, business, contacts, and agreements to Peg Kennedy and New Leaf Productions, something that turned out to be a disaster. See Bill and Ann Leave Fandom.
The Hupe's departure from the zine business also left the field wide open for Agent With Style to go from simply publishing her own zines to agenting for others.From Mysti Frank in Chalk and Cheese #16 (May 1997): "I've... started a zine agenting business called Agent With Style. Since Bill Hupe has left the arena, and left no one to take up the business, I'm hoping to do just a fraction of what he did in getting the zines most fen would never see out and into fandom's eye. I have a long list of zines available—many new, some older and hard to find—for a double-stamped long SASE."
Bill passed away October 25, 2009. His obituary was published in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.Bill Hupe Obituary, San Gabriel Valley Tribune December 20, 2009, accessed Jan 10, 2010 (now offline)
==Zine Publisher Names==
Bill worked together with Peg Kennedy to edit and publish their own zines as well as agenting and distributing for other fanzine publishing. Ann, who worked full time, provided the financial backing for their publication efforts and also edited a number of the zines that they published.
* Footrot Flats (with Peg Kennedy)
* Gypsy Moth Productions (with Peg Kennedy) (starting in 1983)
* Peromyscus Press
==Example Zines==
* MI-Anime
* The 23-Cent Zine!
==Interviews==
* Interview with William Hupe (2006)
* Interview with Dr. Ann Hupe (2007)
==Award==
The Honorary K/Ser Award for the biggest boon to fandom in '94-to Bill Hupe, "with hugs & kisses, for his excellent work in publishing, agenting, reprinting, and distributing zines. And he's a nice guy, to boot."—given at Shore Leave.
==In His Own Words: 1988 (stance on explicit and slash fanworks, "fandom is my primary job")==
==In His Own Words: 1992 (fandom is my life)==
In remembering Gene Roddenberry after his passing Bill wrote:
==In Their Own Words: 1993 (personal fandom history)==
==In His Own Words: 2006 (the opportunities of fandom)==
==Putting Miles on the Road==
An example of the driving Bill did is from 1995: "We regret that we will not be at Shoreleave although we have Alien Worlds there, selling for us.... Bill had to ultimately decide not to attend this con this year as it would have required him to drive to the east coast two weekends in a row (with only 2 days back in Michigan!), come home from the convention and leave to drive to Alaska 3 days later. Although Bill is known for some insane (or stupid, according to Peg), stints, (Seattle to Lansing nonstop for 41 hours -- 8 times in one year), this wouldn't work with Ann's Dodge Caravan needing a complete check-up before traveling the Alaskan Highway and some of the far-flung remote always Ann and Bill and 3 friends want to visit." from a flyer included with Bill's 1995 catalog
== Catalogs==
The Hupes published a number of catalogs, frequency unknown.
In the September 1992 catalog, there was a an explanation regarding slash of any rating and explicit het: "...adult material (any fandom) will be found on colored paper: those offended by adult material, please simply remove and recycle (or discard) the non white pages."
A 1995 catalog is here, archive link.
You had to have good eyesight to read the catalogs! Some samples from the September 1992 one are below.
File:Image-hupe1992-1.jpg|a sample page from the 1992 catalog
File:Image-hupe1992-2.jpg|a sample page from the 1992 catalog
File:Image-hupe1992-3.jpg|a sample page from the 1992 catalog
On occasion Hupe's flyers would be created by the zine publishers. Below is a zine flyer created by the editors of Manacles Press. It is easy to read and in color, unlike Bill and Peg's typical zine flyer or catalog. On the back they listed other zine publishers who were also agented by Bill Hupe.
File:HupeFlyer1.jpg
File:2016 10 21 15 44 20 Page 04.jpg
== Blakesindex and Other Zines==
In May 1983, they released their first zine, Abode of Strife, issue #1. Bill also worked with editor Pat Nussman, and with editor Sheila Paulson, publishing many of their Fan Q award-winning zines. Bill also wrote one fan novel, Shadows.
Among other fandoms, Bill and Ann were huge Blake's 7 fans, and in the early nineties, Bill edited Blakesindex, proposed to be a full index of B7 zines, with stories listed by author, title, and subject, and poetry and art. Although obviously a huge amount of work, it was far short of a full index, as several large B7 presses, such as Ashton Press, (publishers of the long running B7 series Southern Seven and Southern Comfort), among others, weren't included. Hupe's fanzine catalogs are also a valuable source of bibliographic information for past zines.
==The Empire and The Complexities==
It may be hard, today, to imagine the vastness of the Hupe enterprise and how much fans depended on it, for better or worse, for their supply of fanworks.
In 1992, Bill remarked in his September catalog that he and/or Ann were "attending 30+ conventions a year," an astounding feat of time, planning, and expenses.
Simply sending and receiving the goods before online communication would have been an exercise in patience and frustration. Most communication was done via the Postal Service, something that fans today would find unbearably slow. This communication also required a lot of organization, time, SASEs, constant attention to postal rates (foreign, domestic, and everything in between), incoming and out-going boxes of zines, paperwork regarding who had sent what to who and who was owed money or unsold zines, dealing with complaints regarding service, the actual soliciting, editing, publishing, and publicity regarding some zines, storage woes, and the attending of cons to peddle the goods.
An example of postal complexities explanation, something that despite this description, required patience and certainly translated into intricate communication failures: 
A fan in 1993 expressed her fear that Hupe's empire was just too damn big: 
== Zines as a Business ==
By '87, Bill Hupe had a double-page spread in Datazine (a long-running slash and gen adzine) advertising his by then 25 fanzines. This was the beginning of a period where the Hupes (along with Peg Kennedy) gradually became media fandom's largest fanzine publishers and re-publishers, putting out their own issues as well as obtaining permission from several other publishers to agent and reprint various titles. This meant spending most weekends schlepping hundreds, if not thousands, of zines from con to con, across the country, then spending 90% of the con sitting in the dealer's room. At a time when adzines came out infrequently, many fans only found zines they wanted because of the Hupes, and Peg Kennedy's willingness to drag zines everywhere they went. Peg & Bill kept lists of their zines looking for submissions as well—a lot of fans (especially gen fans) had their first stories published in one of Bill, Ann or Peg's zines. All of the zines they edited were gen, but over the years they agented many slash zines. When April Valentine had so much trouble with mailorder that she changed the name and policy to InPersonPress, ordering her zines from Bill was the only way to get them if you couldn't make it to a con in Maryland.
Some fans were unhappy with the "business" quality of their zine transactions. 
A 1993 comment: 
A 1993 comment: 
A fan in 1993 wrote: 
A fan in 1995 wrote: 
Other fans appreciated this "business" quality: 
Another fan was very appreciative of Hupe's business-acumen: 
Bill also sold used fanzines, pricing them according to their condition, about half or two thirds their original price. He then added on a 15% commission.
And expanding out from zines, they also sold VHS conversions of British shows (Sapphire and Steel, Pros (of course) and others), and agented fan art for many artists. Bill and Peg also started taking fans' orphan zine collections when they gafiated and selling them for 15% over cover price. Bill also ran the Dealer's Room at MediaWest, probably the biggest existing con for fanzines.
The next step after putting out his own zines, and agenting other people's zines, was fanzine packager—editors give him copy (on a disk by this time), he did no-frills reproduction and mailing: standard xeroxing on cheap paper, no fancy fonts, no discernible graphic design, no special handling for art (if there is art), and charged about $22 for a zine (or $11 for a disk with that zine on it).
==An Early Promoter of E-Zines==
Bill was also the earliest fanzine distributors to offer e-zines. A fan in January 1996 wrote: 
Another fan wrote a nearly a year later: 
However, since Bill Hupe exited fanzine distribution in 1996, the impetus to offer ezines may have come from Peg Kennedy and Linda Knight who took over his business in July 1996 in the form of New Leaf Publications:
==Agents vs Publishers==
The largest portion of Bill and Ann's business was agenting for other fanzine editors and publishers.
A zine agent could do one of two things: they could resell stock that another publisher had printed. This type of agent carried none of the upfront publication costs and risks.from a 1992 Hupe catalog: "PLEASE NOTE: FANZINES WE ARE SELLING FOR OTHER PEOPLE ARE LABELLED AS AGENT. WE DO NOT PRINT ANY AGENT FANZINE; WE ARE SENT PRE-PRINTED COPIES, UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. APPARENTLY THERE HAS BEEN SOME CONFUSION ON THIS MATTER: WE ONLY PRINT FANZINES THAT WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN SPECIFIC PERMISSION TO DO SO, IN WRITING, AND IT HAS NEVER BEEN OTHERWISE." Or they could be responsible for the printing of new copies which they had to fund themselves.An example was The Bizarro Zine -- from a 1992 Hupe catalog: "Although this is an agent zine, we're now printing copies for Leah Rosenthal, so supply will no longer be a problem." This type of agent faced a greater financial risk, especially in the days before print on demand. The Hupes offered both kinds of services. For those zines that they actually reprinted in order to agent on behalf of the publishers, they would add their name and address alongside that of the actual publishers of the zine in the zine itself.
The number of zines the Hupes edited and published was quite small when compared to their fanzine catalog. However, because of the size of their catalog, many fans were confused for years thinking the Hupes edited and published every zine that they sold and that they had exclusive rights to the zines. Often when the actual fanzine publishers attempted to sell their own zines at events, they were accused of being fanzine pirates. So murky were the agency/distribution waters that Bill Hupe and Peg Kennedy were themselves accused of selling pirated zines at Farpoint in 1993.See The Zine Pirating Message Comes Full Circle.
In 1993, Bill Hupe took over Pon Farr Press and the zines published by Wendy Rathbone and made some comments on how to distinguish "real zines" from copies:
Bill's aggressive stance towards unauthorized redistribution of the zines he agented also created confusion. And last, the informal nature of most fanzine agenting fed into the complexity. Few zine publishers and agents signed any agreements, let alone exclusive ones, leaving the field wide open for the Hupes' "ownership" claims. In a time and era when communication was done by letters, verifying the "legitimacy" of the original fanzine publisher could take months.
The issues of agenting vs publishing is one that many other large scale fanzine enterprises have faced, such as Lionheart Distribution and Agent With Style. After Lionheart received a C&D notice by Warner Brothers in 2005, Lionheart reopened under the name "Distribution" and made it clear they were only agents, not publishers to reduce their liability.
== Controversy One: Open Letters on Zine Pirating ==
The controversy became stronger in 1993, when two open letters circulated about xeroxing (or zine pirating, to use their language) of in-print zines. The most outrageous rant was from Alexis Fegan Black (co-signed by Wendy Rathbone and MKASHEF), directed wildly to fandom in general (see here for the full letter); the other, slightly calmer argument was from Bill Hupe, directed to Candy Pulleine (basically suggesting that she should make an effort to educate her local Kinkos about zine copyrights and so on) and threatened a Dealer boycott of RevelCon if she didn't address this problem (see here for the full letter).
Other zine editors responded that they didn't believe that fans copying a zine or two for your friends was responsible for the decline in zine sales. They pointed to changes in fandom, the recession at that time, etc. There were comments like "What the hell did he EXPECT for a plump, expensive, Multimedia zine from an editor whose standards have slipped?" and "I don't have the kind of $$$ to buy a $20-25 mixed media zine for the 1/3 in which I might be interested, so I copy that 1/3rd from my friend's copy, and no, I don't feel guilty."
== Controversy Two: Profit ==
Some authors had got pissed off when the Hupes and Peg Kennedy first started taking over printing zines edited and published by other fans in the early 1990s. Their interpretation was that they had granted the original publisher the right to print their story, but that right was not transferable to another publisher. The authors didn't give him reprint permission, just the editors. Some demanded another trib copy. (The conversation about this (and of course, the spread of the Internet) eventually led to authors giving rights to their zine eds for the first year or two, and after that, getting the right to put their stories up on the web.)
Another concern over Bill Hupe and company was that having him agent such a large percentage of zines was leading to the collapse of the fannish mutual promotion network. Zines used to come with ads in the back. It used to be that, once you got that first zine, you had a bunch of addresses for that fandom, and the list grew exponentially as you got more zines. Now, you had to either find an adzine or keep ordering from Bill, who was making a job out of all this.
Other fans felt that reprinting zines interfered with standard practice at the time, which was to not allow copying of a zine while it was in print, but to allow unlimited copying once the zine went out of print. With zines never going out of print, fans didn't ever have a chance to just copy their favorite few stories from a zine for a friend.
Still other people were merely annoyed by how hard it was to shop at his tables: the zines generally weren't organized by fandom, or genre, and there would be boxes and boxes and boxes of them.
By this point, Bill and Peg's operation (Ann was still publishing zines, but wasn't part of the zine agenting business) was so large that a backlash was inevitable.
Others entered the fray on Bill's side, saying that he provided an incalculable service to fans—providing them access to fanzines that they might never have been able to see or be able to afford, especially fans outside the US, who could use Bill as one-stop-shopping. He also sold for dozens of small presses that couldn't afford to get to many conventions and sell zines for themselves.
Some fan comments:
== Bill and Ann Leave Fandom ==
In 1996, Bill announced he was gafiating: "Me and Ann bought 40 acres and we're going to 'live the mundane life'".
Some fans in 1996 recounted this exodus:
Eventually Bill and Ann settled in Alaska where they operated a small photography and publication press The TwinS puBlications with their Australian friend, Susan Batho.
Bill's departure from publishing and agenting, especially in such a sudden way, was damaging. Fandom suffered in terms of lost fanworks, loss of trust, and many other hits. But it was an especially hard blow to small fandoms: 
===The 1996 Retirement Letters===
File:billlettershort.jpg|Bill's 1996 retirement announcement, address redacted
File:billletter1.jpg|first page of the 1996 retirement letter, author unknown
File:billletter2.jpg|first page of the 1996 retirement letter, author unknown
File:Billletter3.jpg|second page of the 1996 retirement letter, author unknown
===The Handover to Peg Kennedy===
Hupe decided to turn the whole library of unsold zines (both their own, and ones they were agenting for others) to Peg Kennedy and Linda Knights, who named the new enterprise (New Leaf Press/New Leaf Productions).
From Media Monitor #34: "Contact Peg/Linda for new shipping and handling costs before ordering. Prices have gone up since they took over from Bill Hupe and must ship from Washington. Peg and Linda have taken over most of Bill Hupe's inventory and are handling a great many other publications, (gen, adult, and slash), for various writers and presses. There are hundreds of titles available and representation in almost any fandom you could desire. Please send a SASE and $1.00 for their latest catalog."
Early on, fans were apprehensive about the hand-over to Peg. from a fan in late 1996: 
Their fears were not unfounded. Peg didn't have the in-place group of helpful fans that Bill did, and within a few months, grew completely overwhelmed by the business. Many fans started to ask what was going on, that they'd sent in money for orders and heard nothing back. Months of no information followed. A fan in 1997 wrote: 
From a disappointed fan in 1998: 
Peg Kennedy began emailing the fanzine catalog to interested buyers - something that many fanzine publishers had been doing. However, to the consternation of some fanzine publishers, a copy of the flyer was posted online in 1997: 
In an bit of dreadful irony, one of Kennedy's big detractors was Mysti Frank. In 1997, Frank wrote: 
===The 1996 Kennedy Letters===
File:pegletter1.jpg|first page of Peg Kennedy's 1996 letter regarding the change in leadership
File:pegletter2.jpg|first page of Peg Kennedy's 1996 letter regarding the change in leadership
File:pegletter3.jpg|second page of Peg Kennedy's 1996 letter regarding the change in leadership
File:pegletter4.jpg|second page of Peg Kennedy's 1996 letter regarding the change in leadership
==Operation 'Zine Rescue==
Peg Kennedy carried on the zine agenting business for several years. However by 1999, the business had fallen into disarray, and in In January 1999, several fanzine publishers received a letter from a man who had purchased the contents of one of the Hupe-Kennedy storage lockers and was offering to sell the zines back to the publishers. The inventory included both gen and slash zines, numbering over 3000 items. In addition, almost 1200 art prints were in the collection, including work by Rich Corben, Adrian Morgan, Jean Kluge, Heather Bruton, Suzan Lovett, Lucy Synk, Melissa Elliott, ARLA, Tara and Carol Walske.
See Operation 'Zine Rescue.
==General Fan Comments==
===1994===
 
 
===1995===
===2000===
===2019===
==Memories and Tributes==
After Bill's passing several fans share their memories of the impact he had on their fannish lives:
==References==
Category:2009 Deaths
Category:Deceased
Category:Scandals
Category:Zine Publishers
Category:Zine Editors
Category:Fanwriters