APA

from Fancyclopedia 2
(2008) This article is grossly out of date.

Amateur Press Association. A group of people who publish fanzines and, instead of mailing them individually, send them to an official editor, who makes up a bundle periodically (altho these mailings have sometimes not been temporally regular) and distributes one to each member. Such apazines are contributed to the bundle by their publishers without charge, being considered exchanges for the other members' fanzines. The procedure saves time, work, and postage for the publishers; and since the mailing bundles are identical and all members may be assumed to know their contents, comments on them lead to lively discussions. For fan APAs see under FAPA, OMPA, and SAPS, all still active, and 7APA, Vanguard or VAPA, and WAPA , now defunct. (Whether The Cult is an APA is hard to decide, but go ahead and look it up anyway.) Also in continuous activity for over 30 years as of August 2007 are SFPA (Southern Fandom Press Alliance - bimonthly, 258 mailings, of which the 100th was over 1500 pages) and Slanapa (Slanderous Amateur Press Association, monthly, 450 mailings).

Many mundane APAs are in existence -- in fact, fandom got the idea from them. These mapas usually print their publications with hand-operated equipment, and are for the most part distinctly more interested in getting a pleasant format and appearance than in producing interesting writing. Several fans have vanished into or emerged from the mapas, and some stfnists, notably HP Lovecraft, have been active Ajays at the same time. The memberships of mundane associations are considerably larger and less active than those of fan APAs, and it does not seem to be required that publishers send in sufficient copies to cover the entire membership.

For several years an annual attempt to list all active fan apas was published under the mysterious title "South of the Moon".