Post Mailing

Some apas (and particularly quarterly apas) – FAPA, for example – allowed members to postmail their apazines to the membership — mail out their fanzine individually to the members after the deadline for being included in a mailing. In this term, the word post is used in both its meanings – as in via the mail and as in after the actual mailing was sent out.

Post-mailing was most often done when a faned needed to meet minac requirements and did not have enough time to get the copies to the OE by the mailing deadline. The OE would acknowledge the previous mailing's post mailings in the apa's Official Organ.

Other apas, like SAPS, did not allow post mailings for credit; if minac requirements were missed by the mailing deadline, the member was dropped for lactivity. SAPS also did not acknowledge post mailings in its OO, The Spectator, and further had a no-prior-distribution rule, so fans who circulated their genzines via SAPS had to wait to send them to their regular non-apa readers until after the SAPS mailing deadline.

FAPA had a membership of 65, but the members had to send 68 copies of their zine to the Official Editor for distribution — if they post mailed, the three extras had to be sent to the OE anyway. (In this way, if a bundle got lost in the mail, members could request one of these extra copies; if there was no need to do this, the extras would be offered to newly-invited members or, when not needed for either of these purposes, they would be auctioned, usually to those who remained on the waiting list.)

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959

(Speer) For reasons of timeliness, rush to satisfy activity credits, or philoprogenitive rationalization, fans sometimes don't want to wait till the next regular mailing of an APA to distribute their fanzine to the membership. It may then be distributed as individual mailed copies, the distributor bearing the cost and the responsibility of seeing to it that all members get a copy. OMPA and FAPA allow normal credit when this is done; SAPS doesn't. Despite some objections, publications sent out as postmailings are considered part of the preceding official mailing for purposes of tabulation. A few fans have declared their zines "premailings" to a forthcoming mailing, but tho the original meaning of "postmailing" allowed this, FAPA at least no longer recognizes anything as a "pre-mailing"; implication being that "post" has come to mean method and not time of distribution.

From Fancyclopedia 1, ca. 1944

(Speer) - After each FAPA mailing, there are usually some publications that missed the boat. These may wait for the next mailing, but most of the time the publisher has the mailing manager send them to each member at the publisher's expense, or does it himself. In the latter case, when the official mailing is unexpectedly delayed, these "post"-mailings may actually be premailings. If official material is mailed out late, late publications will be included with it, and the expense is borne by the treasury. Despite some objections, publications sent out late to all members are considered part of the official mailings for purposes of laureates, activity records, etc.

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Publishing