I never was good at math

[morgandawn]

Earlier in the year I guesstimated that we had roughly 8000-9000 pages about fanzines on Fanlore. Many of those zine pages list multiple issues, so the actual number of zines published is harder to pin down (and remember: me.bad.math. so the 8000-9000 figure is a best guess).

Back in 2000, another fan took a guess at how many fan stories were archived in fiction archives online. Their estimate: 200,000.

I am including her calculations below

Gossamer Fan Fic Archive (X-Files het & gen, mostly, some slash): 40,000
Fanfiction.net: 17,000
ASC/EM: between 4,000 & 8,000, depending on which archivist you talk to
Sentinel slash: almost 3000
Sentinel gen: almost 2000
Master/Apprentice (Phantom Menace slash): 2000
Due South, Highlander, Xena -- probably 2000 or more each

100,000 archived stories in major fandoms, and then you get into the enormous numbers of unarchived stories and minor fandoms.  Ex: La Femme Nikita fandom guesses 2000 stories in that fandom, spread among several archives and numerous webpages.

200,000 overall is a conservative, low estimate. Proportion slash? less than 50% overall, more than 20%, but much variation by fandom.

I wonder what the numbers look like today? Grains of sand...grains of sand....