I must admit I never knew cons like that existed, and I only heard about zines themselves when an author I read mentioned having a story in one.

Same here. I only heard of fanzines long ago when I was invited to submit something to a zine called "Gateways". Ah, the memories! I went to MI to check it out and found decades worth of fanzines and traditions around fanfic. There was just something about reading fic in printed, beautifully formatted form. Heck, I often took fic and printed out to read. Here, it was done, bound, edited, layout and wow, since then, I was hooked!

I just love the fact that printed fanfic goes as far back as Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes. Granted, fanfic back then was highly regarded as "fictional commentary". LOL