Ha! Y'all laughed at me, spending the best part of the last 10 years writing in excess of 1.5 million words of fanfiction. Now look!

Seriously, not entirely sure how I feel about this. It's definitely a clever idea, and a way to squeeze every damn penny out of things that are dead or dying.

Would I do it, given the option? Polish up Wastelands a shade and get that bad boy out there? There's a lot to consider - like Wastelands doesn't just borrow from Potter, there are multiple references to other works, and even direct lyrics from well-known songs. In the published world, that stuff matters.

Eh. Going to be interesting to watch.

Funnily enough, my Reminiscent Exile series would be perfect for this kind of exploitation, given that it's set in a world where all story worlds exist and can be accessed through copies of the book. Huh. Meta-ish.

 

Don't think this is such a good idea. I agree that someone is going to get fucked, although i am not sure who, the fanbase, the fanfic authors or the original authors, probably all of them at some time.

The murky legal stuff, obviously. The articles Cheddar linked raised most of the points. What happens to the non legalized fanfics, for example? I mean sure, right now it doesn't concern a fandom I particularly care about but what if it were? How would it influence the authors later on? If a fanfic series were to get immensely popular and take the story and the characters somewhere the author really didn't want to go, what would that mean for him/her?

Furthermore, going with the assumption that this is going to hit the fandoms that I read, I wouldn't really want to pay for most of it. How would that work anyway? To make money, one would have to pay before one reads the story, right? So, most of the stuff one reads is crap or goes somewhere one doesn't particularly care about. I mean, sure, whenever you buy something there is always the danger of getting something one doesn't like but the danger seems particularly high with fanfiction. The summaries are not always that helpful.

Don't get me wrong, there are fanfics out there that I would gladly pay, to give something to the amazing authors that wrote them and shared with us, take Victory at Ostagar for example, or The Girl From Whirlpool, Dreaming of Sunshine, Thu'um of a Distant Utopia or the Alexandra Quick stories. But those kind of stories are household names by now and that wouldn't be the case with most stuff.

I would hate to drop five bucks on a story that is going to turn out to be some crappy surprise high school au.

 

No, they wouldn't. Amazon Publishing has the exclusive rights to every single word and idea in your published work.

So, Fifty Shades of Gray, for example, wouldn't have been able to be created if E. L. James had used Amazon to initially publish it as Twilight fanfiction. All of the original elements would have then belonged exclusively to Amazon Publishing. At best she'd be locked into Amazon as her sole publisher.

What worries me about Amazon's move is that it gives big authors a financial motive to shutdown all free fanfiction. I'm sure we'll see it happen. Some author who's out of touch with their fanbase or doesn't understand or care about the fanfiction community [aside from the extra money it can give them] will try to force them onto Amazon's fanfiction market so that the big author can earn a percentage. They'd do that by C&D, ordering their fics off of fanfiction.net, etc.

When money is involved, the ordinary rules go out the window.

 

I read that there would be some sort of criteria to meet before fics could get published. You wouldn't end up with My Immortal and all the pregnant Harry fics the fandom has. What those criteria are, I don't know; but there will be some for sure. So, knowing that the stories are of above average quality, you can then look at the first few pages just like you do with original work in Amazon and decide if it's for you. I can't confirm they will do this, but it's too good a system they have running already for them not to use it with fanfiction as well.

@LordRaine: I agree the system is a bit muddy right now with fanfiction, but I don't think it needs to be with this Amazon thing. In the past, if a fanfic writer accused an author of stealing his stuff, there could be problems. All the cases I read ended in favor of the author, but there was still a process. However, as the Amazon rules specify now, the author of the original book or series (or the publisher) has the right to use whatever the fanfic author produces. There is no longer anything muddy about it: it outright says 'su casa es mi casa'. If an author wraps up his series the same way a published fanfic writer did, he'll probably get a bit of shit from his fanfic readers but won't be subject to any legal action.

And yet all this hangs on an author not having finished his series. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the majority of allowed works are already completed. With a completed work you don't have any of these problems.

It's a rather clever move on Amazon's part. They have essentially done what publishers have wanted to do forever: get rid of advances. Rather than paying an author an advance (look up how advances vs royalties work) and risk sales falling short of what they paid, they now get thousands of stories they can peruse and choose and only pay a percentage of the sales. 100% safe business.

Which ties to another important question. Will Amazon pay a percentage based on income or based on earnings? The standard values for e-books nowadays seem to be 25% of total earnings, which in turn tend to be about 70% of the total income. Authors always bitch about this. I see no reason for something different to happen with the fanfic aspect of the business.

EDIT: Ninja'd by yak.

 

And there's the rub. Monetize fanfiction and you provide incentive to stamp out free fanfiction. DLP probably would never have existed if every single HP fanfiction cost $3 at Amazon and was C&D'd everywhere else. My own fanfics sure as hell wouldn't have seen the light of day if the only way to get them out there was to jump through the hoops of publishing on Amazon.

This is a worrying development.

 

I think that if the right fandoms were to sign up, then cult-status fanfiction writers in the ff.net world *cough* Joe *cough* could move into the medium and clean house, picking up a very decent take. Heck, even if only 1% of those who read Wastelands were to drop a few bucks on Joe's next big story, you're still be talking thousands of dollars profit, enough to buy him off with Scotch to make more words. I know I'd drop some change to read a Wastelands-quality piece only available through this medium (as I've done with his original fiction). And said authors could use this as a vehicle to promote their original fiction.

Done right, I see a lot of upside if the right fandoms were involved. It could well drive up interest in fanfiction (waning of late, at least in the fandoms I'm following) as well as significantly increase the number of quality stories to read by inspiring more authors, avid readers themselves, to delve into fanfiction. Yeah, as a reader, having to pay a token buck or a few for stories I'd normally read for free is a little annoying, and yeah, the licensing is constricting and heavily favors the publisher/Amazon.com, but it's what it is. Don't sign if you don't agree to the terms. I know I'd be seriously tempted to try my hand if JKR were to sign up the Harry Potter franchise.

 

This.

In the end, it will all come down to whether an author/publisher wants to squeeze every last cent possible from his or her (author's) work. In thought, is a nice idea, but the reality of it just invites too many issues, IMO, and there's too many people out there that either don't care, or don't have the common sense to understand the issues surrounding plagiarism either.

I just can't see an author or publishing house happy with "Harry Potter reads Goblet of Fire," but I can sure as hell see a few thousand people trying to sell it.

 

Isn't it already the case that an author can steal ideas from fanfiction about their story? The fanfic author after all doesn't have any rights to it.
What would actually change?

 

Didn't I hear that JKR gave an OK for fanfiction at one point, barring pornography or something? I could've sworn I had heard that.

As opposed to having to pay individually for each story, what I'd prefer to see if this was introduced would be a sort of subscription, like Netflix. There would be a two or three levels of subscription, with stories falling into a certain category based upon popularity and rating. The new and untested or less popular ones would be on the lowest tier, and the best and most popular would be on the upper. The higher the subscription level, the more tiers you can access. In addition, the upper tier stories would have the option to be purchased in paperback or hardcover, either as a stand-alone for the longer stories, or in a collection of similar ranked stories in the same category.

As far as rights go, the only way I can see the authors getting a better deal is if they (or you, as the case may be) band together. I'm not entirely sure what you'll threaten them with, since authors and companies are the giants and you with no magic sling, but we'll see.

---------- Post automerged at 04:02 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:31 AM ----------

I realized that I effectively described FFN.net if it were like Netflix and had a ranking system and administrators who actually do something. Not such a bad thing.

And as for people claiming that an author stole an idea and made it their own (whether that is true or not), doesn't that happen already? Fans ask an author a question or pose a theory and then we see that same thing pop up later in the story. Or how Bethesda has established the right to take any ideas from mods made and place them in the game (such as Hearthfire). It isn't an entirely new concept, just taken in a new direction.

 

IANAL, but I don't think that's true at all. Everything you write is immediately copyrighted by default [unless you've specifically public domained it]. Elements of your story might belong to other people [eg. the canonical characters would belong to the canon's author], but the rest of it is yours. At least, that's how I understand it.

I'm ignoring specific exceptions to copyright law, such as parody, and US copyright exceptions vs. other nations, because that confuses the issue further. A real lawyer could set me straight.

 

Sauce, yes she did

 

Threads have been merged, posts concerning the duplicate nature deleted.

 

Personally, I think this is a horrible idea that can potentially destroy everything I like about fanfics.

We live in the world where almost everything is about money and we can't change it. But the fanfiction is one of very few things that aren't about it. Sure, it was only that way because they couldn't be, but with this restriction it was about pure need to write something for yourself and your potential readers. No monetary greed involved, even if people still wanted at least a small recognition for their work.

If we start selling fanction, it can and probably will change, at least for some fandoms, and that's not good in my opinion. Especially when, as yak mentioned, the next logical step is to forbid the publication of free fanfiction. Because why anyone would buy it, unless it's from already established authors, when there are countless stories to read for free?

But it could go the other way and there will be no need to forbid it because almost nobody will write it for free. Everyone will want to make money out of it.

Of course, maybe it will not happen. Maybe the fanfiction will mostly stay the way it is while giving some people an easy way to make few bucks. But when money are suddenly involved in things that were for free before things usually take the worst possible turn for everyone. We will see how it will be this time.

 

If this took off within certain fandoms, it would allow some good authors to post there. Therefore we lose out on some epic stories simply because we don't want to purchase them? Fuck that I like my fics for free, I already pay for every other piece of entertainment these days.

This is just like paying 9.99 to "rent" a movie off HBO or XBL and never actually owning it in person. No thanks.

 

As other people have said, the biggest issue is free fanfiction. We have authors like GRRM who have been against fanfiction of his works, but nonetheless the internet is full of ASOIAF fics. Why? Because it's not really worth his publishing company to take a lawsuit against fanfiction writers. They're not losing potential revenue. It's not like people won't buy the books because of fanfiction. But suddenly if fanfiction becomes a potential revenue stream, then free fanfiction IS taking potential revenue and you can bet they'll try their best to stamp it out.

The attractiveness of internet fanfiction is the accessibility with minimal cost. I can open a fic, start reading, and drop it after a few chapters. If I'm really bored, I can open a fic that looks like I won't enjoy, but try it anyway. In popular fandoms, I can read several different takes on the same idea. Or even terribly written fics that nonethless, are entertaining. This doesn't require any real commitment from me, and is just a click of the mouse.

Now imagine that every time I read a fanfic I had to commit some money, go through a 'purchase' process and so on? I'd be probably spending a lot more time thinking hard about what fanfics I want to read. "This looks a bit iffy, I won't risk it." "I read something like this before, might have to pass." "Looks fun, but looks poorly written. I don't really want to pay money for this." Sure, quality of fanfiction might go up, but you lose that ability to be careless and casual with your choices. It'd basically kill all those guilty pleasure fics that end up sinking most of my time.

 

The issue with GRRM is a little off, since it was officially disallowed for the books. It's allowed now thanks to the TV show, which bypasses GRRM completely. Plus, the issue isn't the cost of lawsuits. A takedown letter is more than enough, either to the author or the host. No fanfiction site or writer is willing to throw down in court, so the threat is sufficient(similar to the copyright trolls' mass letters to pirates).

 

Disclaimers on the top of a fanfic don't mean shit. You can disclaim all you want, it doesn't mean anything.

Authors can be pissed all the want or disallow fanfiction of their works all they want. It also doesn't mean shit. Copyright laws just don't work that way. Fair use and derivative works (like fanfiction) are protected. If an author doesn't like that, well, that's most unfortunate.

 

Don't delude yourself. Under USA law, Fanfiction is copyright in infringements with a handful of exceptions. Anything in the public domain is fair game, a small minority might get by under parody and a handful of fandoms allow fanfiction (and by allow I mean a proper legal document, like Butcher releasing his work under a Creative Commons licence allowing the creation of derivative works, not an off hand statements made by an author in some interview) but the rest? It exists at sufferance and nothing more.

 

What's the current status of donations anyway?
Can a fanfic author put a donate button next to their work?

EDIT: Nevermind, Glimmervoid clarified that pretty much.

 

Someone's been following the MoR events haven't they?

Edit: I'm guessing a few other's have done this, but MoR is the most publicized one.