Amazon selling fanfic may sound a great idea, but the whole point of these stories is they go where the powers that be won't
It's been a tumultuous week for internet fandom. First, Tumblr was bought by Yahoo (fandom lives on Tumblr, nestled down amongst the cat Gifs), then, the real game changer, kaboom!, Amazon's Kindle Worlds.
Amazon selling fan fiction? That hasn't happened since 2006, when an over-eager fan listed their self-published Star Wars novel without a care for how George Lucas might feel about it.
But that was then. Star Wars is now owned by Disney and fan fiction (fanfic) or money is going legit. Kindle Worlds is "the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so". Cue a bazillion tweets and blogposts. Getting paid for writing fanfic? After all these years that dream is finally real?
However, that royalty offered is a lot less than Amazon's normal cut for other self-published authors who use their own characters. Franchise owners will be getting a chunky cut and authors also won't own the copyright to their ideas. If the owners of the characters you play with produce something similar and earn squillions, you'll apparently have no comeback, it seems.
Kindle Worlds licenses use from the copyright holders. So far the only licensed works come through Alloy Entertainment, which own The Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl. Presumably there are more to come. The whole thing depends on offering one of the heavy hitters of fandom, such as Harry Potter, Star Trek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This licensing is, of course, what makes the whole thing legit, but derivative works produced under licence already exist. Look at the output of audio adventures titan Big Finish. And fan fiction isn't really the same thing as this stuff.
As Amazon puts it, "Amazon Publishing will work with (the rights holders) to establish content guidelines that balance flexibility and openness for writers with what's reasonable for the franchise". And doing what's reasonable for the franchise isn't really what fan fiction is about. Fanfic is more, "whatever, franchise, I'm doing this". In fan fiction there are no rules. And here, oh, are there ever going to be rules.
Fan fiction exists to create what the original work is failing to offer. An obvious example is slash fan fiction, which responds to the unequal numbers of male and female characters, and lack of gay people, in popular culture by creating stories where two male characters get it together. Often in very explicit ways.
Authors might be pro-fanfic, including the holy trinity of JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Joss Whedon, but getting that nod isn't the same thing as being rubber-stamped by the powers that be. Licensed by the franchise means rules will keep fans stuck making more of the same stuff. Fan fiction can't play nice with the franchise. Because the whole point is it goes where the franchise can't or won't go.
Fan fiction is a place of wing fic (an alternate universe where the characters have wings) and Mpreg (an alternate universe where men get pregnant – like something from Norman Tebbit's worst nightmares). You can't package up a place like that and sell it.
And telling and retelling stories, however we want to, is bigger even than a giant like Amazon. Fanfic existed before the internet and it will still be around when we live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. After all, it's created enough of them.
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
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