the delphic expanse

Interesting new development. Amazon's Latest Venture: Fan Fiction

Excerpt:

Beloved novels, games, even TV series have spawned pages upon pages of fan fiction — much of it unauthorized and unsellable. Amazon is hoping to create a new model to commercialize the genre. The company announced Wednesday that it has partnered with Alloy Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. that produces novels tied to its television shows, to authorize and compensate writers who produce fan fiction related to certain shows.

Amazon writers are now authorized to publish and sell fan fiction on Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diairies, with additional licenses on the way. Writers are encouraged to self-publish their works — of at least 10,000 words — in the Kindle Store.

Writers who meet those qualifications will be eligible to earn 35% of every sale made (and 20% of works between 5,000 and 10,000 words). The rights holders of the original works — in this case, Alloy Entertainment — will also receive a cut of every sale made.

If this works, I wonder if CBS and Simon & Schuster - and the parts of the Star Trek franchise responsible for the novels - would consider this model as well?

It might open up more than just one new can of worms, legal and otherwise, not to mention if there is going to be any kind of quality control over what is offered for sale.

It could also shift the perspective of fanfic writers as writing for enjoyment but not profit if some authors do seek to benefit monetarily from their fanfic.

I'm going to have to think hard about this one before I come to any conclusion.

What I'm getting out of this is that Alloy Entertainment will "authorize" certain writers to do this. Authors who meet the "qualifications" (and I'm not at all clear on what those are) will be eligible for compensation. What are we talking here? Pennies a fic? Dollars a fic? What is the pricing structure likely to be? Since a great deal of what gets loaded up to ff.net or AO3 involves porn and/or slash, will that really be allowed? What about "real person fiction" (as in the actors "interacting" in questionable ways with their characters)? I'll be interested in seeing more about this because I can think of a few writers whose stories would likely be approved, but for most fanfic writers (myself included), no way!

I've been thinking about this one most of the afternoon, ever since I heard about it. I still can't come to a decision.

Part of the allure of fan fiction, IMNSHO, is the fact that by necessity it is strictly an amateur venture (in the sense of it being unpaid; that's not a comment about quality). People who write it have to do it for the love of whatever universe they're writing in, because it can't possibly turn into anything else. That leads to a sense of community and to a willingness to try new things that the canonical writers might stay away from because they're afraid of losing audience or sponsorship or whatever.

And I can't help but to remember that I was right there with the folks who vilified E.L. James for the "50 Shades of Grey" stunt. In my case, it was primarily because she didn't even acknowledge that it was fanfic to begin with. (She may have since; I haven't checked.) In addition, the minute someone starts mixing something up with profit-making, the profiteers show up trying to earn a quick buck. That cheapens things for everyone.

Yet at the same time, many of us fanfic writers spend an awful lot of our time working on our projects. Why shouldn't we get paid for our efforts? And, if we do, wouldn't that help to legitimize the idea of fanfic in the eyes of all those who dismiss it? Where does this fit in with the new wave of "indie" authors anyway?

I'm with Glory. For right now, no how, no way. But I'm concerned about what effect this will eventually have on fanfic. Will licensing mean that unauthorized fic starts getting cease-and-desist letters again? Or will this simply add to the mosaic and allow for some quality control? In other words, is it going to ruin it anyway?

Lots to think about here.

This raises really interesting question, to be sure both good and bad.

There's the question of what this means to the very definition of fan fiction, especially in the light of a recent article where the journalist did some extensive interviewing of fan fiction authors - and found that 90+% of them wrote purely as a hobby with no intention of seeking publication. It was sorta like... flag football. I.e. It was a relaxing fun you shared with like-minded friends and not meant to be anything more than that. (Which is surprising to so many non fan fiction writers because so many people can't imagine WRITING as a "relaxing and fun" pursuit. To them, it's work. But that's beside the point.) For so very long, fan fiction has been defined by the idea that "we're not making any money off it" and "we do it simply for the love of it". I think this heralds a change in the definition of fan fiction. I.e. what really makes it "fan fiction" if it's authorized and has assistance to be published, distributed and make money? What makes that any different from previously published "official" or "pro" fiction? What does it mean to be "fan fiction" in this context?

Then there's the change to the industry. I can see how publishers would want to tap into fan faction as a new source of material and monetize some of it. In fact, given the high profile of some fan-produced media (like the fan-produced webisodes that got Koenig and Takei to take part) I suspect this may come Star Trek's way very soon. That being said, it seems pretty obvious to me that only a small fraction of fan fiction would end up being authorized - any particular franchise that decided to go that route would want to protect the their brand and exercise some control over the creative direction of anything "official". Were Star Trek to go that route, then yes, I would expect that several genres of ST fanfic would not be a part of that. More than likely, the old rules for submitting manuscripts would reappear - perhaps with some tweaks - and those would be the basis of what would be authorized. I wonder then, what would happen to the official line of novels. Would they continue?

I suspect "unauthorized" fan fiction won't disappear anytime soon, and community will always be available around it, though I do share lfvoy's concern about the possibility of cease-and-desist letters. I'm not sure how this sort of change would shake out, but my gut feeling is that this would simply mean some new forms of community and an extension of fan fiction into a yet another new realm - from the old days of mimeographed stuff, to hand created and physically mailed zines, to e-mail and internet archives, to PDFs and files downloadable to an e-reader. (In fact, I'd love to see some DE fan fic authors available in that format. I'm learning the technical end of how to create those sort of things right now. It'd be nice to have a folder on my Kindle with nothing but ENT fiction in it, to read when I'm on vacation.

Sorry, y'all, but I find this sort of stuff utterly fascinating - it's my training as an anthropologist.

Just for laughs, I looked up the fandoms named in the article to see how big they were on AO3 (and I could do the same on ff.net as it might be different). Probably because I don't have cable, the only one I'd heard of was Pretty Little Liars because it was mentioned here that Mr. Trinneer had a guest role in it. Pretty Little Liars had 156 entries. Gossip Girl had 487. Vampire Diaries had 2657. In contrast, BBC Sherlock had 31,076 and Harry Potter 40,095. Some caveats: I said entries because not all are necessarily written stories. There may be artwork, podcasts of stories and vids. Because of the tagging methods, there may be more entries for any given fandom. I looked for the more generic, but for Sherlock Holmes, for example, there are also entries for all media types, the PBS series with Jeremy Brett, the Downey movies, etc.

My point being that extremely popular fandoms might not go that way if the copyright holders don't agree. Some, like Anne Rice, don't want fan fiction at all and say so in the "rules" for posting at ff.net. Some may tolerate it as long as no money is being made. I haven't seen/heard of the Tolkein estate asking that no fan fiction be posted, but they have sued Sir Peter Jackson over contractural arrangements dealing with who got how much for what.

EntAllat, is MOBI or EPUB something that would work on your reader? I don't have one or a smart phone, so I assume these formats belong to those type of devices. You can download from AO3 in those formats as well as PDF and HTML (which I do recognize). There are just over 900 entries for Star Trek: Enterprise. Quite a few are Mareel's as she is working on building/rebuilding Reed's Armoury (which is how I learned of AO3). But the entries aren't exclusive to that.

Glory1863 wrote:EntAllat, is MOBI or EPUB something that would work on your reader? I don't have one or a smart phone, so I assume these formats belong to those type of devices. You can download from AO3 in those formats as well as PDF and HTML (which I do recognize). There are just over 900 entries for Star Trek: Enterprise. Quite a few are Mareel's as she is working on building/rebuilding Reed's Armoury (which is how I learned of AO3). But the entries aren't exclusive to that.

Oh yes, though I meant more "generally speaking" about more ENT fan fic being available that way as a rule. Just about any format works for me, since I have multiple devices that can read eReader formats.

(Speaking of: It's great that other archives and some fanfic 'zines and authors are starting offer these formats - I'm hoping to eventually help out the members of the DE do the same here! At work I'm learning how to design, edit and code EPUB 3, MOBI, iBook, AZW and KF8 in order to make some of our training and documentation available through eReaders. The last two are proprietary and for the older and newer Kindles, respectively, while the previous two are more open and widely used on all kinds of devices. iBook is Apple's, obviously. When I'm a little more confident about what I'm doing, I'm happy to help DE folks try out the formats with their own fics.)

I'm wondering if this move to sell fanfic is really a corporate move to control the cost of talent. In almost any industry, the cost of labor is among the highest, if not the highest, cost of doing business. In so many other industries, the desire to maximize profit and/or undercut the competition takes the form of pay and benefit stagnation or outright reduction for the workers. Management can break the union or be non-union to begin with; they can bring in foreign workers on special visas who will happily take less for the chance just to be here and, as a last resort, they can pack it all up and beam it to someplace where there are minimal to no worker protections at all.

That all may be a little bit harder, but not impossible, in the creative fields. So if you're management at an entertainment conglomerate, why not troll the fanfic sites and use them like major league baseball uses its farm system? You'd even be one up on baseball because you aren't paying to maintain the farm system. You find talent that already has a following and may be looking for that big break. They'll probably accept that they have to pay some dues before seeking the compensation level of the name pro writers. If you're really lucky, they're BS hobbyists (to quote someone here) who really do it for fun and any money at all will go to charity because for them it's not about the money. But when the first wave of "semi-pros" (for lack of a better word) get to the point of expecting pro compensation, if you've kept your farm system open (no cease and desist letters), you can replace them for less the same way you replaced your original high-priced pro writers. And every once in awhile, someone like the author of 50 Shades or J. K. Rowling will come along. Not often enough to break the bank, just often enough to keep people believing it could happen to them. It works for the Lotto.

Glory1863 wrote:I'm wondering if this move to sell fanfic is really a corporate move to control the cost of talent.

This may not be far off, or perhaps an eventual end.

When a mutual acquaintance went to my friend for advice on publishing a story they'd written, they mentioned Amazon self-publishing as a last resort. After researching what my friend said could loosely be called a contract (terms of service), she began a very long rant describing how the author is not compensated anywhere near fairly, and it seemed the only recourse available for the author was to remove the book.

Now, this seems all well and good for a fan fiction author that's thrilled to get anything back when they do it as a labor of love, but will this bleed into commissioned work for authors? It seems like a razor-thin line that could be easily crossed.

Possibly, but I doubt it. I would think that any company that failed to compensate the big-name-players in the hopes that they could save money by relying on a cadre of unknowns and small-potatoes-earners, is going to go under themselves. Not everybody - and more like 99.9% of all who try - will NOT become the next "50 Shades". If they're lucky, they'll make a few bucks and that'll be it. No publisher is going to survive on that kind of return, no matter how many offerings they make.

I think of it like actors, rather than writers. Just because there's zillions of folks who'd be happy to be in a movie as an extra, for nothing more than minimum wage or even for free, doesn't mean that Will Smith can't still negotiate a several million dollar package when he takes on a role. And just because there are hundreds of thousands of working actors who have to have a day job to make ends meet, doesn't mean that a name-actor can't still get a pretty sweet deal when signing on as a series regular. Nor would most production companies take the risk of relying solely on unknown, green actors to carry their company/project while trying to save money by going with name-actors and their increased cost. (The cheapness of reality TV not-withstanding. That's a whole different kettle of fish.) Similarly, an already published author brings name recognition and marketing clout to the table. That's still worth compensation, and still something that can be negotiated and haggled over from both sides.

What I bet it means is that the offering of "pro" fic gets smaller, is published less often and that it becomes even harder to break into than it's ever been. You'd have to be an already published author, with a proven track record and a string of successes behind you to even be considered and, in fact, the publishers may move to closing off submissions entirely. I.e. they might begin to approach certain authors to write for a TV-series spin off, rather than making submissions open to any who qualify. (The Stargate series of novels is like this. They don't accept manuscripts and you can't even query them unless you've already published a novel or two or ten.) That way, the risk they take on in putting money behind marketing efforts is minimized.

No, I think it's more likely that publishers are looking at the possibility of tapping into a new revenue stream if they offer fan fiction, because it's a ready-made "long]/url] [url=http://google.about.com/od/googleforbusiness/f/longtailfaq.htm]tail" of niche material - one that's also firmly ensconced in Internet culture and not dependent on the physical bookstore space that's rapidly disappearing. (For example, Penguin books was hit hard with the demise of Borders bookstores.) Long tail niche business models are risky too, since there's so very little earned on each unit - you need a LOT of unique offerings to make it work. But that uniqueness defines fan fiction.