monanotlisa

Amazon and Alloy Entertainment, the production company behind Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars, have entered into a partnership allowing people to self-publish and sell fanfic for those books. Amazon promises they will have similar licenses for other properties. Read more here and here.

They're offering royalties of 20% or 35%, depending on length, and will set your price for you in a range between $0.99 and $3.99 per story. (They're also making some high-handed claims to the original content in those stories, so be sure to read every word.)

I have never taken issue with people making money off their fanfic or other derivative work, although usually what you see is authorized tie-ins or people "filing off the serial numbers" so that it gets rewritten from fanfic to "original," like E.L. James did with 50 Shades of Grey.

This, I think, is something a bit different. For one thing, it opens up the copyright licensing to a much broader group. I'm suspicious that Amazon is starting with teen-oriented dramas, i.e. targeting younger fans and customers who maybe have no idea how much fanfic is already free on the Internet, or how a lot of older fans view fanfic as a "gift economy."

Mostly though I'm just curious how much profit and participation this program is actually going to get. I'm sure authors will want to participate, but will readers really pay? Just look at these content guidelines, which are fairly limiting. The whole thing strikes me as impractical from a business perspective, but then again, many fans do seem happy to give financial support to authors they love when those authors start charging money for writing that was previously free (E.L. James, Cassandra Claire, S.U. Pacat being some examples that come to mind). And there may also be some purchaser bias in people thinking that if something has a price tag on it, it's superior in quality to free stuff.

Anyway, I've been surprised by fandom often enough before, so who knows?

Content Guidelines for Kindle Worlds

• Pornography: We don't accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.
• Offensive Content: We don’t accept offensive content, including but not limited to racial slurs, excessively graphic or violent material, or excessive use of foul language.
• Illegal and Infringing Content: We take violations of laws and proprietary rights very seriously. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that their content doesn't violate laws or copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other rights.
• Poor Customer Experience: We don't accept books that provide a poor customer experience. Examples include poorly formatted books and books with misleading titles, cover art, or product descriptions. We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience.
• Excessive Use of Brands: We don’t accept the excessive use of brand names or the inclusion of brand names for paid advertising or promotion.
• Crossover: No crossovers from other Worlds are permitted, meaning your work may not include elements of any copyright-protected book, movie, or other property outside of the elements of this World.

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http://www.avclub.com/articles/may-22-2013,98022/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=type_savage-love

http://xkcd.com/1215/