5 replies to this topic

[tricksie]

So Amazon is developing an area to sell fanfic on the kindle, with royalties going to the original creator as well as the fanfic author. Works over 10,000 words would give ff author a 35% cut.

"Worlds joins Kindle Singles and Kindle Serials as a way for authors to earn money from digital publishing, and the best part is that in this case you don’t even have to be all that creative – the idea is to let fans create stories around original properties from other authors, offering them up for purchase on the Kindle book store. Amazon then pays out royalties to both the original rights holder, as well as to the fan fiction author, with the author making around 35 percent of all net revenue for works over 10,000 words."

Check it out: Amazon Debuts Kindle Worlds to Sell Fanfic

So...would you pay for fanfic?

And is this a deal so that people like Stephanie Meyers ("Twilight") can potentially earn a slice of royalties from the offspring of their works, like "50 Shades of Grey," born as a "Twilight" fanfic, now a worldwide best-seller opted for a movie.

And will this lead to more regulation of fanfic — ie. more accountability for fanfic authors if they ever want to take their fanfic, strip out the borrowed characters publish it as ocs?

I guess what I'm saying is I wonder who will benefit more from this? The individual fanfic writer or the publishers, brand-name authors and dealmakers on the other end? (Like, what if the fanfic version of "50 Shades of Grey" was published through Kindle? Would the author be yoked to those agreements when her novel went big time?)

[desaix]

If someone wanted to monetize fanfic in this way, it should pretty much be free with donations allowed for quality work (from which the original source's writer would get their cut), but that's not what Amazon is doing, and even if it was what they were doing it wouldn't work because so few readers are interested in fanfics for the series they've licensed. I think it's a trial program, and unless Amazon picks up some better rights for it the trial is going to plummet like a rock -- maybe a lot of people trying to write for them, but so very, very few will actually buy fanfic sight unseen, especially for those series.

[Derock]

I heard about this when reading the current issues Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic series having when one of the ex-writers trying to sue the company AND Sega to get "royalities" for his creations. 

 

Apparently, it is a attempt for fanfic writers/artists to get money and avoid being sue for copyright infridgement by the original author/company.

[jworks]

Interesting. At first read 35% seemed a small cut but considering it would be the only legal way to monetize your fanfiction work it is pretty dang good. I may be extreme in opinion, but in the first place it hardly seems fair for a fanfiction writer to make any money off of it. This is coming from the perspective of being a content creator myself. I absolutely adore fanfiction and fanart and make it myself, but making money off of what somebody else has already worked hard to build is iffy to me.

 

Now this would still be cool if the original author benefited too, but by "original rights holder" are they referring to the publisher?

[Smiter]

This is an interesting development, and I'm not sure where I stand on this matter.

 

On the one hand, it would enable fanfic authors to get their stories out there, and readers could enjoy more of the series/characters they like.

 

On the other hand, what about editorial/quality control?  There are some wonderfully talented fanfic writers out there, but there are also some really bad ones.  People would feel horribly ripped off if they paid for a story with horrendous spelling and grammar.

 

I'm in agreement with jworks, making money out of fanworks just feels... iffy.

[Cloud]

I'd hate to be the guy sorting through all the slash fics (male or female).

 

Unless they're banning M rated fics.