![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusIn Kindle Worlds flourish hits every point where Amazon's new effort is different from Fanlib.
Except one.
Amazon agrees to compensate fanfic writers. Not Fanlib's vague "hey, we're connected to publishing companies that might, somehow, benefit you as a writer. We think. Use your imagination how!"
With Kindle Worlds there's actual cash money going to the fic writers.
Problems with it? Oh, heck yeah, I'm sure. I haven't researched it much yet (read: at all). But I'm willing to bet plenty of broke fic writers will be sniffing around this offer.
I'm tempted. Four years of working part time with no benefits? A temple where we're going to be doing practice outside with the cicadas? Yeah. Cautious. But interested. And I don't even write those fandoms.
I never expected anything like this, not in my wildest "the truth is we're out here" posts.
Personally, I credit The Organization of Transformative Works for the fast and recent shift in attitudes about fan writers, treating us as writers, wow.
Remember, it was only 2003 when Raincoast Books sent Cease & Desist orders to The Restricted Section for its NC-17 Harry Potter fic. In 2004, Yahoo Groups TOS'd one fanfic Yahoo Group after another, driving fans to Livejournal. In 2007 came Fanlib, which hoped to profit (from ads? it was never clear how) and exploit fanfic writers but viewed them as teenyboppers complete with their "Hey, Kids!" Disney layout. OTW got off the ground almost immediately afterward, and the archive went into beta testing in 2008.
By 2011, 50 Shades Of Gray was able to openly acknowledge its fanfic roots. That's a big change, very, very quickly. It's not all OTW. We have the aca-fen and new generation that's grown up on the internet coming of age. But I believe that the newly positive attitudes toward fanfic have a lot to do with the OTW.
I need to renew my membership.
ETA: Scalzi weighs in on the downsides for writers. His perspective is not the fanwriters, but the lowering of standards for prowriters. Right off the bat (I may change my mind), it seems to me that the prowriters need to stop sneering at the fanfic writers and include them in their union (how? I don't know how...) or risk watering down the protections that writers get in general. I'm pro-union and these are hard-won protections. We need to not have a lower class of writer called "fanfic writer" ripe for exploitation.
Here the work-for-hire authors who were contracted to participate ahead of the release weigh in. They consider it standard ghost writing and are pretty positive about their experience.
flourish hits every point where Amazon's new effort is different from Fanlib. Except one.
Amazon agrees to compensate fanfic writers. Not Fanlib's vague "hey, we're connected to publishing companies that might, somehow, benefit you as a writer. We think. Use your imagination how!"
With Kindle Worlds there's actual cash money going to the fic writers.
Problems with it? Oh, heck yeah, I'm sure. I haven't researched it much yet (read: at all). But I'm willing to bet plenty of broke fic writers will be sniffing around this offer.
I'm tempted. Four years of working part time with no benefits? A temple where we're going to be doing practice outside with the cicadas? Yeah. Cautious. But interested. And I don't even write those fandoms.
I never expected anything like this, not in my wildest "the truth is we're out here" posts.
Personally, I credit The Organization of Transformative Works for the fast and recent shift in attitudes about fan writers, treating us as writers, wow.
Remember, it was only 2003 when Raincoast Books sent Cease & Desist orders to The Restricted Section for its NC-17 Harry Potter fic. In 2004, Yahoo Groups TOS'd one fanfic Yahoo Group after another, driving fans to Livejournal. In 2007 came Fanlib, which hoped to profit (from ads? it was never clear how) and exploit fanfic writers but viewed them as teenyboppers complete with their "Hey, Kids!" Disney layout. OTW got off the ground almost immediately afterward, and the archive went into beta testing in 2008.
By 2011, 50 Shades Of Gray was able to openly acknowledge its fanfic roots. That's a big change, very, very quickly. It's not all OTW. We have the aca-fen and new generation that's grown up on the internet coming of age. But I believe that the newly positive attitudes toward fanfic have a lot to do with the OTW.
I need to renew my membership.
ETA: Scalzi weighs in on the downsides for writers. His perspective is not the fanwriters, but the lowering of standards for prowriters. Right off the bat (I may change my mind), it seems to me that the prowriters need to stop sneering at the fanfic writers and include them in their union (how? I don't know how...) or risk watering down the protections that writers get in general. I'm pro-union and these are hard-won protections. We need to not have a lower class of writer called "fanfic writer" ripe for exploitation.
Here the work-for-hire authors who were contracted to participate ahead of the release weigh in. They consider it standard ghost writing and are pretty positive about their experience.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 04:11 am (UTC)If you're interested in making money through self-publishing on Amazon, you might want to check out
http://eroticanons.dreamwidth.org/profile
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 04:36 am (UTC)Yes, this. The problem is that when you publish with Alloy, they own all your ideas, characters, etc. It's like someone asking if they can videotape your non-profit community choir and sell the tapes-- except they don't just take a cut of the profits from selling the tape, it's also in the contract that *now they own all your original songs* and can do whatever they want with them. And whatever future use they put them to, you *don't* get a cut, ever.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 05:11 am (UTC)Yeah, I kept reading. It's definitely a raw deal. I've applied to eroticanons, though I find that when I write original fic, it's never porn.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 05:39 am (UTC)My Buddhist temple got shut down by the county for mandatory renovations. I spent over a decade building the place. Short of selling my jewelry at a loss, I'm short of options. Learning the Vampire Diaries fandom and throwing Amazon some fic seems to be a better option than what I've got, which is zero. I was considering knitting Waldorf toys....
With Amazon, it's a bad deal, but my upfront costs are zero and demands on my time--which is at a premium, notice I haven't been around much, it's not because I haven't wanted to be--limited.
What are the time demands of self-publishing?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 07:15 am (UTC)I would bet that the time demands of self-publishing are not greater than the time demands of watching 89 episodes of Vampire Diaries episodes. You can even do it through Amazon-- note that they offer 80% of the profits, not 35%. You also retain ownership of the copyright on your work.
Obviously you should do whatever you think is best for your situation, but I would suggest (if you are willing to spend the equivalent of 89 hours on it anyway) that you spend that time catching up on some media source that is extremely popular and has a large fandom, but is already in the public domain (Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Sherlock Holmes, etc.) and write something based on that. It doesn't even have to involve a lot of original work-- those "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" books are just Jane Austen's exact words but with some monster scenes added in. And those were all very successful.
You could even write a non-fiction work with a Buddhist slant, like "A Buddhist Perspective on Sense and Sensibility." That'd have a unique, catchy hook that might get you some publicity and end up selling well. (There is actually already a quite interesting Sherlock Holmes goes to Tibet and meets Buddhists book that I bought and paid for-- and enjoyed! I thought it did a bit too much direct quoting of dialogue and description from Conan Doyle, but overall I really liked it and would enjoy reading something similar.)
So there's lots of other options besides Alloy's horrible deal. I wouldn't bother learning a whole new fandom just for a *terrible* deal when you could (if that's what you want to do) learn a whole new public domain fandom instead, and get a much better deal, and also a much larger audience-- like, I'll bet there are more people who would buy a lesbian romance based on Snow White or "Sense and Sensibility and Kittens" than there are people who would buy Vampire Diaries ebooks.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 07:19 am (UTC)I like your thoughts here.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 05:32 am (UTC)I'll look into the self-publishing, but I can't see myself writing erotica....
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 05:58 am (UTC)This isn't particularly fanfic-fandom related; it's an "authorized tie-in novel" maneuver that's capitalizing on the popularity of the word "fanfic" this year. I suspect it'll only allow stories that are more-or-less canon compliant, right down to the permitted pairings.
I think this is a way to scout for the next E.L. James, rather than "hey we could make money off fanfic." Also worth noting: the three universes currently under contract are all commercial properties, not individual ones--the authors are works-for-hire rather than copyright holders. Kindle Worlds may never be open to anything with a human copyright holder; the issue of moral rights and the potential for an author to rescind permission for the derivatives may be too much hassle.
Looking at the terms as a work-for-hire contract, it's not so bad... but it's still much worse terms than any normal publisher would offer.