Obviously, you should do whatever you think is best for your situation, but my objections to Alloy are *not* that people are getting paid for their fanfic, but that they are not getting paid fairly. I have a hard time imagining anyone breaking even by writing Vampire Diaries ebooks, given the terms of the deal, especially since most Vampire Diaries fans can easily find similar quality fanfiction for free. (There are over 25,000 Vampire Diaries stories on ff.net and over 2,500 on the AO3.)
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.
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branchandroot
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.