FanLib Invitation. One of the select few. Like hell.

[icarus]

Drawing on the FanLib discussion, I have to say that I was invited to archive my fanfiction on FanLib back in March.

Hi Icarus,

I saw some of your Stargate fan fiction online and really enjoyed your writing. I work for a brand-new fan fiction website called FanLib.com and my colleagues and I want it to be the ultimate place for talented writers like you. In case you're wondering, FanLib's not new to fan fiction. Since 2001, they've been producing really cool web events with people like CBS, Showtime and HarperCollins to bring fan creativity into the big leagues (see below for some links).

We're impressed by your writing and impact in the fan fiction community and we value your opinion. That's why we're inviting you to be among the first to experience FanLib.com. As a member of our Beta Team (not like "beta reader" but "beta software" that's still in development), you'll get an exclusive peek at what we're doing before we open the site to the general public.

Feel free to take a look around, upload some fics, maybe read and comment on a few. Do as much or as little as you like. On FanLib.com, you'll be able to connect with other first-rate writers like yourself, exchange ideas with the site creators, and get some of the fun stuff we're giving away to celebrate our launch.

Don't worry, you won't get spammed. We're not selling anything. We just want you to try the site and hopefully give us some feedback.

You'll need to use this special individual login to access the protected site:

http://beta.fanlib.com
Username: Icarus
Password: ****

(This is just to access the beta site and is separate from your site registration.)

We look forward to having you as a founding member. Together, we can create the greatest fan fiction site the web's ever seen!

Best,

Naomi
FanLib Beta Launch Coordinator
FanLib.com

Well, ain't that fine and dandy. I was "personally selected" because of my great writing. Why did that sound like a credit card offer? (Bring fanfiction to the big leagues? Really. You're going to what -- publish it? Hmm. Just looks like another archive to me.) I scanned through the possible places they could have gotten my name at random.

Remember. I'm an author who posts everywhere. If anyone's going to turn up on a random search, it'll be me.

Then I remembered the Gen drabble I posted at, aha, Gateworld. Gotcha.

Curious, I checked FanLib out. At the time, they had only four authors on the archive. Three were so-called "Multi-Fandom Authors." There was something strange about these authors. First off, I'd never heard of them. Okay, okay, I don't know every author in fandom, and I'm certainly out of step with the immense Harry Potter fandom. But Stargate Atlantis, while prolific, hasn't been around that long, and they wrote slash. You'd think I'd at least run across a multi-fandom author on sga_flashfic. Huh. Odd. I let that go.

Then each author had exactly two stories in each fandom they wrote for. Now, usually how an author becomes multi-fandom is they are a little obsessive. They'll go through phases where they write massive numbers of stories in a fandom and then flit to another fandom that they'll flirt with for a while. But, hey, maybe they were only uploading their two favorite stories.

Then I read some of the stories. They weren't bad. Whoever wrote them definitely had taken some creative writing classes. But they had that kind of awkwardness and close ties to canon that you see in an author's first story in a fandom. All of them. They started slow and uncomfortably. One had Rodney flipping a coin (and described the coin in vast detail) a reference to "Rising," in a Rodney/Carson story. I dunno. They felt forced.

They didn't reference fanon at all. It was like these authors existed in a vacuum. A multi-fandom author is usually connected to fandom in some way.

I decided that the owners of FanLib had hired some interns (okay, "hired" for an intern implies pay) to write some "fanfiction" stories to seed their archive. It annoyed me.

Then I was annoyed at the "bright colors!" and "bold stars!" layout. What is this, kindergarten? They didn't even know the average age of a fanfiction writer. The site seemed marketed to high school students. I contemplated sending them a scathing (if politely worded) email on how poor their market research has been, but I decided I didn't want to help them.

But here's the weird part: of those four authors, only cpt_ritter is still around, and cpt_ritter wasn't one of the "multi-fandom" authors. Once they got their archive started, they pulled their "seed" authors out.

Now I'll post my stories anywhere. I've joked that I'll staple them to telephone poles. But even I draw the line here. These guys were dishonest and manipulative. I don't trust them.



ETA: I agree with astolat: It's time for a truly all-inclusive multi-fandom archive. Now there was one called The Archive At The End Of The Universe. Let me see if that's still in business.

Comments

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

I've seen that banging around LJ the last couple of days and somewhere I found a really interesting (read apalling) analysis of their TOS.

Let me see, if I can find it again, but what it came down to was, that they reserved the right to not post, delete or worst of all edit any fanfic on their site. And should they get sued for copyright infringement, they are not protecting the authors. No, the authors will have to protect them.

This whole thing stinks, if you ask me.

[slashophile.livejournal.com]

:snorts: I make it a rule that if I feel dirty after reading an e-mail, don't have anything to do with it. They sound like pimps or some such.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Doesn't it just make you squirm?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, it smells to high heaven. That's just what we need. Fanfiction under the control of publishers.

I just read stewardess's TOS analysis (http://stewardess.livejournal.com/253154.html). Yeah. Not surprised.

Icarus

[blackletter]

The Archive At The End Of The Universe is indeed still in business. That's where I archive my stuff. ('Cause where else could I archive all in one place Historical Person Slash, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Discworld, and Outlander fic with ratings ranging from PG to NC-17? And if I ever wanted to write chan (I don't think I will; it's not my thing, but you never know...) I could archive that there too with no fuss.)

It's not a large archive, but it's suited my needs.

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

Yep, I'd read the one by angiepen.

The audacity of these guys really is something else. How they openly admit that they want to make money off the site and the stories on it and yet not a single penny will ever get to the writers.

[kres.livejournal.com]

*facepalm*

Good call.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Is it still run by painless_j (I think I've got that right). Could it handle the pile-on if fans from outside Harry Potter really started using it?

The other option is Skyehawke, too.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My favorite lines from this letter keep changing. Right now it's a toss-up between "exchange ideas with the site creators" and "you'll be able to connect with other first-rate writers like yourself."

This thing's really skeevy.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy begordy. Seriously. This whole thing stinks a lot worse than the "sponsored communities" LJ thing. Blech.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The ads are new. That was the one good thing I saw when I checked it out in March.

I was sure they were going to use it for the ad revenue, but there weren't any. I decided it was some kind of marketing campaign for Harper-Collins, trying to get kids involved in reading, market their own books or somesuch. Now I think it's all about the ad revenue.

Icarus

[cofax7]

Huh. Now, I got one of those letters, I believe, but I've never posted at Gateworld. I think they went to a bunch of different places.

Still, skeevy in the extreme, and clearly unfamiliar with this end of fandom.

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

Well, if nothing else, it's a challenge to fan creativity. We'll have to come up with a nick name worse than Pit of Voles.

[jackoweskla.livejournal.com]

The Archive's run by fluffyllama, maeglinyedi, and nimori, I believe. It's an automated eFiction site, so I'm sure it'd be able to take the influx of other fandoms. I put all of my fic on there from multiple fandoms (except bandfic, because The Archive doesn't allow RPF unless the members involved have been deceased... some number of years I'm not recalling), and I've never had any problems. It's really user-friendly.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Wandered over after you linked in a comment. [wave] It's interesting to see a detailed response from someone who was actually headhunted. And ROFL! on their "seed" authors. [eyeroll] Good grief.

Regarding the hideous site desigh, my theory is that the place looks like it was designed for teenyboppers because it was. We -- active fanfic fans, the people who are already reading and writing fanfic -- are not their primary market. We're not the ones who are going to make them back the "millions" of dollars they've invested in the site, plus a significant profit. The bottom line is that there aren't enough of us. Fanfic fandom is a very small slice of general fandom (defining "fandom" here as the set of all active fans -- people who go to conventions or write fic or join clubs or do art or vids or make costumes or publish/read non-fic fanzines, etc.), which itself is a very small slice of the much larger number of people who watch the movies and TV shows and read the books and comics. There's no way in hell that fanfic fandom, that small slice of a small slice, will be enough of a market for them, even if they do institute the fees I suspect they'll charge once their site really opens. (Note that there are two mentions in their TOS of their "fees," and also that the site is still in beta.)

FanLib has stated straight out in their recent FAQ that they've invested "millions" on their business. That's a lot of ad clicks. In order to come even close to making their money back, much less making the sort of profits that would interest the kinds of people they have on their board (venture capitalists, for example, don't show interest until you start talking serious profits) they have to be going after that largest group -- the people who currently watch the shows and movies, and read the books and comics, but are not currently active in fandom. These are people who've never read fanfic, probably never even heard of it (which is why their press release puts "fandom" in quotes, as though it were some new word they'd never heard before) and more importantly, these are the people who don't know that there's more fanfic than any one person could read in their lifetime available online for free.

Remember their babble about "bringing fanfic to the masses?" They need the masses -- preferably the ignorant ones -- to make their investment back.

They're going after the MySpace generation and they probably have marketing weasels who told them that Generation Y is into crowded, busy web pages with lots of bright colors, contrast, blinking and animation.

We all (well, most of us -- I remember seeing a comment from one person saying she likes it) think it's ugly because it wasn't designed for us. And they didn't bother to find out what fanfic fans want, what our concerns are, what issues we think are important, what are values and sensibilities are, because we're not their target market. All they need us for is to prime the pump with enough fic to make it look full and busy when they open the doors for the real audience. If they can get some of us to stick around and keep posting then that's great but if they do manage to bring in the thundering hordes, I imagine they'll find enough people in that crowd who think it'd be cool to try their hand at writing fanfic that they should be able to keep the flow going at a reasonable rate, and the quality really doesn't matter.

Think of a used bookstore -- most of what's there is crap and they don't really expect to sell it. But when you're starting a new used bookstore, you go to garage sales and flea markets and library sales and anyplace else that sells books cheap, preferably by the carton, because if your shelves aren't full then no one will come in. It takes only the occasional gem in the trashpile to keep customers coming back.

[Continued on Next Rock...]

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

[...Continued from Previous Rock]

And the fact that they're going after people who've never read fanfic before is also to their advantage -- most people who have no experience of fanfic (or of anything else, really) are incredibly undiscriminating. The newbies are the ones who think Mary Sues are cool and have no clue about decent characterization and couldn't tell you what a plot is if you whacked them over the head with one, and the vast majority of their target audience is going to be newbies.

They talk about having the "best stories" but that's just marketing hype. I went through all the LOTR members and didn't recognize any of them either.

And none of this would have me doing anything more than rolling my eyes if it weren't for the fact that they're going to be shining a very bright splotlight on fanfic fandom, before the masses and to the media, which is quite likely to force that test case we've all been chatting about on and off. If they end up crashing and burning in a courtroom they're likely to take all the rest of us with them. That pisses me off. [sigh]

Angie

[astolat]

Wow, unbelievable. And I bet you're right about them "seeding" the archive.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I tell you, if they'd really read one of my stories, they would've mentioned a name. I'm still picking out favorite lines. There's this prize:

"We're impressed by your writing and impact in the fan fiction community"

How would they know?

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Where do you think they checked? Wraithbait? Oh. I post at ff.net -- okay, I post everywhere else, too. I'm curious (since I'm wrong) about triangulating this.

Not one sincere word in the entire thing. It really annoyed me that they implied some sort of legitimacy. They're not doing anything different from any other archive (except making money).

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I wasn't entirely sure, but when all three of the fishy ones disappeared, leaving the first poster (obviously a real fan)? Uh-huh. No one wants to be the first author to post.

I'm glad you stopped by.

I know of a multi-fandom archive that's already in operation: The Archive At The End Of The Universe (http://www.the-archive.net/). It's by invitation (though it's easy to get an invite) and run by fluffyllama, maeglinyedi, and nimori (sane, long-term fandom people; I know nimori, so I can vouch for her, and I've seen fluffyllama around in the Stargate fandom). I don't know about their bandwidth, but it's worth a look. I can drop nimori a note if it's what you're looking for.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Cool. I have some stories there though I've never kept up on posting. If it's what people are looking for, I'll drop a note to nimori to see if they think they could handle a sudden jump in bandwidth useage.

Icarus

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

thanks for the info.... the one question i'm waiting for their faq to answer, or anyone to answer (and i am in no way up on all the discussion about this; i learned everything i know about FabLib from reading the LJs of cathexys and cofax7 until yours) is this:

How the hell are they dealing with the copyright issues if they have mainstream publishers signed on? Has HarperCollins and the other big publishers they namedrop decided fanfic is not, after all, copyright violation and most definitively falls under the "fine art" exception? come on! until someone figures this out, archives like this could suffer napster's fate, and take the authors down with them. has anyone said anything about this? how can a big publishing house like Harper Collins sign up?

Sincerely,

Confused Princess

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I agree with you 100% on the target market. It's pretty clear who they're looking for, and I've run into some of those kids on the periphery of fandom.

What annoys me is the "award-winning" labels on some of these stories. It just... bums me out to have them representing what's out there in fanfiction.

As for the impending court case, I'm not sure they'd lose. They do have the spotlight on themselves, and they have deep pockets which is another temptation. But there's a difference between earning money through publishing sales and pop-up ad revenue. Also, fanfiction.net has been doing the same thing for years. (Probably where FanLib got the idea....)

What I'd like to see is that site bring in new writers and readers, and then have them bleed away to the real fanfiction sites.

Hey, do you think they'll really charge people to post their stories at some point?

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ooo! I have to check what cathexys has to say. She's always interesting.

angiepen combed through the TOS (http://angiepen.livejournal.com/38593.html?format=light) and it looks like what they've done is a nifty game of "blame the fanfic author." Those who post at FanLib are not only obligated to take the heat, they also are obligated to defend FanLib. I thought that was a nice twist.

What bugged me when I first saw it was FanLib's claiming all rights to fanfic posted there. Yeesh. So if I sawed off the serial numbers on my fanfic and got it published in a little magazine (which I just did this month) I'd be violating their rights to my story? Uh. No thank you.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah, Interesting bit o' news.

Apparently jdsampson, an employee of FanLib has been replying to people at fanthropology. She mentions that she was interested in Supernatural and Stargate fanfiction. I'm thinking she probably means she targeted SG-1 writers. That takes the wind out of the sails of this being a random pitch.

Icarus