EBOOK REVOLUTION CONTINUES: Amazon To Build A Market For Fan Fiction.
Megan McArdle is interested.
Up until now, most fan fiction has been in a sort of legal limbo–regular publishers won’t touch it because of copyright infringement. Amazon proposes a way to get around that problem: cut the rights holders in on the deal. Kindle Worlds will pay authors a lower royalty than writers get for normal ebooks, with some of that profit diverted to the person who create the world.
It’s a brilliant and even fair solution. Some writers are better world-builders than others; why not let them profit off of their imaginations, while also compensating the folks who can do interesting things within that world? Of course, some fan fiction purists may be disappointed in the control that this will give the world-builders over what is done with their work. Amazon will not, for example, publish pornographic or highly explicit fiction. Under those rules, 50 Shades of Grey would never have been published; it started out as slash fiction set in the Twilight universe.
Still, as a writer I’m always glad to see more ways to compensate writers. And as a business writer, I’m excited to see how much innovation is taking place in this new market.
Some related thoughts from John Scalzi, who’s not quite as positive.
I don’t like the terms that are on offer here. And of course I have my own things to write. Likewise, I would caution anyone looking at this to be aware that overall this is not anywhere close to what I would call a good deal. Finally, on a philosophical level, I suspect this is yet another attempt in a series of long-term attempts to fundamentally change the landscape for purchasing and controlling the work of writers in such a manner that ultimately limits how writers are compensated for their work, which ultimately is not to the benefit of the writer. This will have far-reaching consequences that none of us really understand yet.
The thing that can be said for it is that it’s a better deal than you would otherwise get for writing fan fiction, i.e., no deal at all and possibly having to deal with a cranky rightsholder angry that you kids are playing in their yard. Is that enough for you? That’s on you to decide.
Indeed.