Monday, May 27, 2013

Amazon/Fanfiction - PG (Warnings: Corporation!fic, DubCon)

(Don't worry if you don't get the title, it's mostly for my own chuckles. Though anyone who does get it...amirite?)

It seems that Amazon has made it possible to "publish" fanfiction.

I say "publish" because as seen in this article by John Scalzi, it doesn't really seem like the authors are going to be getting a lot of compensation here. Basically, if you as a fanfic author get your work produced by Amazon, you may only get paid for it once, because after that they own it and any of your new material that you make, and they have the right to publish it elsewhere without your consent or giving any compensation to you. It also doesn't seem like you'd be getting a paper version printed, so it's more of an e-publish situation.

As a bookseller, this effects me...not at all really. Not at the moment, based on what rights they have and the content they allow. I mean, shows/books like Pretty Little Liars didn't have media tie-in books anyways, so it's not really encroaching on my business. For those who aren't hip deep in bookselling, a media tie-in is a side story or a continuation of a world (usually a tv or movie world) through professional writers being paid to come up with something that then gets put on the shelf of a bookstore. A good example is Star Trek, which is a franchise that has quite a lot of novels associated with it. Star Wars, Halo, Doctor Who, all of these franchises have books for when you just can't wait for the next episode or the next film.

What's the difference between media-tie in and fanfiction? Not a lot, except that one is free on the internet where the authors don't get paid, and one is endorsed and authors are paid for by the franchise itself. You could argue that the ones being paid have higher quality since they get editors and stuff, but that's not always the case. The really big difference that I can see, is that in most cases the major content of the media tie-ins are directed and decided upon by the people in charge of those franchises. So when it is decided that Chewy should die, you know that decision isn't R.A. Salvatore's, although the details are left to him. There is a sense that the story is legitimate, not just something some random fan decided to go with. This explains why the books have the market that they do, and one I don't think is going to translate over to the fanfiction land.

Am I worried about what may happen if one of those franchises does get added? Maybe. But for me the big kicker is if they aren't allowing porn, I'm not overly concerned. Here's the thing, and it may sound strange coming from me, but extra content from a franchise is often consumed differently based on gender lines.* It is a commonly held belief that women both create and consume the majority of fanfiction. (I could find surprisingly few statistics on this, but this has been both my personal experience and there are some figures here and some scholarly opinions here.)  And as Cracked points out, the majority of fanfiction is...romantic in nature. So if Amazon isn't allowing erotic fanfiction, then they are taking out a huge portion of why women people read fanfiction in the first place.

Let's look at the most successful fanfiction publication to date, shall we? 50 Shades of Grey by E.L James, which is popular for a myriad of baffling reasons, but no one can deny the sex content. I would argue that it's because of the erotic content, and it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal if it wasn't in there. Then it would just be Twilight, set in an alternate universe where there is no magic. I know right? Who would read that? I feel then that female readers, who would generally be the ones to read fanfiction versus media tie-ins, wouldn't be as interested.

So I'm not really sure what, if anything, there is to get excited over. Unless Amazon a) gets the right to franchises that already have a market like although even that is no guarantee of success  or b) they allow erotic fanfiction. Though even if either or both of those things happen, with the terms of service the way they are I'm pretty sure most fanfic writers are gonna take a pass. And I would encourage them to do so, because that seems like a pretty shitty deal.

Nice try Amazon, I see where you were going with it, just maybe get a beta before you try again.

*Men do read fanfiction. I have seen them at it! But gender constructs being what they are, men don't read it as much, or own up to it often.

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