Amazon announces authorized fan fiction business

Buffy Summers

Buffy Summers

Yataro
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By: Malene Arpe

Fan fiction writers rejoice. Soon you'll be able to make a bit of money from your hobby.

Just don't get too excited if you're spending your nights writing about the further adventures of Harry Potter or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

While Amazon has just announced a new publishing platform called Kindle Worlds, which will be available for fan fiction writers who wish to attempt making money on their work, there are, so far, just three properties open for use.

They are Cecily von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl, L.J. Smith's Vampire Diaries and Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars, all licensed by Warner Bros. Television Group's Alloy Entertainment.

According to an Amazon press release first posted by Deadline, "Amazon Publishing will pay royalties to both the rights holders of the Worlds and the author. The standard author's royalty rate (for works of at least 10,000 words) will be 35 per cent of net revenue. As with all titles from Amazon Publishing, Kindle Worlds will base net revenue off of sales price "” rather than the lower, industry standard of wholesale price "” and royalties will be paid monthly."

Of course, one of the joys of fan fiction is the ability to play with the characters like little literary puppets. But once you step in into Kindle Worlds, there are strict guidelines to be adhered to.

They are as follows and some of them seem designed to take the joy out of everything. No hot sex, no swearing and no crossovers between various fictional worlds. (There are also guidelines regarding trademarks and bad layouts and excessive use of brand names. So, no having the Salvatore brothers enjoy a nice, refreshing Coca-Cola).

Pornography: We don't accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.

Offensive Content: We don't accept offensive content, including but not limited to racial slurs, excessively graphic or violent material, or excessive use of foul language.

Crossover: No crossovers from other Worlds are permitted, meaning your work may not include elements of any copyright-protected book, movie, or other property outside of the elements of this World.

Amazon promises that more properties will be added to the three already announced. Philip Patrick, director, business development and publisher of Kindle Worlds says, "At Kindle, we're not only inventing on the hardware and software side of the business, we're inventing new ways to create books. Our goal with Kindle Worlds is to create a home for authors to build on the Worlds we license, and give readers more stories from the Worlds they enjoy. We look forward to announcing additional World licensing deals in the coming weeks."

Source: TheStar
 
At the risk of sounding like the grumpy, old person, I have to say I don't like this at all. Fic shouldn't be something you have to pay for. Not even 1 cent for a story. It really shouldn't be something you do to make money. And especially not when the stories are so limited in what they can do. I really wish fandom wasn't becoming so mainstream.
 
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itssmiletime
[No message]
I agree with Kean, while this is a pretty cool idea, I do think that fan fiction is something you write out of love and dedication for a fandom, not a way to build your career. If anything it's great practice for writing and eventually creating your own characters. I wouldn't pay to read fan fiction (too varying quality to start) and back when I wrote it I was just thankful if anyone read it... I wouldn't have dreamed of charging for it.
 
Yeah I dont think this will be successful, I just can't see people paying to read it.

But I can imagine there are a lot of writers that will be happy about this, some do see their own stuff as better then the original, given a chance to have it "branded" and paid for I'd say they can't wait for this!
 
Ethan Reigns
Ethan Reigns
It's always good to be able to say you are a published author, even if no one reads your work.
A lot of my stories that were failing were changed to be fan fic to give me different ideas.
Both my books were completed after they were made fan fic. I wonder if I can make the fan fic and the story to be yet another story. Oh yeah, and make it interesting.
 
On one hand, this is a good deal for fic writers, because it allows you to get paid for something you otherwise could never get paid for, gets your work way more exposure than it would ever get sitting on your obscure LiveJournal or Tumblr page, and acts as a potential writing sample for the people who actually own the show. With this, a writer can at least plausibly fantasize "if I write a story that's awesome enough, maybe they'll want to adapt it for the actual show!"

On the other hand, it's a bad deal for fic writers, because you're basically giving someone else the right to use your story wherever they want to, without your input, and without paying you anything beyond what you get from people actually downloading the story. If they DID adapt your story for the TV show, they wouldn't have to pay you anything. I don't know if they'd even have to give you a screen credit. And they could publish your story in an anthology and not have to give you a cut.

I would consider doing this, but I'd be VERY careful about what stories I'd submit. I wouldn't give them anything that contains my original characters or any ideas I might want to use elsewhere in my own writing.

I do have one particular Buffy story I would be willing to "test the waters" with, if this ever opens up to Buffy fic. The vast majority of my stories are too adult for this project, though.
 
Buffy Summers said:
Hey, Joss used two of mine already 😉 *

* I don't actually think Joss read them, it's just a coincidence. I just like to say it 😉
Click to expand...

Well, the TV series "Being Human" is based on a dream I had, maybe 15 years ago, in which a ghost, werewolf and mummy all shared an apartment. (My idea was more of a straight comedy without the dramatic elements.)

I even wrote a one-page summary of it, which I still have as a file on my computer. Too bad it never went beyond that point. I could have made millions. Millions!
 
Buffy Summers
Buffy Summers
Aw I wish they had a mummy in it!
My Buffy fan fiction

I write fan fiction mainly hoping that someone would read it, I guess all of us fan fiction writers like feedback on our work. This does indeed sound promising.
My Buffy fan fiction mainly includes my character Daniel Revils who's the Minder, a Minder is a formidable and courageous fighter that fights for the Slayer and Watcher. Whenever a Slayer dies it's the Minder's duty to take over and protect the community while another Slayer is trained and prepared to join the fight.
Revils is half demon but he uses his human strength to fight knowing that overusing his demonic abilities could corrupt him. Later on in my fan fiction you discover that Revils does have the same power as Dawn to open up dimensions but his power is more stable. His stories to crossover with the Buffy and Angel TV series but Revils does have his own adventures and fights his own adversaries but is an ally of Buffy and the Scooby gang.
I'm still writing the fan fiction as there are still new ideas I have and that's why I haven't yet posted it on the internet yet. Here's some images that I've done of his so far.

http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r713/JReed1985/DanielRevilscharacterdesign_zpsbc6b78ad.jpg
http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r713/JReed1985/DanielRevilspose1_zps2f2201c8.jpg
 
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Yeah, I agree with most of the people here. I can't picture it being successful, and what's so beautiful about fan fiction is that it is something you do out of dedication to something, that you and other fans can share and appreciate together. It's not another thing that needs a price tag, you know?

Also fan fic is a really great way to hone in your writing skills and sort of push yourself.

And that's really fascinating, JReed1985. It really looks like you've put a lot of work into that!
 
I have not seen the details, but it is almost certain they will insist that any fiction submitted to Amazon as paying fan fiction must not appear anywhere else (such as on the internet) for a period of time, meaning you have to decide whether to post it on this forum or submit it for the limited market it will have of people who will pay for fan fiction.

Check the terms and conditions of submission very carefully or you may find you no longer have the rights to your own work. A lot of musicians are in the same position - they sold exclusive rights and can no longer play music they wrote and made popular.
 
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EffieT1
[No message]
Although some fanfictions are sometimes better than the actual show/book, I'm with you guys in there and believe people shouldn't have to pay to read a fanfiction. Hell, I won't even pay for book unless they're REAAAAAAAAAALLY good or next in a serie I already own.

I predict this to be a big flop, even among the biggest fanbase.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
I have not seen the details, but it is almost certain they will insist that any fiction submitted to Amazon as paying fan fiction must not appear anywhere else (such as on the internet) for a period of time, meaning you have to decide whether to post it on this forum or submit it for the limited market it will have of people who will pay for fan fiction.

Check the terms and conditions of submission very carefully or you may find you no longer have the rights to your own work. A lot of musicians are in the same position - they sold exclusive rights and can no longer play music they wrote and made popular.
Click to expand...

Another concern is that they will insert fine print into the agreement that participants in this program can't publish "unauthorized" fanfiction anywhere else.

I'd read the fine print really carefully to see what kind of "gotchas" they try to sneak in there.
 
Ethan Reigns
Ethan Reigns
They would probably prevent you from using any characters you create elsewhere.
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EffieT1
[No message]
Well, the gotchas come down to this:

Amazon owns the copyright to print your story forever - you can't take it somewhere else and publish it there

The licensor (meaning Alloy Entertainment or whoever else agrees to this in the future) can use anything from your story without your permission and without paying you royalties

There's also some weird wording that doesn't make it clear if you still own original characters and ideas in the book or if they do - they claim that you own the copyright then mention that those new ideas can only be used in Kindle Worlds stories, so... I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, and this is kind of confusing.

You know, I think that this is a good idea. If that last point which confuses the hell out of me was that you owned the copyright over those characters and ideas for other works while they were still allowed to use them in the context of those shows or such, then this would be pretty much perfect in the way that I think creators could work to support fanfiction while still not damaging the value if what they're making.
 
I would be VERY careful not to submit any stories that contain any original characters. You will lose ownership of them and won't be able to use them anywhere else.

This would be a terrible deal if it dealt with original fiction... but for fanfic, there really can't be that much downside. It's possible (though unlikely) that somebody could make a lot of money off your story that you wouldn't get a cut of. But even if that happened, at least important people would know that you are a writer with profitable skills and ideas, and it might be worthwhile to hire you for more. It would be like writing a spec script for a TV show.
 
I don't see this taking off any time soon. Although personally I wouldn't mind making a bit of money from fanfic writing, I also probably wouldn't want to pay to read it when I can get so much of it for free, and I think a lot of people would argue the same thing. So even if I did have one published, I wouldn't be making much of a profit and no one would be reading it. I'd rather publish it online for free and have more people read it.
 
For the promise of a few shekels from writing, Amazon gets the names of everyone who thinks they are writiers and gets to target ads at them. It is their attempt to get into the data mining business in competition with Facebook and Twitter.

There used to be a cartoon (which I can't find right now) showing two pigs standing in front of a pig sty and one says, "Free room and board - this looks like just what we want" but with a caption at the bottom that says, "If somebody offers you a service for free, you are not the client, you are the product".

The terms and conditions appear to be onerous. I will not be submitting anything to them.
 
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