Lawyer and Writer

I've closed the survey (or rather, I would if I could figure out how. Anyway, officially it's considered closed, though you can still take it, I guess) and I'm totally blown away by all the responses.

I have a lot going on the next couple of days, but I just wanted to let people know that:
a) You can still join the mailing lit for updates and free stuff as I get organized, and,
b) Cool stuff is coming.

Later.

It's been 24 hours since I announced the survey and I've already had over 20 responses. I'm gathering some really helpful data already, and I'm hoping to get a bunch more responses before I close the survey.

In order to do the analysis and get started on developing course material, I'm going to have to put a deadline on the survey. I've decided to give it a week, so the survey will be closed to responses on October 20th.

If you're interested, please go here and fill out the survey, and don't forget to sign up for the mailing list so you don't miss the course when it's done!

Today Amazon announced the newest expansion on the self-publishing-on-the-Kindle landscape - Kindle Worlds. In a nutshell, Kindle Worlds will allow fanfiction authors to publish their fanfiction on the Kindle, and sell it. Any sales will pay royalties both to the copyright holder of the original property, and to the fanfic author.

Now, for full disclosure, I have been writing fanfiction as long as I've been writing, which is a damn long time. I am also on staff for the Organization for Transformative Works, which not only runs one of the most popular fanworks archives on the web, but is a non-profit which in part deals with the legitimacy of fanworks from a legal standpoint. I'm also an author with properties of my own.

Personally, I'm for fanfiction in a general sense. If anyone ever writes fanfiction or creates fan works about my own properties, I will count that a positive thing. In my opinion, fanfiction does great things for copyright. But this post isn't about that - it's about Kindle Worlds. From the perspective of people involved in the creation of fanworks, it has always been the cardinal rule - Thou Shalt Not Sell Thine Fanfiction, Lest Thou Incur the Wrath of the Author. Kindle Worlds seems poised to change all that.

Based on my reading of the limited information on the Amazon site, there are some big caveats.

Firstly, you can only publish fanfiction in the fandoms that are allowed - presumably Amazon will need to negotiate with each copyright holder for the right to include them in the program. I think that's really key. If someone is going to profit by their fanfiction, it should be with the blessing of the one who created the world. I think that this could create a wonderful symbiotic relationship, even more than fanfiction already does, without forcing any copyright holders into a situation where they feel threatened by the - shall we say - legitimized fanfiction.

Secondly, they won't allow any porn, offensive material, bad fanfiction, crossovers, or "illegal or infringing content". Setting aside the last one, it makes me wonder if there will actually be any fanfiction that qualifies for the program. Most importantly, they really don't say what's illegal or infringing. Isn't all fanfiction sort of illegal and infringing at this point? No one really knows, which has always been the problem.

I truly hope there will be some really clear guidelines about that, or I seriously doubt this will take off. Fanfiction authors are already inclined to batten down the hatches at any hint that their hobby is being noticed by the mainstream world at large. To violate the cardinal rule and risk being sued is something I think few people will be willing to do, unless they can trust that the risk is minimal enough to be worth it.

As a final point, a Forbes article on the announcement has a quote in there saying that the contract will give Amazon full rights to the fanfic, and the writer will not retain any publication rights over the work. According to John Scalzi (President of SFWA and all around intelligent dude), this clause makes this into a "Work for Hire" sort of contract where you are literally giving your fanfic away in return for royalties on the sale, for the full term of copyright - which would be your life plus 75 years I do believe (thanks, Disney).

This is a huge deal, and one I hope they remove from the final contract. I didn't see any hint of that on the Amazon site so far, but Amazon is only giving generalized information at the moment.

I don't write in any of the fandoms that will be offered upon original launch, and I'm also concerned about Amazon having the right to republish and profit from any fanfic I did publish in the program if I chose to do so, so at this point I'm very much in "wait and see" mode. Other people have tried to profit off of fanfiction in the past, and it has always met with an extreme negative backlash. But none of those people have been Amazon, so we'll see where this goes.