The Kindle Worlds Fiasco
First off I would like to say, I wouldn't touch this with a twenty foot pole.
However, that's not what worries me.
What worries me is the unscrupulous people who will. For the honest fanfic writers I say, it's up to you, but be careful, it's plagiarists that cause me some anxiety.
Say we have this scenario.
Writer A writes a fanfic with some great, distinctive, original ideas in it - it's popular.
Writer B comes along, steals those original ideas and publishes a new fanfic on Kindle Worlds (might even be an entirely different fandom).
If this was just fanfic, fandom would likely see the plagiarism and jump on it because fandom is vigilant like that.
Amazon doesn't seem to understand fandom and hence has no fandom people to spot the problem.
Amazon and Writer B are now illegally making money off Writer A's copyright for the original content and claiming rights to it forever and a day.
Who is going to stand up for Writer A - Amazon are already bad enough at patrolling the self pub section for completely plagiarised books, how are they going to spot original concepts?
Will Amazon have a system for removing plagiarised books from Kindle Worlds?
This becomes really important if Writer A then decides to use their original idea in an original novel which they wish to publish.
It makes me want to very carefully document where all of my fanfic is and has been published, y'know, just in case. Paranoia rules okay.
Fanfic is an inherently shared community - I remember the comm where we put up disclaimers to say, sure, anyone can write fanfic of my fanfic, just credit me. Now writers are going to have to say, sure, you can write fanfic of my fanfic, but not on Kindle Worlds, ever.
This may all be moot because the content guidelines might be so tight it makes all this irrelevant, or the submission process might be actually stringent, but, until I see how it is going to work I shall worry. (The whole you can use our cover creator part does not fill me with confidence). Wait 'til people start stealing fanart to use as their covers.
Has the OTW made comment yet? I would be very interested to hear their take on it.
This entry was originally posted at http://beren-writes.dreamwidth.org/253437.html.
However, that's not what worries me.
What worries me is the unscrupulous people who will. For the honest fanfic writers I say, it's up to you, but be careful, it's plagiarists that cause me some anxiety.
Say we have this scenario.
Writer A writes a fanfic with some great, distinctive, original ideas in it - it's popular.
Writer B comes along, steals those original ideas and publishes a new fanfic on Kindle Worlds (might even be an entirely different fandom).
If this was just fanfic, fandom would likely see the plagiarism and jump on it because fandom is vigilant like that.
Amazon doesn't seem to understand fandom and hence has no fandom people to spot the problem.
Amazon and Writer B are now illegally making money off Writer A's copyright for the original content and claiming rights to it forever and a day.
Who is going to stand up for Writer A - Amazon are already bad enough at patrolling the self pub section for completely plagiarised books, how are they going to spot original concepts?
Will Amazon have a system for removing plagiarised books from Kindle Worlds?
This becomes really important if Writer A then decides to use their original idea in an original novel which they wish to publish.
It makes me want to very carefully document where all of my fanfic is and has been published, y'know, just in case. Paranoia rules okay.
Fanfic is an inherently shared community - I remember the comm where we put up disclaimers to say, sure, anyone can write fanfic of my fanfic, just credit me. Now writers are going to have to say, sure, you can write fanfic of my fanfic, but not on Kindle Worlds, ever.
This may all be moot because the content guidelines might be so tight it makes all this irrelevant, or the submission process might be actually stringent, but, until I see how it is going to work I shall worry. (The whole you can use our cover creator part does not fill me with confidence). Wait 'til people start stealing fanart to use as their covers.
Has the OTW made comment yet? I would be very interested to hear their take on it.
This entry was originally posted at http://beren-writes.dreamwidth.org/253437.html.