Fanfiction, publishing, the silliness of telling your fans not to be so enthusiastic, goddamnit.
You know, once you understand that fanfiction is inherently a "for the love" market, it's not that hard to see how copyright holders could actually benefit from it. Picture an arrangement where you could upload works to a print-on-demand publisher like Lulu, except one that's specifically meant for works of fanfic. Uploaders are able to tag their works of fiction with various source canons. The publisher, like iTunes, pays the canons' copyright holders a share of the profits from purchases. The copyright holders profit with literally no effort on their parts.
Ideal? Certainly not. Even in a derivative environment, there's a lot of work that goes into making (good, salable) fiction, and if there's profit being made, the writers should benefit from that. But the appeal of this sort of system come from a few places:
1) One of the reasons eBooks aren't as popular as printed matter is because there's a tactile interaction with a bound volume that eBooks cannot match, and I imagine that a lot of fanfic readers would jump at the chance to have bound volumes of some of their favorite fics, thus creating a viable market
2) I'm sure there are fanfic writers out there who, even if they weren't making money off it, would be deeply gratified to see that their work meant enough to someone else that they were willing to drop money on a permanent bound copy, and
3) Authors of fanfiction are going to write fanfiction regardless of whether or not they'll ever get paid for it.
Really, I don't get why so many companies cultivate such a hostile attitude toward fanfiction. People! The fact that your fans enjoy your canon and want to engage with it is a very, very good thing!
Ideal? Certainly not. Even in a derivative environment, there's a lot of work that goes into making (good, salable) fiction, and if there's profit being made, the writers should benefit from that. But the appeal of this sort of system come from a few places:
1) One of the reasons eBooks aren't as popular as printed matter is because there's a tactile interaction with a bound volume that eBooks cannot match, and I imagine that a lot of fanfic readers would jump at the chance to have bound volumes of some of their favorite fics, thus creating a viable market
2) I'm sure there are fanfic writers out there who, even if they weren't making money off it, would be deeply gratified to see that their work meant enough to someone else that they were willing to drop money on a permanent bound copy, and
3) Authors of fanfiction are going to write fanfiction regardless of whether or not they'll ever get paid for it.
Really, I don't get why so many companies cultivate such a hostile attitude toward fanfiction. People! The fact that your fans enjoy your canon and want to engage with it is a very, very good thing!