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[jacebhw]

What the fuck is up with all the MNFF-related drama?

EDIT - I have reposted this entry publicly, seeing as I don't have every party involved on my flist. If you're not on my flist and have been sent a link to this entry: read it, comment if you like, but be respectful.

I'm friends with a lot of present/former mods, and there's this issue with this

Comments

[v_viridian]

"Set it up on iTunes at $.99 for every ten minutes."

You know, we could also follow the model of an academic press and charge X amount to access a chapter or one-shot on the archive and Y amount for a year's unlimited access. That would certainly cover the server costs and the forum license costs. MN main, who does the actual bookkeeping for it all, would probably love it.

For about as long as it took for Harry in DH to go from saying "Voldemort" to sitting in the Malfoy dungeons listening to Hermione scream. In fact, on the whole, MN and MNFF would probably prefer a fully-armed and fully-empowered Bellatrix to the lawyers of the Rowling/Scholastic/Time-Warner triumvirate. You cannot charge access fees for fanfiction in any format, because then someone will want to know where the money is going and will call it competition with the actual books or audiobooks. Selling MNFF merchandise clearly labeled as such, as in the CafePress shop that nobody seems to remember exists, is okay. Selling an original work such as the heavily-researched writing book is okay. The minute we charge for downloads of anything with a Potterword in it, that's not going to be okay.

See? Not as easy as it looks. The people who set up the audiofics were very, very careful about costing as little as possible while bringing new eyes to the fanfic archive to clicky on the ads.

What "The fat" might be is a question for another day. Speaking of sandboxes, at present, MNFF seems to be set up rather as a miniature of what a writer has to expect in RL, actually, minus agents.