Important: Yet another Fandom Locust has landed
I know that it's Saturday and therefore a bad day for posting, but please, do read this entry and follow the links inside; it's important for fans, whether they are in the LotR fandom or not.
"(...) LOTRFanFiction.com is a fan fiction archive, just like TwilightArchives.com (another site I snapped up a couple of months ago).
The thinking is that I can leverage the technology behind the Twilight site’s redesign to quickly rejuvenate the LOTR site. Plus, plenty of opportunities for cross promotion and integration (SSO, for example).
The longer term thought is that with the combined user base, I’ll be able to quickly enter and dominate new fandoms, hopefully creating some returns. (...)" - Keith Mander, in his blog
Every two or three years, some clever clogs "discovers" that wonderful thing called fandom and tries to monetize on it (Fanlib, anyone?); Keith Mander is only the latest, you can read all about the case here (many thanks to esteliel for her work). None of them seems to be able to use Google, or they'd realised by now that, no, you can't make money with a fanfiction archive. All legal problems aside, you have the basic rule that the one with the money is the one to set the rules. In the case of a website, that would be the advertisers. Sooner or later, one of them will stumble over Erestor/Glorfindel tentacle porn and demand that such filth shall either be removed, or they wouldn't want to see their products advertised on that site anymore. It's happened in the past, it will happen again.
The thing is: fanfic writers are not employees. They won't write the stories your advertisers want to read; they'll write what's coming in their heads, period. Could be G-rated romance, could be NC-17 orgy. So even if authors wouldn't mind that some git makes money from their work, they would mind very much if their writing was restricted and censored. Without authors, no stories. No stories, no advertising. Simples.
The Keith Manderses of this world are like locusts, hopping from one green pasture to the next and leaving dust behind. But that's their nature. On the other hand, we have the ones who really think a locust would enter a field and only eat the weed. We have the "I don't care what happens as long as I get my porn" crowd. But the driving forces in every fandom, the ones who keep it alive are usually those who do care. And once their gone, the archive is dead.
"Yes, but there's ff.net and they also make money and some websites have donation buttons and..."
Running a website, especially a large one, costs a ton of money. Webspace, traffic, maintenance, software, backup, taxes, staff, time etc. - you don't get that for free. Something like ff.net isn't run by one person sitting in a garage and doing it in their spare time. Does ff.net make a profit? I guess so. Only very few people who are not fans would invest so much money and time into a website if it didn't make some sort of profit. But I doubt that it's much.
That's not really the point, though: if you put your story up on ff.net, you know what you get. And you know there are ads and you know that, indirectly, you generate income for the people running the website. That's not the case with LOTRFanFiction.com, though. People archived their stories there because they wanted to share their work with other fans on a fan-run platform. None of them agreed to write for Keith Manders. None of them volounteered to secure his pension fund.
Keith's very open about his business tactics and intentions:
"(...) My approach would be to directly contact site owners who are unaware of their site’s value and who’ve never experimented with online advertising. They’re usually surprised when you contact them with an offer and this eases the negotiation process. The potential with this approach is far greater.
Using information on popular search keywords is a good starting point. I think it’s wise to concentrate on topics that are not immediately commercial in nature as you’re more likely to discover a site created out of passion, rather than for profit. (...)"
There. All you need to know. I can understand that Adora, the previous owner of the site, got tired and didn't want to carry the costs anymore. But if she says that
"(...) That doesn't necessarily mean there are any intentions to turn it into a cash cow. Indeed, with the existing cost of the server, in addition to expense involved in making improvements in the first place, this is not and will never be a hugely profitable enterprise. He knows that... and if his only interest was making money, he wouldn't be doing it with a niche site based on a very specific interest. That's not how you turn over a high-level profit. (...)"
then I can only say that I wish she'd googled her new business partner before she sold her website.
Under the name of erestor , I started writing LotR fanfic back in 2003. And just like with my current fandom, I never archived my work anywhere but on my own websites. Why? Because there will always be a locust, and there will always, always be one who feeds it salad rather than insecticide. In the past, I've been offered £500 for Joyful Molly (the blog, not the website) and $ 1'200 for Good Boy, Sparky; I've been asked to "hype" stuff for money, and I doubt I'm the only one. You can't blame people for accepting such an offer - as long as they sell only their own stuff. A fanfiction archive, however? That's a different kettle of fish.
This is not about a website getting a new owner; it's not about better functionality and software upgrades and getting used to a new layout. It's about, in Keith Mander's own words, "quickly enter and dominate new fandoms, hopefully creating some returns". Well, good luck with that, Buster!
Molly originally posted this entry at http://joyful-molly.dreamwidth.org/330850.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, using OpenID.
