I want my MTV; or Money for Fanfic

[telesilla]

So in some discussions that have been happening on my flist and in other places, the idea has been put forward that money in exchange for fanfic wouldn’t necessarily be a bad, evil, immoral, wrong thing.

Some of the people I was discussing this with were unaware of the fact that Rockfic, for example, exists. There's an archive that charges a

Comments

[hominysnark]

I have paid money for zines in the past, and they weren't even close to legal. So if it was a high-quality product *and* legal--yep.

[telesilla]

*nods* Many of us have; in fact current fandom is standing on the shoulders of our 'zine producing/writing/reading foremothers. But, and this has always been a defense of 'zines, supposedly no one was making an actual profit off the 'zines. There were abuses of the system, but for the most part, most 'zine producers I know, take a loss.

I know we did with the TPM 'zine.

[screwthedaisies]

I could have gone a really nice ski vacation last year with what I lost on Rockfic Press...but since I don't ski.... (30 years from now I'll be saying, "Yeah, but you DID want to retire someday, didn't you you stupid woman. You could have put that in IRAs and shit!" Ah, well.)

[parisntripfan]

Right. The only people making money off a zines were/are printing companies.

[sidewinder]

FWIW, one of the main reasons for the $2/year for RockFic - as I understand it, I'm not rockfic herself or an administrator - is that it seriously helps keep the underagers away. They don't want to use mommy or daddy's credit card to get access to their porn (they just sit around in the other bandfic communities whining about how unfair it is they can't get in, LOL).

I'm published by Rockfic Press; owner of most of the titles too & I'd love to see more genres of legal fan-fiction like actorfic represented in print. We've had some interesting discussions about the legalities of it over on the RockFic messageboards (which are free to read & contribute to, by the way) in the RockFic Press forum, what it appears you can and cannot publish, good publishing services to use, if you or anyone else is interested in looking into further.

[sidewinder]

Oh, and I might just add - I don't think anyone involved is raking in any big bucks, either, at this point. There are lots of costs involved in publishing and we're talking a pretty niche market, too. I've *maybe* made about...$50? in royalty payments so far for RFP books...which I've generally just turned around to pay for buying more books :D

[screwthedaisies]

And then some! Thanks for the order yesterday.

[neery]

The thing is, if fanfic becomes something you have to pay for, I won't be able to afford to read anywhere near as much of it as I do now. I already have to ration my books. It would make me really, really sad if I had to start rationing how much fanfic I can read, too

[mayqueen517]

First off: I'm Chrissy and I've been published, twice in fact, by Rockfic press.

From an insiders point of view, it IS nice. And the nice thing is that any fic that is published, that even if you can't afford the book - they're still up on the website. Sure, you have to pay 2 bucks to get into the archive, but...two bucks isn't that much.

And with Rockfic Press, it's so...mindblowingly amazing to see a story and to say "That's mine. That is MY story." and...it's amazing. (that aside, from being published twice in two different books, I've made less than five dollars. So...yeah.)

If they have to pay, I think most people would be a lot less likely to try out new things that might turn out to be a waste of money.I think most of us from Rockfic aren't...the 2 dollar fee doesn't bother us. I'd rather have to pay for quality band fic than half the crapfic that's out there

[neery]

Well, if the price for fanfiction is limited to $2 a year, that wouldn't be a financial problem, of course, but then it seems a little pointless to ask for a fee at all. Aside from keeping minors out, that is, which is something I personally just can't get that enthusiastic about, but I know it matters to other people.

And of course I have nothing whatsoever against people selling their fic as books in addition to putting them on the web. I mean, if I could afford it, I'd love to have all my favorite fics in a form I can take to the beach.

[screwthedaisies]

The fee is to offset the server cost. In summer '05 the server we were hosted on started crapping out regularly, sometimes for more than a day. People were willing to pay to move to a more reliable server, and since then we've had very few server problems. We didn't need to charge $5 or $10/year to cover the server costs--just $2. It sure beat selling ad space on the site (which no one wanted) or having to pass around the donation cup whenever funds got low (ugh!).

The decline in underage user registration (until we instituted a free 48-hour trial recently) was just a bonus.

[almostnever]

One thing that distorts this discussion, to me, is the assumption that it involves readers paying to read fan fiction. I don't see that working either, but that's not really the model I think fic would follow.

It's an online community and there are other ways to create an economy online. Ads on sites or archives are one possibility. Free online fic collected into buyable print compilations. Paypal tip jars for fan authors. There are a lot of ways that the community could open this door.

[sidewinder]

It's an online community and there are other ways to create an economy online. Ads on sites or archives are one possibility. Free online fic collected into buyable print compilations. Paypal tip jars for fan authors. There are a lot of ways that the community could open this door.

The problem is, other sites have tried the "tip jar"/donation type idea before, and it rarely if ever works. Give people the option to pay or not pay, and 99 out of 100 folks are not going to pay. If anything, that kind of model is only going to encourage a BNF-type bias where the most popular writers would get "tips"--perhaps from folks thinking it would put them in better "favor" or status--whereas lesser/new authors would likely get nada.

I figure a nominal subscription fee to help offset an archive hosting's costs is a more equitable method--after all, the person running an archive is already putting out all this time and effort to set up a site, should they have to pay the entire bill, too, if they can't reasonably afford it?

Free online fic

[almostnever]

Give people the option to pay or not pay, and 99 out of 100 folks are not going to pay.

Sure. But for example, I have a very kind LJ fairy who got me a paid account. I don't begrudge everyone else who read my LJ and didn't give me paid time-- I'm very grateful to the LJ fairy who did. But she wouldn't have been able to make that kind gesture if LJ didn't allow for it.

Same thing with a tip jar; maybe only 1 in 100 people would use it, but that's 1 in 100 who's willing to do it who can't, currently. Though right now I think fans would find tip jars off-putting because the overall ethos of fandom is barter and gifts in return for gifts, rather than cash. And maybe the barter economy is better, I don't know!

If anything, that kind of model is only going to encourage a BNF-type bias where the most popular writers would get "tips"--perhaps from folks thinking it would put them in better "favor" or status--whereas lesser/new authors would likely get nada.I don't see any way to avoid that in any system, though. That happens now and I'm

[angiepen]

I've always sort of eyerolled at the "OMGNOMUNNY!!!!" folks. I figure they're just too young to remember back when we all paid for fanzines. Heck, my first fanfic purchase was a Battlestar Galactica Apollo/Boomer story a lady at a convention was selling -- three pieces of paper and a staple for fifty cents.

And while the assumption was always that the zine publishers needed the money for printing costs, I always figured the prices were at least somewhat inflated with a bit of profit on a per-zine level. First, I don't buy that every zine came from the printer with a nice, round pricetag on it, but all the zines I ever saw for sale at cons were ten dollars or twelve dollars or twenty dollars or whatever. And it makes sense that they would inflate the prices a bit; just because they printed 200 copies doesn't mean they're going to necessarily sell them all, but they still have to pay the printer up front. It'd only be smart to make their break-even point somewhere below the full 200, or whatever their print run was. I don't

[angiepen]

[nodnod] The resale market's always been volatile; a lot of stuff you can't give away but there's always been the rare classics that go for piles of money. Heck, when I was hanging out in RomEx (the online home of the RWA, back on GEnie) one fairly wanky topic that cycled through once or twice a year was whether or not used bookstores should exist. :P There's a small but vocal subset of pro writers who don't think it's fair that people can resell their books over and over and make money when the writers aren't getting any of it. [sigh]

I'm sure there's always be a similarly small but vocal subset of fans selling their fic who'd grouch about the same or similar things. Still not a reason not to do it, though, assuming we could get over the primary hurdle of doing it legally.

Angie

[the_reverand]

Just paving the way to OMG FIC PIRACY