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

[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

[almostnever]

The writers don't see any of it, though. FF.net is basically just a specialized hosting service, and their ads aren't any different from the ads on GreatestJournal-- everyone kind of understands that if you're not going to pay for the site, the space has to be paid for somehow, so: ads.

If they paid out a percentage in commissions to FF.net authors who drew lots of hits, that would be more like the hypothetical writers-making-money-from-fanfic scenario that I think people are trying to evoke in these discussions. Epinions used to run on that model-- if lots of people read your reviews, you got a percentage of the ad revenue your pages earned.

[darkrosetiger]

The real problem with ads is in determining who you'll get to advertise. FFN got ads right around the time that they banned NC-17 fic. I suspect that if more fanfic sites started taking ads, they'd discover quickly that the people who were most interested in advertising were porn producers.

[darkrosetiger]

I bet we could get Coffee Fool, though!