ALERT ALERT ALERT

[cleolinda]

ANNOUNCING KINDLE WORLDS

Get ready for Kindle Worlds, a place for you to publish fan fiction inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. With Kindle Worlds, you can write new stories based on featured Worlds, engage an audience of readers, and earn royalties. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. for

Comments

[the_gneech]

Sounds pretty on to me!

-The Gneech

[cleolinda]

Well, I think it's also no coincidence that the most famous definition of porn is "I know it when I see it." They've left themselves a loophole to be all like, "Well, but *this* is totally artistic, so."

I actually don't think Amazon would have a problem selling fanfic erotica. It's the rights holders who wouldn't want it. And they may want to ban it across the board because some of the fandoms may involve underage teenagers, and they don't want to have to go through on a case-by-case basis and declare which World can or cannot have erotica.

[cleolinda]

Oh, true. But they haven't defined (can't?) the line between the two, either.

[greyduck]

I think you hit every nail squarely on the head, here. And I don't see how this is going to work out all that well for anyone. Those who submit works aren't going to get the kind of renumeration and exposure they really (might) crave, those who don't might find themselves staring down the barrel of incoming C&Ds/litigation because "there's an official venue for this now," and Amazon & the rights holders get... what? An idea farm?

There's a whole lot of "good luck with that" in all of this.

(Here's one reason why, even though I'm a poor hack frustrated writer, I've never dabbled in fanfic... playing in someone else's sandbox seems fraught with problems all the way 'round.)

[rufinia]

...and Amazon & the rights holders get... what? An idea farm?

The licensing agreement seems to imply that the World holders get precisely that. Yeah, Gossip Girl is over (and honestly, if it had been crowd-sourced, it would have made a LOT more damn sense), but PLL and The Vampire Diaries aren't. I wouldn't be surprised that they're thinking they can get ideas that they wouldn't need to pay a lot for. Because OBVIOUSLY any fanfic writer would be over the moon to have their idea become canon, and be so happy with that they wouldn't expect any proper compensation.

The sad thing is? It just might well work.

[channonyarrow]

Yeah, that's (part of) what I find frightening here. One of the reasons that I will always back an author who is reasonable about "I don't want there to be fanfic of my property" (so, not Anne Rice) is because they are legally liable if they use an idea that someone wrote their Great Fic Opus in their own work. (There's also the fact that, you know, they may just not want to see it. But that's a digression!)

But with this model, I think it's spot-on that cleolinda pointed out that two of the three properties are multiply-written; this is just an idea farm, and one they don't even have to pay further rights for, because Kindle bought all your damn ideas when you used their platform to publish.

It will be interesting, ASSUMING this thing works, which I think is a huuuuuuge assumption, to see how many writers start trying to angle their way into screenwriting.

[cleolinda]

My hope is that all the fan writers go "Well, fuck that noise" and the project dies a quiet death. Except that... I wouldn't have thought E.L. James would have gotten away with what she did (or that people would even care about it), and I was clearly wrong about that. All it's going to take is a writer or two who's good enough to get real attention, which will might make the draconian contract worthwhile (a writer who somehow found huge success through this program would at least have volume to make up for the low rates). And then other writers follow and get screwed over because they don't break out the same way.

[davisac1]

My take is that they're not targeting fanfic readers at all, but fans of the primary material who might shell out for tie-in fiction if it existed, which they don't even know they could find free online for the price of a Google search and some eye bleach.

[cleolinda]

Hm, that is a good point. It could also be an idea farm for future TV show developments, as someone else mentioned.

[annlarimer]

Basically this. It's a low-rent, low-stakes version of the way DC and Marvel comics are now relatively inexpensive farm teams for blockbuster movies. They don't care about fandom, they're after the people who are fanatical about Gossip Girl, have done the Kindle equivalent of reading their books to shreds, and want more.

[stockholmvictim]

THIS. I laughed so hard.

[cleolinda]

I had this initial "THIS COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING" reaction of terror... and then I saw the no-porn thing and it just became hilarious.

[chibi_regalli]

Pretty much. Welcome to the realm of fanfiction, Amazon! 90 PERCENT OF OUR STUFF IS PORN OR SHIPPING. MUCH OF IT BAD. Have fun reading through the submissions.

I mean, let's think about it for a moment. Non-canon ships in ongoing works are probably going to be up for greater scrutiny, for instance. And of the stuff that has a plot beyond shipping, and will fit in with canon, and is worth reading? I get the feeling if they're good enough to do that, they're probably smart enough to look at the contract first.

Then again, I'm assuming there'll be a screening process of some sort to ensure there aren't any "and then they turned into super-powered magical girls who killed all the ugly villains, turned the hot ones good, and everyone fucked" stories. Watch me be proven wrong.

[quicksilvermad]

This. I've got the feeling that this is rather doomed to fail (Watch me be proven wrong) seeing as about 90% is porn/shipping/bad. I'll just continue to write fanfic without those pesky "guidelines" and post it on AO3 where anything is welcome.