Have You Lost Your Damn Mind?
So let me give you the lowdown on what’s happening. According to my favorite double blog of the week, Terribleminds, Amazon has created something called Amazon Worlds which seeks to help authors on both sides capitalize on fanfic. By which I mean the fanfic author and the original author.
It sounds great.
On paper.
It really does. Because I’m all for fanfic, always have been, I even enjoy reading it. But one of the greatest things about fanfic is that it doesn’t cost anything! Because it’s often really really bad.
Like… Fifty Shades of Twilight bad, sometimes even worse. Fifty Shades is to me proof of why needed to stay in the dark corner of the internet, because sometimes it’s really really good and sometimes well… it definitely isn’t worth whatever price Kindle would ask for it.
So what is the plus side in my mind?
If I understood Chuck’s post correctly, the original author can also make money on the sales of this. So had this been in effect when Fifty Shades happened, Stephanie Meyer would have actually made some money off of it.
Which again…
sounds great on paper.
But the reality of it is incredibly complex. I mean part of the reason fanfic was even allowed to be a thing was because the authors made no money off of it, because to do so runs into copyright complications. Just because both parties could be making money from it…
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
For the record, I wholeheartedly agree with Chuck that if you’re lucky enough to have fans who want to write more of your story you’re extremely lucky. I also know that one of the most amazing things about fanfiction is that it gets people who otherwise wouldn’t read a 200k word novel to read one. Now maybe if Amazon could help with editing or something, this would be a better idea.
