Amazon Kindle Worlds: here we go again

[owlmoose]

New Amazon program, Kindle Worlds, will allow fanfiction for specific properties to be published on the Kindle.

Hey, everyone remember FanLib? Yeah, me too. Obviously Kindle Worlds is not quite like that, but it has the same whiff of "come be officially sanctioned!" about it, and hence I cast it similar glances askance.

I don't have much to say about it yet. Fortunately, other people do.

John Scalzi looks at the contract and finds it not particularly favorable toward authors. He also speculates what it might mean for authors who write tie-in books on a contract basis -- ie. does this spell the end of the tie-in as we know it?

Chuck Wendig, who runs the writing blog Terrible Minds, also brings up the tie-in issue with some musings on what this means for 'canon' in those universes.

From the fandom perspective, a few thoughts from The Mary Sue.

More, I am sure, to come.

Edit: this post by unjapanologist is highly recommended.

Comments

[auronlu]

Oddly, while I'm disturbed by the possibility of Amazon setting a precedent here, it doesn't rattle me in the same way as Tumblr's recent kerfluffle.

I guess the Amazon situation seems wrong to me at a more intellectual level. I don't have a problem with the essential idea that copyright holders and fans could set up some kind of licensing mechansim so that fans could earn money for fanfictiom. and authors, also, get paid in the process. (If a fan makes money on fanfiction, I like the idea that the author benefits, too. And I disagree with the "fanfiction OUGHT to be profitless" argument, because it can be good work. Where's that article about how fanfic is like folk art, both of them largely done by women and therefore often anonymous and usually unpaid?) I just don't like how Amazon's setting this up for maximum exploitation of fanfic writers. Also, I understand the OTW argument that fanfic,as a transformative work, is already legal, so this is voluntarily putting fanfic into legal bondage.

But that's all legal stuff. Whereas the Tumblr thing hits a fandom space I was just getting to call home, and it makes me remember losing other fandom homes. It's more a visceral than a rational response, a sense of "oh, no, here we go again." Ironic that I feel any concern for Tumblr, since I resisted Tumblr for so long hoping and wishing that more people would use DW.

[owlmoose]

I reblogged a good post yesterday talking about the commodification of art in general, and how one of the good things about fanfiction is that it stands outside that trend, sort of as a counterargument to the one you mention about folk art (which I remember but don't have the link to offhand).

Also, I understand the OTW argument that fanfic,as a transformative work, is already legal, so this is voluntarily putting fanfic into legal bondage.

Yeah, that's the biggest concern from my perspective, too. Does this mean that media properties that sign on to Kindle Worlds suddenly see free fanfic as a competitive threat? Or do they continue to let the "gray market" slide?

But I can understand why your concern is less visceral than the Tumblr buy-out. For one thing, if there are impacts on wider fandom from this, they'll take a lot longer to manifest. Also, just on a personal level, I highly doubt that any of the media properties I write for are likely to ever sign on with a program like this. Maybe, *maybe* the Marvel universe, but even that strikes me as a stretch.