amazon wants to sell your fanfic

Kindle Worlds for Authors

You know, I'm actually not sure how I feel about this in specific.

Link Roundups

Tis the End Times by morgandawn

Another corporate attempt to corral and profit from fanfic? by ithiliana

I'm warily working my way through the links so far, and I would probably be doing a lot better at the pros/cons bit if I hadn't had really intense meeting today about the new build at work.

Includes:
Kindle Worlds by flourish - I like her breakdown a lot.

Seriously, Is This Happening?

Weirdly enough, approaching this from a reader standpoint, I seriously love beyond words this. I can pay my favorite authors for my favorite fic. This is like a dream come true. I mean, the ones without offensive porn, incest, or violence (per observation by coffeeandink) which are usually my favorites. I'm assuming A/B/O Sam/Dean SPN fic isn't going to be widely available there, is what I'm saying.

As a writer--I don't think I've written anything without two of the three above (three of three on a good day). And--okay, I'm not sure how I feel about pay-only access, either, if it can't be archived (which this going to Amazon's copyright ownership terms, that would be a no).

This would happen a week before a major deployment at work. Jesus, the timing.

Comments

[dafna]

The fact that the only rights holder involved so far is Alloy makes me think this is less a brave new world and more Alloy seeing a way to make their fiction factory work even more efficiently than it does now. I mean, I could be wrong, but unless some non-book-packaging types come forward to say they're involved, I bet this stays very small.

[seperis]

Yeah, I'm kind of hoping so now. I just posted about my own worry of free fanfic in competition with not-free fanfic.

[silverflight8]

I'm so conflicted by the announcement. I think I should go and read all the thoughts everyone else has; I really don't know what to think. And honestly I'm kind of dumbstruck that it's even happening (!)

[out_there]

This is... odd. I mean, I just don't know how I feel about the concept -- I've been in fandom 10 years or so, I'm used to it being a little underground. On the other hand, having a legally authorised way to produce fic is kind of cool too. On the (third) hand, one of things I love about fandom is the self-organised community and freedom here.

And then I realised that given the list of exclusions and the three "worlds" currently under copyright, none of this would ever apply to my writing so I can forget all about it.