I’ve definitely pondered fanfiction in relation to my own work. I had a blog post a while back talking about the Princess series and their overlap with what we think of as fanfiction. I think there are both similarities and distinctions, and I’m pretty comfortable with both.

I don’t think Libriomancer really qualifies as crossover fanfic myself, but it doesn’t bother me if others consider it such. I deliberately avoided pulling *characters* from other people’s work. Smudge is from my own goblin books, and Lena’s books were made up. For me, that’s one of the boundaries as I’ve been working on the series. Playing with ideas is one thing, particularly when most of those ideas have been used and reused so often in the genre. But I want the characters and stories to be my own.

Does that make sense?

I write fanfic (largely pseudonomously, which is funny if you consider that “sistercoyote” is already a pseudonym). I also write original fic (and have had some published).

If I want to get paid in $$ for my writing, I write original fiction and submit it to places I can get paid if it’s accepted.

If I just want to share a thought I had, or re-write a piece of canon so it’s more pleasing to me, then I turn to fanfiction. Also, I write with a co-author when I’m writing fannishly, and it’s a great deal of fun. I would not want to get paid for the fanfic. I think this is a tremendously Bad Idea.

Not unless Kindle Worlds starts giving out advances or pays by the word.
***

While there is a portion of the fanfic communities that goes into pearl-clutching theatrics at the idea of making money off fanfic, most of it is more concerned with the balance between creativity, rights, and income potential: is it worth giving up the freedom we have in fanfic, to explore *any* kind of story and share those stories with anyone we like, in order to make a few bucks? (Or, in the case of E.L. James, a few million?) Most of us aren’t so much anti-money as anti-loss-of-liberty, and money tends to come with strings that would damage our communities.

The worry in Kindle Worlds is that the terms aren’t well-defined; the “no porn” rule is standard for all Kindle publishing–although they have a huge selection of erotica titles. Anecdotal evidence suggests Amazon defines “pornography” as pictures, not text. The “no offensive content” rule is also standard for KDP, and just as blurry; both of those boil down to “if we don’t like your story we can pull it without explaining why.”

The rights grabs aren’t clear at all. Presumably, when the program gets closer to launch, an actual TOS will be posted, not this brief overview in casual language.

I would love to see some posts comparing the Kindle Worlds system to standard tie-in novel contracts, rather than normal publishing contracts.

Do you know what a license actually is?

It’s permission granted (here by the gov’t) to perform an act *that would otherwise be illegal*.

I’m curious if you ever pondered these issues in writing Libriomancer, which is arguably a work of crossover fanfic. I mean, you can carefully avoid calling it a lightsaber but we all know what it was. That troubled me a bit upon first reading; it’s clearly not fanfiction in the classic sense, but strong elements of fanfic pervade it and it was written for profit.

That’s meant to be a question, not a criticism, by the way; I feel uncertain on the subject. If I thought you were doing something outright unethical I would let you know, loudly. As it is, I really loved the concept. It just seems like it might have given you a relevant perspective on this issue.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/22/amazons-kindle-worlds-instant-thoughts/#comment-476069

Seriously, in order to genuinely be endeavouring to police the rule, you’d need to have at least one human editor reading everything as went in for submission. Which would slow down publication speeds tremendously (and also be a job with a fast turnover). Instead, they’ll have the “no porn” rule, and it’ll be “policed” mainly through the same mechanisms as are used on fanfiction.net – if someone decides to get all purist within or about a particular fandom and starts reporting things, those items which are reported will be taken down. In other words, policing by vendetta.

It’s worth noting this doesn’t mean there isn’t mature-rated fanfic on ff.net.