Would You License Fan Fiction of Your Work?
The hearsay on the street
is that Amazon has now purchased rights to have fan fiction on its site for
several television shows such as Gossip
Girl and Pretty Little Liars.
This means that a fan fiction writer could get paid for their work without risk
of a copyright lawsuit.
Under copyright laws
currently, fan fiction is considered plagiarism. It, in pure simplicity, takes
the idea of another artist. But in most cases, no one pursues legal action
against it. For one, people don’t try to profit from their stories, rather
share and post them online for free. This makes it difficult to enforce
copyright law, it being more of a financial concept. If you don’t like the
existence of fan fiction but it’s not making any money, you’ll do best with a
cease and desist letter. You don’t hear a lot of authors or publishers going
after fan fiction writers because they’re not making any money, but also it would
be really bad P.R.
Most big publishers
discourage authors from encouraging fan fiction, however.
All works are protected
under copyright, even if you have not gotten an official copyright. (You send a
manuscript with a form and a fee—35 to 55 dollars—to the U.S. copyright office.)
You, however, must prove with evidence that you wrote the work first and that
the “theft” has taken significant parts of your piece, and sometimes even proof
they had the opportunity to steal it. (How did they see the manuscript?) This
is where the “Poor man’s copyright,” comes into play, in which you send a
sealed envelope to yourself through the postal service, giving it a legal date
and proof of its existence. However, it isn’t necessarily going to hold up in
court. Another option, is to have the manuscript notarized, along with a list
of any parties you sent it out to.
So why do works like Fifty Shades of Grey and the Immortal Instruments—books that the authors admitted to originating as fan fiction—get away with it?
Two possibilities: One,
the copyright holders are the ones to enforce the law. They can choose who to
pursue or not to pursue. If the authors/publishers aren’t bothered by fan
fiction making money, you’re free to do so. (Getting written permission first
can bypass the problem). Two, because the stories are completely rewritten with
new plots, characters, and text, only the faintest of ideas still influenced,
it crosses the line of plagiarism to inspired by. The work is still majorly the
writer’s own, even if it had a foundation on someone else’s.
Copyright law is actually
vague and poorly stated. Satire and spoofs are perfectly legal, meaning I could
use the idea of Twilight and “make
fun of it” for financial benefit. And, the burden of proof is on the copyright
holder to show that it isn’t a satire, but actual plagiarism. It’s somewhat of
a “I’ll know it when I see it law,” meaning that we don’t have strict, blanket
definitions, but rather use context to judge each individual circumstance.
Evidence that it subtracted from the original author financially is the best
bet.
But the main point is that
while many authors allow fan fiction of their work to exist, even cheerleading
it unofficially, it exists predominantly now as just a fun pastime. Writers and
publishers will sometimes license individual pieces of fan fiction to be
produced into a profitable book, but having the online site of Amazon purchase
rights so that its freelance writers can blitz out anything they think of…
that’s a different story.
I have no moral problem
with this—the copyright holder still has to agree to it, and it actually
enables a little more control over having fan fiction created of your work.
However, it leads to another question: If this becomes a popular tactic for
Amazon and successful authors, would I license my work out?
Right now fan fiction has
a more “blind eye” policy. The author of the original does not necessarily
agree to it be written, but it’s not being placed side by side with its
remakes. There’s not really a fan fiction section in the bookstore. It’s more
like porn; hidden away from the public eye, but readily available on the
internet for those who chose to look for it.
And I kind of like it that
way. I admire fan fiction writers a great deal because taking other people’s
ideas and maintaining continuity and a genuine sense of the original is
extraordinarily difficult, especially for me. But having fan fiction come out
as an official story seems to unnerve me.
In my mind, fan fiction is
an inevitable response to any successful work. It doesn’t matter if you want
people to reimagine your idea. In this day and age, it will happen, and trying
to chase down any fan fiction writer is just bringing down wrath on a, by
definition, true fan. Plus, it’s like trying to kill an infestation by
squashing a few ants. You will never prevent people from doing it, unless you
want to develop a reputation as the insane author with a vendetta against his
own readers.
Yet there is a difference
between allowing something to happen and actually giving permission. Once you
actually inform a person he is allowed to do something, he begins to cross
boundaries. His comfort in his permission takes away the natural subtly and
caution brought by the uncertainty. It’s like, I know you’re doing it, you know
I know you’re doing it, but because I haven’t exactly said it’s okay, you’re
not going to push your luck. I don’t have it shoved in my face the whole time.
If blanket licensing of a
title becomes standard, allowing anyone to sell any fan fiction they write
through a specific third-party seller (Amazon), would you license your book?
The benefits are the same
as any fan fiction. You keep people talking about you, keep them excited about
your work, give your fans more joy, and now you get the added benefit of
getting paid—although I doubt it is as much as it would be if you licensed
individually.
On the other hand, you’ve
lost control of the reputation of the source material and the saturation of the
market.
Bill Watterson, the
creator of Calvin and Hobbes, has
always been my greatest hero. For a long time he fought with syndication for
the rights not to sell Calvin and Hobbes merchandise. While he
retained final say as to whether or not someone could license the right to make
t-shirts, there was a great amount of pressure from those around him to do so.
His reasons he didn’t want
a movie, stuff animals, mugs, backpacks, or any of the like was because he
believed it would affect the reputation of the source material.
“The visual sophistication
of Pixar blows me away, but I have zero interest in animating Calvin and
Hobbes. If you’ve
ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets
bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths
and needs, and when you make a movie, the movie’s needs get served. As a comic
strip, Calvin and Hobbes works exactly the way I intended it
to. There’s no upside for me in adapting it,” he says.
And on sequels, reboots,
and other continuations… “You can’t really blame people for preferring more of
what they already know and like. The trade-off, of course, is that
predictability is boring. Repetition is the death of magic.”
Lastly… “Every artist
learns through imitation, but I rather doubt the aim of these things is
artistic development. I assume they’re either homages or satiric riffs, and are
not intended to be taken too seriously as works in their own right. Otherwise I
should be talking to a copyright lawyer.”
We can easily over
saturate the market, making something lose its original umph. It can look
mainstream, or just start to get on people’s nerves.
And then there’s the issue
of continuity and what’s the “real” story. Even if fan fiction was obviously
labeled as such on the cover, I could see there being a loss of control over
the rules of the world if too many fans enjoyed the fan’s work as well. The
writer’s careful heed of maintain the reality—many points of which are solely
in the author’s head—can be destroyed by a barrage of other stories that
disobey the guidelines. Hearsay alone can damage the perceived continuity—and
thereby “realness” of the book.
The thought of actually
giving official licensing to any fan fiction sold through a specific site is
terrifying to me. I always believed in its right to exist, but I’m not sure I
would be willing to give out my official approval.
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