Fanfics and Monetization

CharlesEBrown said:

That was pretty much how Fifty Shades of Gray came into being - the author read Twilight and thought: "What if they met as adults, not teens, in a professional environment, and they used sex instead of blood for power?"
Then she changed the character names and had a hit on her hands.

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When someone told me that bg story I finally understood why they made it so cringe mysterious. BDSM hobby was just the replacement of the vampire thing.

CharlesEBrown said:

That was pretty much how Fifty Shades of Gray came into being - the author read Twilight and thought: "What if they met as adults, not teens, in a professional environment, and they used sex instead of blood for power?"
Then she changed the character names and had a hit on her hands.

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There are even entire publishing companies that specialize in only publishing "sterilized" fanfiction.

Man, I'm seeing so many Fanfictions declaring not declaring themselves as such... not sure I want to snitch, but this pisses me off.

Fandom is gone, and now people are abusing the system already.

Obviously, this whole thing did not work out that great....

Based Tony.

FRWriter said:

Man, I'm seeing so many Fanfictions declaring not declaring themselves as such... not sure I want to snitch, but this pisses me off.

Fandom is gone, and now people are abusing the system already.

Obviously, this whole thing did not work out that great....

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Do it! Based snitch.

SirControl said:

Based Tony.

Do it! Based snitch.

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Useless... half ot the popular stories on this site are fanfics. Just check out Trending. Face it, this site is all about Fanfics... as much as some people loathe them.

FRWriter said:

Useless... half ot the popular stories on this site are fanfics. Just check out Trending. Face it, this site is all about Fanfics... as much as some people loathe them.

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So? If they are not reporting as such and it bothers you, say something. Particularly if they are monetizing it, as this is what the thread is about.

Just bitching about it here won't stop them from happening.

Be the change you want to be and all that jazz =P

Once I am done with my FF, it will be all OG for me. Stepping stones and getting better at putting words on a page.

I love writing FFs because it lets me practice within an already-built world and see how the butterfly effects of my character start changing things. Just doing that lets me see how to world-build better in my more OG stuff, or flesh the original canon of some worlds out even more because they were never finished by the original author.

Hell, I am 35ch/80000 words into one of these FF worlds that had maybe a paragraph of lore for that planet. I've nearly written a full-length novel based on that, using mostly OG chars, except for the two antagonists, and the fact that they are piloting mechs when fighting happens. If I changed the world name from Battletech to Wizard in a Mecha World, and a few names on things, it would all pretty much be OG.


Not sure why I am defending writing my FF here, I don't monetize... but I did!

Quack!

JordanIda said:

If only Patreon would crack down on intellectual property theft, this whole back channel might be crippled

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It's a matter of time. An activity is only allowed if a big players profit from it directly or indirectly, once it becomes to lucrative for individuals, it will be shut down.

JordanIda said:

and the legitimate publishing industry might experience a resurgence.

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I desire in my heart for the 'legitimate' publishing industry and all its tendrils and asslickers to crash and burn. We are not the same.

JordanIda said:

But you talk about loopholes and you and I both know exactly what will happen if this site and others "shut down" fan fiction: The authors will change proper names in their stuff and call it "original." I get into the worst fights over at R R, because a BIG percentage of the "original" trash over there is fan fiction, thinly disguised.

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I don't think it's okay to change the names on someone's story and call it your own. I also don't think it's okay for someone to claim ownership of themes, tropes, genres, personality types, super powers, narrative events, just because they have a bigger legal team.

JordanIda said:

And why not? Wattpad has turned it into an artform. They take their "Watty Award" winning fan fiction, sanitize it with superificial name changes, and stick it under the Premium umbrella as original work.

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Still better than outright using a creative talent to boot-lick a corporate IP.

JordanIda said:

As a real author in real life who plays around with this fan fic nonsense purely as a hobby, I have to tell you, I despise all of the places that allow monetization of declared fanfics and also sanitized fanfics that are shilled as "originals." Deplore it all, from top to bottom. I've never met this Tony, but if he were to take my work down, I would send him a note of congratulations.

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The whole idea of "sanitized fanfics" puts a chill up my spine. Its the attitude that stiffled the entire space-opera genre because somehow 'Star Wars' owns it now. This is how we get further into the territory of corporate and state control of ideas. Anything anyone writes or draws can be traced back to something that inspired it. Works of arts will have similarities even when the author has never heard of or engaged with prior material. Writers and artists draw inspiration from popular culture they have experienced as well. So the idea of 'sanitized fanfiction' must be carefully and narrowly defined, else it become a cudgle to bash indie writers.

Oh, please. All this animus against "big corporate," I don't know where it comes from. Just a century ago, in the most developed countries on the planet, women married at 13 and had life expectancies of around 35. In most parts of the world, it is the same. Even today. Reminds of that scene in "Life of Brian," where a terrorist says "Ok, the Romans gave us the cities, the baths, the roads, the aqueducts, sanitation, and plumbing, but apart from that, what else are they good for?"

We could argue about "big corporate" and its intrinsic evils all day, whatever they are. But lumping in mainstream trade book publishers with it? That I don't get at all.

Publishers have been struggling for more than fifty years. That "big industry" has consolidated, merged, and collapsed down to a pathetic remnant of what it once was, when people used to buy and read books, subscribe to magazines and get them deliverred by post, subscribe to newspapers that were delivered by kids every day of the week and were read every morning. That "big industry" is dead. To paint it as a vast evil leviathan and dance on its bones, celebrating the Web as a heroic David who has smitten Goliath.... nope. I do not agree. Don't get it at all. The WWW has destroyed reading, has dumbed us down in the process, and has replaced the reading culture with hubris.

JayMark said:

The whole idea of "sanitized fanfics" puts a chill up my spine. Its the attitude that stiffled the entire space-opera genre because somehow 'Star Wars' owns it now. This is how we get further into the territory of corporate and state control of ideas. .....

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( smiles )
Walks like a duck, though, doesn't it.

We're not talking about Disney's rights to the image of Baby Yoda on Lego kits.

When I use an idea that isn't mine. I know it. So do you. So does everyone.

Now, what you do with that knowledge, that's all yours. (Not you personally JayMark, :), I'm addressing readers in the collective.)

JordanIda said:

I don't know where it comes from. Just a century ago, in the most developed countries on the planet, women married at 13 and had life expectancies of around 35. In most parts of the world, it is the same.

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It was mid to high 40's for those developed countries and while many of those countries had the legal age at 12-14 for marriage it was rarely a thing. The normal marriage age was still over 20.

JordanIda said:

Oh, please.

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Businesses work when they are free to compete. This has not been the case for a long time because the corporations defacto merged with the government instead of being regulated against monopolistic practices. This includes the publishing industry and cultural gatekeepers.

Getting readers was always competitive. The publishing industry tried to make it impossible. They made a miracle happen by turning the industry into an elite club while churning out the pre-ai version of slop with a stamp of cultural relevance.

The business model in books for fifty years has been to gatekeep, pick favorites, force the use agents, force exclusive submission of manuscripts with endless wait times for rejections, among other abuses. They sytematically destroyed aspiring writers while using their cultural hammer to blame them for not making it. They destroyed modern fantasy literature by churning out formula slop and recycling the same stories endlessly. It's gotten so bad that I doubt Tolkein would even be considered in the modern traditional publishing industry if he tried to submit a manuscript today. So cry me a river and tears of blood for the mainstream publishers and their suffering. Fuck them.

As for the internet, that's a whole other semi-related matter with a whole new set of pros and cons i don't feel like elaborating. Literacy was degrading long before it came into existence, continued after, and the trend may be accelerated because of it. But I'm glad it existed as a way for people like me to bypass the traditional publishing conglomorates.

JordanIda said:

When I use an idea that isn't mine. I know it. So do you. So does everyone.

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I don't consider an idea as something that by definition can be stolen.
Copy and pasting a work and changing the names is plagiarism, not stealing an idea.
People make comparisons all the time. This is like that, etc. Does that mean an idea was stolen?
Can you give me an example of an idea that is not yours? I can't do anything with this without specifics.