Me, an old fic writer by todays standards, watching writing commissions start to pop up on Twitter and in Discord servers again like
I hope that’s not fanfiction for the love of the gods and if it is - please, please, please be careful with what you’re doing
Yyyyeah. I know I’ve seen at least one person in the Lupin the 3rd fandom actively advertising that they do commissions, and it’s not so much that I’m against it on a moral level as I have…..concerns about where this has gone in the past.
What… what happened? Like, as a person who is just kind of on the outskirts of fanfic stuff, I have no idea what this is about and I am suddenly very curious.
basically, and feel free to correct me on this because i was a Young One when a lot of this was happening, in the early days of internet fanfiction, there were a lot of litigious authors who would go after fanfic writers for using their copyrights. (hence why you sometimes see “i do not own these characters, anne rice does, please do not sue me anne rice!”) one of the major defenses against that was that the authors weren’t profiting off of it, so fanfic for commission can easily muddy the waters on that front
One of the first things Young Fanfic Writers of Old were taught was always, always make sure you say you don’t own anything. And when I say “of Old” I mean even up to a few years ago.
Not to mention I’m like 98.7% sure that offering to write for commissions or advertising a way for people to support your works monetarily (ko-fi, patreon, etc.) on AO3 is against the site’s Terms of Service. AO3 exists because fan writers and creators needed a space where they were safe (mostly) from more litigious minded IPs. But if your profiting from your writing, then that protection doesn’t work so well and might get everyone in trouble.
Re-blogging for the excellent additions.
(And I’m also certain that advertising *is* against AO3′s terms of service. If you write that you’ve received compensation for fic, you’ve broken terms of service.)
AO3’s TOS are clear about it - you cannot link to a channel that involves money on their website. No PayPal or Ko-fi or Venmo or anything. You can link to your Tumblr which then links to a payment account or service, but not directly.
AO3 is a non-profit.
Yea, you can’t advertise on AO3.
