Why do I have to market books and worry about publishers and stuff why can't I just make up cool characters and stories and beam them by telepathy into other people's heads and earn a living wage from it?
The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve.
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Hi, I’m sure there’s some logic you were using to make this that makes sense in your mind but this will make this website unworkable to me. If this change goes into effect I’m going to have to move the blogs I’ve spent over a year building up to a different website. You now cannot turn off reblogs, cannot do reblog chains meaningfully, any creator of any kind just cannot see how much attention their post is getting and it is ripe for usage by bullies. I just cannot make sense of where any utility is in this. I hope you will reconsider. I am going to send something to the feedback form for everyday until this changes, and go to the App Store when it gets rolled out on mobile and give tumblr a 1 star review, and I invite anyone who follows me to join me.
I barely have a following, so if you think I won't uproot and go somewhere else to scream into the void about my books @staff and @changes then you have a big surprise coming.
I submitted my first ticket this morning and I'll submit another tonight. Ditto the rating on the app store.
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
I want to clarify my point because I think it got misread entirely.
I am not shaming authors. That was never what I said.
What I am saying is that capitalizing on fanfic is a problem.
On the "turn it into an original work and keep the fanfic up" argument — I understand why people see this as a solution but it still misses the point.
When filing fanfic down into original work becomes a known pipeline the entire culture of fanfic spaces shifts. Fanfic communities become incubators for product. That changes everything about what those spaces are and what they are for.
And yes of course authors of popular fanfics want to bring their audience with them when they go commercial. That makes complete finacial sense. But I would rather they didn't. Not because I want to punish them but because the moment that pipeline becomes normalized it creates a commercial incentive that lives inside fanfic culture permanently. Every highly rated fanfic becomes a potential product. Every writer is potentially building a brand. That is not what fanfic is for.
Fanfic has always thrived because it exists outside commercial spaces. That is the unspoken agreement between fan communities and original creators. When commercialization enters — whether directly or through the file-it-down pipeline — that agreement breaks.
Ultimately authors want to take their existing audience and make money based on fanfiction which I find dangerous. The argument that all books are somehow fanfiction is one I disagree with cause there is a difference between inspiration and derivation, but that point is not relevant here because this is purely about the commercial aspect.
Beyond that commercialization brings a lot of people into fanfic spaces who may not have genuine respect for the etiquette and culture that exists there and that is not a good thing.
I think we may be imagining different things here. I was imagining taking some aspect of a fanfiction story and using it, not exploiting an audience.
I suppose I've never thought of fanfiction authors as having an "audience" that could be monetized except through ko-fi or something. That's a point I hadn't considered.
I think there's wiggle room here, though. There's nothing inherently wrong about telling people "if you like my writing, I have books." Again, publishing is a very difficult and predatory business to navigate. Social media followings are vital for indie authors, and if someone wrote a story I really liked on AO3, I'd want to at least know that there could be more in their voice out there.
As for the pipeline becoming a known thing... It's already there. We live in a post 50 Shades world. Reylo fanfiction became a best selling chemistry romance novel. There will be more and more examples as time marches forward with the internet connecting everyone to huge databases.
It feels like a balancing act to me. Like there should be a polite way to go about telling people "If you like what I write here, check out this page where my books are." Though I think I wouldn't personally enjoy attaching my nom de plume to the silliness I write on AO3, I think casting either option as back and white absolutes is a mistake.
On reflection, I think we may have been speaking past each other which colored my arguments after. I have been thinking about this and I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding at hand.
This is the original post:
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please.
FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
So when I read this, it sounded like "do not write books with ideas/stories/ocs that were in a fanfiction." Which read to me as unreasonable, because fanfiction authors put a lot of original work into their writing and I don't see why I shouldn't use OCs in their own stories or take the basic strokes of a plotline or a book. This is the point my original post was trying to make, and I stand by it. The work that a fanfiction author does within a fanfiction and all pieces that are not copyrighted are theirs and should be usable for other projects.
What it's become clear that you mean is "Don't advertise your commercial properties in fanfiction spaces." Which I agree with. Especially because AO3 outright bans this, which I did not know about before. And now that I've thought about it, this is probably for legal reasons, so if people do start turning this into a commercial pipeline, it would probably lead to negative consequences for everyone. Perhaps to companies having the legal ability to take down the space, which I agree should be prevented at all costs.
I was wrong out of ignorance, thank you for educating me about this topic.
I subscribe to a church and state approach for original work and fanfiction myself and it never occurred to me that fanfiction authors would try to use fanfiction spaces to advertise their original work or that it would even be an effective marketing tool. I do maintain that people should be able to link their socials to their fanfics (and if there happen to be original works on those socials, that's ancillary) but fanfiction spaces should not become advertiser pages for authors.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. @soulwriter-sp
Coral climbed to her feet at the bottom of a slick ravine. The sky overhead was purple and streaked with yellow beams of light. Not sunlight. Nothing so natural. She had been at the bottom of the ravine for hours. The walls and floor were slick with mold and slime. It offered no purchase when she tried to climb free.
She tried to wipe off her hands on her pants. The material was already caked. So was her shirt. She physically pulled the mud off of each finger. A pair of similarly caked gloves were on the valley floor, somewhere. Probably already sinking into the mud and slime.
Gravity was stronger in this terrible place. She could feel the pressure on her body. Collapsing her ribcage. Or maybe that was just the underlying panic that drove every thought in her head.
She needed to rest. Her arms and legs ached and she was covered in the slime. Selecting the least slimy spot around her, she dropped down with her knees to her chest. She almost put her hands over her face before she remembered what was on them and crossed her arms over her knees instead. Forcing out deep breaths, she rocked gently on herself.
It wasn’t clear how long she’d been down in the ravine. Overhead, the light hadn’t changed at all. The shadows weren’t deepening. Except the increasing layers of mud on her clothing, there was no indication that time had passed. Her once-smooth hair was full of sweat and slime clung to the braids in it. She felt more like a mud skipper than a woman.
Her head swam with conflicting thoughts and confused memories. This wasn’t her home. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She had a backpack full of equipment that she didn’t remember packing – and none of it was good for climbing. The only reason she kept it was because something in the uneasy soup of her thoughts told her not to throw it away.
One more time, she tried to focus her thoughts and sort out the fragments of her recent memory. Like a puzzle, she tried to lay all the pieces before her.
Coral went to college to become an accountant in Arkansas. Then, without any explanation she could grasp, she was training in a facility somewhere. At least thirty others, together, practicing defensive martial arts. She heard the cracking sound of a gunshot. A voice “Again!” Then she woke on the floor of the ravine, face towards the purple and yellow sky. A voice reminded her that she was equipped with useful items. Another told her not to throw them away.
What use would the gear be if she couldn’t get out of this awful place? The slime was the perfect mix of disgusting yellows and greens to make it look like infected snot. The mold grew out of everything, feathery and white. It turned her stomach. She had to get out.
Staggering to her feet, Coral decided to scout the trench again. Surely there was something she had missed, anything to get her out. A gentler slope, a few dry patches, a place where the slime wasn’t so thick and she would be able to dig steps for herself through it. Something.
The trench was about a hundred yards long, ten yards wide at its widest, and easily four or five times Coral’s height. The whole surface was covered in slime mold and sludge. The bottom was sometimes filled with knee-deep brackish water. It offered neither shelter nor hope and the wet floor pulled at her boots as she searched the walls, looking for a place to make another desperate climb.
She found the shallowest slope she could, squinting at the top. “Shallowest” was still fairly steep. One more time, she opened her back pack and looked through it for anything that could help her. It was a good thing the food was wrapped in plastic, because she was covering it in more mud and slime as she rummaged. There was nothing for it. She would deal with the mess when she got out of the ravine.
She found a trowel with a sharp tip and upon investigation, she realized she could pierce the slime with it and make a kind of handhold of the handle. She carved out foot holds in the slime and mud behind it as far up as she could reach. They couldn’t be too large – the wall of the ravine was too soft.
The other thing that might be useful was a knife. She also had six or seven magazines and pistol ammo, but no pistol, of course. In fact, she had multiple pieces of equipment that were useless or at least harder to use without other pieces of vital equipment. She had, for example, a water filter and water purification tablets, but no water bottle. Some medicine, but no bandages, and unexplainable patches but no sewing needles.
The knife and the trowel together. Maybe. If she could cling to the knife and dig a foothold with the trowel at the same time, it could work. It would be exhausting and take a very, very long time, but maybe.
Since the option was stay at the bottom of the ravine and slowly starve to death or die of exposure, there was nothing to be done about it. She had to try. She stabbed the trowel into the wall and began scooping out her first foothold. She tested them with her feet, making sure the wall wouldn’t give way. They needed to be a fair distance apart, but she was surprised by how large she could make them before they broke in.
She dug them out, each one beside another, so she could stand in them. She kept digging them until she couldn’t reach any further on the wall. Time for phase two.
With a knife in one hand, and the trowel in the other, she put her foot into the first hold and climbed up until she could sink her knife into a new patch of wall. She stabbed it in vertically and gave it a few quick tugs. But she clearly wasn’t thorough enough, because when she put her weight on it, the blade sliced downwards and gave way.
She had one frozen moment to think, “Right, I’m an idiot.” Before she was free-falling.
As she hit the relatively solid ground, it felt like she lost consciousness. Her limbs writhed, insect-like, as she recovered. In her excitement to get out, she’d forgotten a basic law of physics: Gravity was always in force. And here, gravity felt like a lead weight. It was like the sheer awfulness of the situation manifested itself in a full-body, crushing embrace.
Coral took in a deep breath, feeling the pressure in her lungs. She didn’t know how to estimate how much stronger gravity was, but it felt like she was sealed in a metal suit. Chainmail, maybe. Just chainmail, encasing her body. All she wanted to do was lie down and rest. She didn’t care if it was in a puddle of mud and slime.
Coral realized she had dropped her knife somewhere in the brackish water. Adrenaline surged into her, pain disappearing in an instant. She sat up and felt around with her hand until she felt a sting in her fingers and closed her hand on the blade, pulling it out of the horrid water. She stuck it into its sheath on her belt.
As soon as the energy came, it was gone. She looked around wearily, picked a spot where it seemed driest, and lay down. The one good thing so far about dying trapped in this slime pit was that she seemed to be alone and the danger the pit represented was slow coming. She closed her eyes to rest.
Crawling her way out of sleep, Coral shifted. She had to pee. It was so hard to move. The world felt so heavy, it was twisting around her. She wiggled and pulled at her limbs, grimacing in pain and exhaustion.
She opened her eyes into unhappy slits, wishing she could sleep longer, and glanced around. When she looked down, she found her whole lower body was sunken into the mud. She twisted her legs and the mud sucked at her harder, actively pulling her down into it.
A shriek left her lips without thinking. Cursing and kicking, she flailed her feet until she could pull herself back out of the mud and slime that imprisoned them. As she stumbled away from it, she felt a soft rumble, and heard an animalistic, sucking moan from the mud. Heart thumping, she realized the ravine had tried to eat her. She must have been lying still for long enough that it took her.
There was no more time to wait around, she had to get out of the pit, right at that very moment.
Coral wasn’t surprised to find her carefully carved footholds were covered over. She set to carving them again, trowel digging into the side easily. The footholds were still there. She discovered they had filled with the slime, but not the earth. The soft, slick material was easier to pull out and discard than the initial packed mud. Small mercies.
Digging her knife in horizontally, she climbed up to make a new foothold. The angle of the trowel was weird in her hand, but she didn’t have a choice. She carved out a new indentation and switched the trowel and the knife with extreme care to make her next one.
If she could just get to the ledge, she would be safe. She had to believe it. Anything less, and she may as well just re-bury herself in the mud to be eaten by this stupid, disgusting, slime-covered, stinking, f@#$-ing pit. The angry description helped her focus as she pulled herself up to make another foothold.
A chill breeze ran down the trench and she shivered. Her clothes were wet and the wind seemed to pierce right to her skin. A warm breeze followed, taking the pain away, but then intensifying it when the cold returned right after. She dug her trowel into the wall of the ravine and gritted her teeth, praying she wouldn’t fall. She just needed to make it – maybe just ten more feet?
She felt her eyes sting as she hung onto the trowel and the knife. She would give herself just a little bit longer to catch her breath, but she had to move, and she had to move soon. The longer she took, the less energy she would have to make the rest of the climb.
The punishing angle of the walls ate at her reserves as she carved out her next foothold with the trowel. It was shallow – a toe hold. It would have to do. She needed momentum. She pulled herself up to stab the wall again. Barely a foot above where she’d been before. It would have to do. Another shallow toe hold.
Her arms and legs started trembling and she stabbed the tools into the wall, holding on for dear life. How far had she come? Twenty feet? Less, more? If she fell, would she be severely injured when she hit the bottom?
Should she risk climbing down, trying to rest, and being consumed by the slime?
No. No, there was no going back. She wiggled the shovel, working it back and forth slowly, holding onto the knife with her other hand. The mud must have been more compact here, because it was taking a long time to work out even the smallest toe hold.
Looking up, she tried to estimate how many more she needed. At least one more full body-length. She could do it. It was five feet. Just five. She wiggled out the toe hold, as deep as she could bear to make it, and prepared herself to climb to the next one.
The shallow toe-hold betrayed her. Her foot slipped out from under her. A sickening lurch in her stomach, she let go of the knife handle and scrabbled at the valley side as one slip led to another and before she knew what was happening, she splashed down right where she’d started in brackish water.
Stunned, she lay at the bottom of the ravine, covered in slime again. Her whole body hurt. The slick climb swam before her eyes, looking impossibly high. Her eyes stung with splashed slime and tears. She forced herself to sit up and tried to wipe them, only succeeding in smearing more slime over her face.
Her ankle was sore. Worse, sprained or at the least twisted. It was tender when she prodded it, and when she tried to get to her feet, it burst into agony and she was forced to sit down.
Tears sprang to her eyes. She dragged herself to the driest spot and tried to make herself calm down, but she couldn’t. She curled her legs in and rubbed her ankle, weeping softly. The weeping turned into screaming.
“I’m here! Help me! I’m in a slime pit! I don’t want to die here! Help me! Help me! I don’t want to die here…” She screamed until her voice broke from screaming and she was left alone, at the bottom of a slimy ravine, with a twisted and aching ankle, weighed down by a backpack full of useless equipment, her knife still stabbed into the side of the ravine, and her trowel somewhere.
It was no use trying to climb again. She would never make it with one bad ankle. She could barely walk. Her last hope was rescue and rescue seemed… Unlikely.
Looking up at the sky, Coral tried to determine if it was any closer to night – if night even existed.
With one ankle in agony, she forced herself to move to different spots in the bottom of the ravine, afraid it would start to consume her again. There had to be someone coming. Someone would find her. They would have rope and some way to anchor it above and they would pull her out. She would be fine. She just had to wait.
A bit of knowledge tickled her and she turned back to the backpack, digging through it until she found a whistle on a lanyard. She tore open the plastic package and put it around her neck. This had to work, because otherwise she would surely be calling in some kind of monster. With her last hope, she blew three short blasts, three long blasts, and three more short blasts. Panting, she waited, then repeated the pattern.
The whistle’s shrill noise pierced her as she whistled into the dark ravine over and over again. It became a pulsing routine, a compulsive habit, fight her way to the next dry-ish spot, collapse, whistle in mouth, blow … --- …, wait, hear nothing, head pulse, heart pound, fight to her feet, move, collapse, whistle, blow S.O.S., hear nothing, help me, heart pulse, head pound, fight to stand, move, collapse, whistle, blow loud and long blasts just to make some kind of noise, to drown out the ever growing voice that cried out “Anyone, anywhere, somewhere, please, come get me, help me, help me, help me.”
Eventually, she stopped blowing on the whistle. She let the ravine fall completely silent. The slime around her suckled at her legs, her buttocks, she sank into it by millimeters. It hurt to keep her eyes open. She yearned to fall into distraught sleep. But the suckling sensation around her kept her awake. Like little fish nibbling all over her. She forced herself up and wondered why she was doing it. Maybe she should just close her eyes and go to sleep. Let it take her. It wouldn’t change the outcome.
The sky looked dark purple. Was night falling at last? If it did, she would never be able to stay awake. She was already so tired. She put her whistle to her lips, trying to call for help one more time. But as the noise faded around her, she was forced to accept reality: She was going to die in this pit.
Well. If the ground was going to eat her, she might as well be as comfortable as possible. She settled the backpack as a pillow and laid down, watching the sky. The shifting tendrils of gold and purple turned into green and silver as she watched. It had the effect of an aurora borealis, but spread out flat and encompassing the whole sky.
She imagined a dress made of that material. The flow of it, the feathery details of the colors touching each other. She would have loved to own a dress like that, to dance in it under the stars or the real northern lights. In this hostile world, the sky was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.
If it was going to be the last thing she ever saw, there were worse things.
A shrill sound split the night. A shriek like some terrible monster. It called over the slime pit and Coral was startled upright. She put a hand over her mouth to smother her panicked breathing. She couldn’t run. Even if she could, she couldn’t escape. Animal panic and despair washed over her as the call repeated, long and loud. Eldritch, but familiar. She couldn’t place it even though she knew it.
Well. Maybe it was better to die from an animal than be eaten by actual mud. She picked up her whistle and examined it. For hours, she’d heard nothing but the slip and slime of sludge, but now she knew she wasn’t alone in the world. Her frantic whistling must have drawn the creature in.
The cry shrieked across the world again. It sounded lonely, mournful. A great, predatory bird, crying. It was silly to think, to hope, that all it wanted was a friend. She considered whistling, calling the creature closer. It would be nice to see something that wasn’t slime and the walls of this pit. But that was madness.
Something else shouted, a more human tone. Almost words. She was going insane in this pit. It had to be. Slowly going mad listening to a shrieking predator and surrounded by the sludge and squidge of slime and mud.
Something stirred in her though. She sat up and put the whistle to her lips, blowing a short, quick blast. Afterwards, she strained her ears to listen, hoping to figure out what was coming for her. In the silence, a shriek came back, closer, and the tone was clearer. The shape of the sound.
It didn’t sound like a creature at all. Coral began frantically whistling, praying that she wasn’t wrong. The whistle out there returned occasionally, encouraging her as it got closer and closer, and then she saw a human silhouette up at the top of the ravine.
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
I want to clarify my point because I think it got misread entirely.
I am not shaming authors. That was never what I said.
What I am saying is that capitalizing on fanfic is a problem.
On the "turn it into an original work and keep the fanfic up" argument — I understand why people see this as a solution but it still misses the point.
When filing fanfic down into original work becomes a known pipeline the entire culture of fanfic spaces shifts. Fanfic communities become incubators for product. That changes everything about what those spaces are and what they are for.
And yes of course authors of popular fanfics want to bring their audience with them when they go commercial. That makes complete finacial sense. But I would rather they didn't. Not because I want to punish them but because the moment that pipeline becomes normalized it creates a commercial incentive that lives inside fanfic culture permanently. Every highly rated fanfic becomes a potential product. Every writer is potentially building a brand. That is not what fanfic is for.
Fanfic has always thrived because it exists outside commercial spaces. That is the unspoken agreement between fan communities and original creators. When commercialization enters — whether directly or through the file-it-down pipeline — that agreement breaks.
Ultimately authors want to take their existing audience and make money based on fanfiction which I find dangerous. The argument that all books are somehow fanfiction is one I disagree with cause there is a difference between inspiration and derivation, but that point is not relevant here because this is purely about the commercial aspect.
Beyond that commercialization brings a lot of people into fanfic spaces who may not have genuine respect for the etiquette and culture that exists there and that is not a good thing.
I think we may be imagining different things here. I was imagining taking some aspect of a fanfiction story and using it, not exploiting an audience.
I suppose I've never thought of fanfiction authors as having an "audience" that could be monetized except through ko-fi or something. That's a point I hadn't considered.
I think there's wiggle room here, though. There's nothing inherently wrong about telling people "if you like my writing, I have books." Again, publishing is a very difficult and predatory business to navigate. Social media followings are vital for indie authors, and if someone wrote a story I really liked on AO3, I'd want to at least know that there could be more in their voice out there.
As for the pipeline becoming a known thing... It's already there. We live in a post 50 Shades world. Reylo fanfiction became a best selling chemistry romance novel. There will be more and more examples as time marches forward with the internet connecting everyone to huge databases.
It feels like a balancing act to me. Like there should be a polite way to go about telling people "If you like what I write here, check out this page where my books are." Though I think I wouldn't personally enjoy attaching my nom de plume to the silliness I write on AO3, I think casting either option as back and white absolutes is a mistake.
On reflection, I think we may have been speaking past each other which colored my arguments after. I have been thinking about this and I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding at hand.
This is the original post:
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please.
FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
So when I read this, it sounded like "do not write books with ideas/stories/ocs that were in a fanfiction." Which read to me as unreasonable, because fanfiction authors put a lot of original work into their writing and I don't see why I shouldn't use OCs in their own stories or take the basic strokes of a plotline or a book. This is the point my original post was trying to make, and I stand by it. The work that a fanfiction author does within a fanfiction and all pieces that are not copyrighted are theirs and should be usable for other projects.
What it's become clear that you mean is "Don't advertise your commercial properties in fanfiction spaces." Which I agree with. Especially because AO3 outright bans this, which I did not know about before. And now that I've thought about it, this is probably for legal reasons, so if people do start turning this into a commercial pipeline, it would probably lead to negative consequences for everyone. Perhaps to companies having the legal ability to take down the space, which I agree should be prevented at all costs.
I was wrong out of ignorance, thank you for educating me about this topic.
I subscribe to a church and state approach for original work and fanfiction myself and it never occurred to me that fanfiction authors would try to use fanfiction spaces to advertise their original work or that it would even be an effective marketing tool. I do maintain that people should be able to link their socials to their fanfics (and if there happen to be original works on those socials, that's ancillary) but fanfiction spaces should not become advertiser pages for authors.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. @soulwriter-sp
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
I want to clarify my point because I think it got misread entirely.
I am not shaming authors. That was never what I said.
What I am saying is that capitalizing on fanfic is a problem.
On the "turn it into an original work and keep the fanfic up" argument — I understand why people see this as a solution but it still misses the point.
When filing fanfic down into original work becomes a known pipeline the entire culture of fanfic spaces shifts. Fanfic communities become incubators for product. That changes everything about what those spaces are and what they are for.
And yes of course authors of popular fanfics want to bring their audience with them when they go commercial. That makes complete finacial sense. But I would rather they didn't. Not because I want to punish them but because the moment that pipeline becomes normalized it creates a commercial incentive that lives inside fanfic culture permanently. Every highly rated fanfic becomes a potential product. Every writer is potentially building a brand. That is not what fanfic is for.
Fanfic has always thrived because it exists outside commercial spaces. That is the unspoken agreement between fan communities and original creators. When commercialization enters — whether directly or through the file-it-down pipeline — that agreement breaks.
Ultimately authors want to take their existing audience and make money based on fanfiction which I find dangerous. The argument that all books are somehow fanfiction is one I disagree with cause there is a difference between inspiration and derivation, but that point is not relevant here because this is purely about the commercial aspect.
Beyond that commercialization brings a lot of people into fanfic spaces who may not have genuine respect for the etiquette and culture that exists there and that is not a good thing.
I think we may be imagining different things here. I was imagining taking some aspect of a fanfiction story and using it, not exploiting an audience.
I suppose I've never thought of fanfiction authors as having an "audience" that could be monetized except through ko-fi or something. That's a point I hadn't considered.
I think there's wiggle room here, though. There's nothing inherently wrong about telling people "if you like my writing, I have books." Again, publishing is a very difficult and predatory business to navigate. Social media followings are vital for indie authors, and if someone wrote a story I really liked on AO3, I'd want to at least know that there could be more in their voice out there.
As for the pipeline becoming a known thing... It's already there. We live in a post 50 Shades world. Reylo fanfiction became a best selling chemistry romance novel. There will be more and more examples as time marches forward with the internet connecting everyone to huge databases.
It feels like a balancing act to me. Like there should be a polite way to go about telling people "If you like what I write here, check out this page where my books are." Though I think I wouldn't personally enjoy attaching my nom de plume to the silliness I write on AO3, I think casting either option as back and white absolutes is a mistake.
Placeholder title: Albert - Cozy arranged marriage romance set in a fantasy world. 118003 words. First in at least a duology. Closing on the last chapter in the next 25k words at least. I want to end a little bit after the actual wedding for this first book, to close out Albert's current arc and set him on the next phase. Not in a cliffhanger way, of course.
Untitled Anthology of Horror Short Stories: 6 stories in Alpha, ready for critique. Approximately 18000 - 24000 words total. Currently working on "The Unspeaking Eyes." Looking forward to updating this at MerMay, hope to commission some art for it and to debut the revised Mako Pup and His Little Prince.
Apotheosis - Cosmic Horror novel about a group of survivors navigating a chaotic pocket of space and solving the mystery of why they're there, who sent them, and how to get out. 13064 words currently, and working on headshots for each survivor to post with lore about the world.
Eclectus Parrots in Gouache, which I am developing a love-hate relationship with:
I have learned that Gouache is tricky, that understanding what I need to do does not mean I will be able to do it, and that I need more practice.
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
So normally when I'm writing in Word, I use the hyphen key like this:
He looked - eyes flashing up at her - and raised his bow to fire.
And in Word, that automatically lengthens the hyphen and makes the space between the hyphen and the words smaller.
I was under the impression that this was actually an em-dash. But I've been told by a member of my writer's group that I should use the em-dash instead of hyphenating the clauses.
I am very confused. Do you have insight on what is/isn't a real em-dash?
so when you add a space after a hyphen in word, what it creates in an en dash. however it only creates this in situations when an em dash would be appropriate, just for funsies
dash: hyphenated words i.e. t-shirt
en dash: ranges i.e. 2000–2025
em dash: microsoft word — which should never be trusted for grammatical issues — likes to put en dashes where there should be em dashes
do i know this? yes. do i bother correcting the en dashes to em dashes as i'm writing? no comment
Ah, I see. So I've been using En-dashes, thinking they're Em-dashes. At least no one will mistake my work for AI.
I guess the follow-up question would be if this is a grammatical faux pas to overlook or if I should go to the effort of breaking my established habit to bow to the opinion of someone I just met two weeks ago and making writing an even more challenging endeavor than it already is.
...I will offer no further comment on what my choice will be...
So normally when I'm writing in Word, I use the hyphen key like this:
He looked - eyes flashing up at her - and raised his bow to fire.
And in Word, that automatically lengthens the hyphen and makes the space between the hyphen and the words smaller.
I was under the impression that this was actually an em-dash. But I've been told by a member of my writer's group that I should use the em-dash instead of hyphenating the clauses.
I am very confused. Do you have insight on what is/isn't a real em-dash?
So, I ran across something on a second-hand book site today...
The worst part about growing up in the age of self publishing was that 17 year old me knew about it. Little Camilla Draymarch not only knew about self-publishing, she wanted to use it.
I could make books before I knew what editing was or why people did it.
When I thought I was a prodigy writer, and everything I made was brilliant enough as it was.
Worse. I marketed them. I took them to local book festivals. I gave copies to people.
Fortunately, I woke up when I hit college and started to understand writing as a craft. I pulled them off of Lulu and made them unavailable to purchase.
I could not imagine what I had released into the world.
...Those books are on second-hand websites. People bought them and now they're selling them on. They have my pen name on them. They have the beautiful art work I commissioned for one of their covers.
My pen name is going to be associated with those cringey teenage novels forever.
kaledo-art
stormborns
ellievsbear
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
titsay
