Hello hello I am new to the bookbinding world of fic (as in, I’ve never bound a book or considered it, I just started seeing gorgeous bindings on tumblr) and I’m wondering: what are the ethics & rules around binding fics? What about paying artists to bind fics for you?
hey there! thank u for your question, but i’m not like an Authority on the ethics of bookbinding hahaha. I’ll answer to my opinion, though!
i think the most generally accepted guidelines would be:
when possible, ask the authors permission - to bind it or to post the typeset (for free). to this point i would add that it’s becoming kind of a general practice among fic writers to have a statement abt their stance in their bio on ao3 - i would check that first, but if they don’t i generally leave comments on the most recent/last chapter asking for permission, or if they have their tumblr listed i contact them here!
this is a hobby/craft, first and foremost. you’ll find a lot of the community discussing less the content of the book and more the skill/time/effort of actually making a book. i love it and it’s very worthwhile, but it is expensive and time consuming with not too many avenues for turning a profit
and as for profit: selling bound fanfiction jeopardizes the ff community as a whole. the police aren’t gonna knock your door down, but it is gonna scare writers into pulling their work lest they get served a lawsuit for copyright infringement. if you find someone who is open to being commissioned to bind a fic, that’s fine in my opinion. if an author reaches out and wants to pay you to bind their fic, i also see no problem with that. gifting is actually a large part of this community - a lot of binders, if they have the resources, will gift a bound copy to the author. the issue becomes when you sell like many copies of fanfiction on a public website like etsy, as we’ve seen with manacled - that is actually reportable bc of copyright, and can get the seller as well as a non consenting author in legal trouble.
so yeah those are my thoughts! there’s a lot more nuance going on in the community but i fear there are much better articulated videos and posts about it on here and on tiktok.
i hope you do take up bookbinding bc it is the most rewarding craft i’ve tried so far (and i hope you have better luck with cutting straight lines than i do LMAO), but you’ll be fine if you accidentally cross some invisible ethical line. no one is mad about accidents - it’s really only the malicious people who know it’s wrong and continue to do it anyway that everyone is mad at.