If I'm writing fanfiction of one of your books and I say something exactly like you wrote it, is it plagiarism? Do I have to quote it in any specific way or... How does it work?
I have a few asks about fanfic in my inbox, so I’m going to try to answer all of them in one go, because what else does one do on Christmas after the family’s all gone home?
The thing is, the worlds of canon and fanfic don’t mingle as often as one would think. I don’t read fanfic, and fandom, for their part, often works in a curious, closed system that develops versions of characters who are internally consistent but diverge substantially from canon. In between that and the nature of what fandom is writing about, the text fandom produces doesn’t generally wander anywhere close to the land of copyright peril.
But you guys have asked, so here we go. Legal time.
Strap yourself in, kids, because it’s gonna be … boring.
1. The author of a traditionally owned novel doesn’t have the final say in how the text and characters are used: the publisher owns those rights. I sold mine to Scholastic for a song and a Camaro. Well, for money. But I used it to buy a set of bagpipes and a Camaro, so same diff. The point is that although I get a lot of legal questions about usage of my characters’ likenesses for art/ jewelry/ book-themed dog food blends or text excerpts for fic/ papers/ billboards about Welsh kings, those questions are really for Scholastic’s legal department. From here on out, I shall refer to these faceless suits as Legal.
2. Even though I like to imagine Legal as a bank of snappily dressed assholes with short tempers who work in sleek offices with gray walls and six foot rubber trees in the corner, the truth is really not that terrifying. Because Legal really only has two priorities when it comes to fanfiction: stopping activities that prevent sales of the canon text* and preventing others from exercising the rights that the publisher owns.**
3. *Stuff that prevents sales of the original text includes highly derivative fanfic and substantial plagiarism. An example of the first: when Shiver was first published, a fanfic writer got in trouble for copying Shiver word-for-word, changing only the main characters’ names. Such plagiarism assassinates the demand for buying the original text because the fanfic still is the original text. Legal leaps to their feet, knocking over a rubber plant. The second — substantial plagiarism — is more subjective, but generally involves copying a notable amount of the canon (not a line or two. No one will blink an eye if you use a line of dialog from the books to write a chapter from another character’s POV, etc.) It also sort of involves content/ structure. If you rewrote the entire Raven Cycle with your own prose but the exact same chapter structure, you’d be wandering onto wobbly ground even if you didn’t use a single word of mine. Legal doesn’t care about the ethics of it, only the bottom line. Such a work could make an impact on the sales of the original, and that’s what would possibly draw Legal’s eye.
4. **Preventing others from exercising rights that the publisher owns basically means that you can’t legally disseminate fan-translations in foreign languages unless you’ve bought the translation rights nor charge for your fanfiction. The translation rights are sold close to the book’s publication and so if you translate, even for free, you’re using those rights. And charging for fanfic exercises yet more rights that Legal is interested in. I have a clause in my contract (as do most authors) saying that my publisher has the first right of refusal on any professional work that uses those same characters. Many authors have even more stringent clauses, saying that the authors can’t use their own characters with any other publisher at all. And some publishers own the characters outright, which means that they and only they can decide who professionally writes those characters. Professionally = for commercial purposes. Commercial = for money/ bagpipes/ Camaros. If you write a 30,000 word fanfic of side characters from the Raven Cycle for nothing, my publisher will shrug. If you write the same fic and charge money for it, no matter what the sum is? Suddenly you will find Legal is very interested. They vault over their desks and paint those gray walls red.
5. Publishers want readers to have fun. They also want to make money off the rights they’ve paid for. As long as you don’t interfere with that, you’ll be a-ok.
I also have several readers in my inbox wondering how I feel about fanfic.
I wish I had a rubber plant.
