Fanfic

Selling Fanfic to Publishers

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Seaquest2032_aI received an email today from a guy who writes fanfic in "the SEAQUEST universe" and would like to see it published as novels. Here’s part of what he wrote me: 

We see novels based on other universes published all the time. Be they
the Extended-Universe Star Wars novels written by people like Timothy
Zahn or the Star Trek novels which go largely uncreditted by Paramount
studios, and they seem to do fairly well. Do you have any tips on how
I may actually go getting Atlantis published? Obviously there would be
copyright issues that need to be resolved with Universal studios and
so on, but I don’t have the foggiest on where to begin!

First off, your initial premise is wrong: Paramount maintains rigid control over the STAR TREK novels as does Lucasfilm over the STAR WARS books.

I would say it would be impossible to get Atlantis, your SeaQuest-derived work, published and it would be an utter waste of time to pursue it. But, for the sake of argument, you would have to contact Cindy Chang at Universal Licensing in Los Angeles for permission to shop it around. Then whatever publisher you found would have to pay Universal a license fee to publish your work.

There are two ways that licensed novels are usually pursued.

1) The studio offers their TV or movie property to publishers.
2) a publisher contacts a studio and says they are interested in a particular property, what would it cost to license it?

In either case, the studio is paid a license fee, receives royalties, and usually maintains creative control over the property (ie they can approve or reject writers, stories, manuscripts, etc.).
For instance, in my case, Penguin/Putnam had tremendous success with the MURDER SHE WROTE novels (licensed from Universal) and wanted to come up with a companion series that would appeal to the same audience. So they approached Paramount and licensed DIAGNOSIS MURDER from them, then they came to me to write the books (though I had to be approved by Paramount first). I am paid an advance and a royalty. Paramount, in addition to the license fee, also gets royalties.  All my manuscripts are read, and approved, by Paramount before they are published.

My advice to you is to move on. It’s time to write something original…and to put your efforts into getting that published instead.

Marmaduchy

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I was doing research on the cartoon strip "Marmaduke," the huge dog, for my MONK novel (Monk loves Marmaduke), when I stumbled on this entertaining discussion of fandom at Websnark. He illustrates his ideas by describing what Marmaduke fandom might be like:

The Marmaduke fandom, on the other hand, spends a significant amount of time
on the Marmaduke forum (the Marmaduchy, let’s call it). They have many different
discussions on Marmaduke, and on things that have nothing to do with Marmaduke
— to the point that the Marmaduke forum moderators had to create a specific
topic for off-topic posts, and have to kick folks there whenever they stray.
They trade LJ icons and forum avatars based on Marmaduke art. They collect pithy
Marmaduke sayings. They affirm each other and their common love of Marmaduke,
and they find close friends through Marmaduke — friends that mean a lot to them
far beyond Marmaduke. This is what the Marmaduke Fandom has given them, and it
means everything to them.

The idea, for many of the Marmaducets and duchesses (so clever, those
Marmaduke fans — the guys naming themselves after currency and the girls making
a delightful play on Marmaduke’s name), is not so much the individual Marmaduke
strips themselves, but the zeitgeist of all that is Marmaduke. It’s the
attitude. It’s how Marmaduke makes them feel, and how much they can amplify that
feeling in the company of others. It can be terrifically empowering and it can
be terrifically satisfying. Right here, in this little community on the
internet, Marmaduke is the coolest thing around, and by showing your love for
Marmaduke, you’re cool too. And as for Marmaduke-creator Brad Anderson? The
Marmaduchy provides feedback and, more importantly, validation. It’s damn hard
to be a cartoonist — or a creator of any stripe. It takes effort and ego and
skill and talent, and you spend a huge amount of time wondering if anyone gives
a fuck. The Marmaduchy tells Anderson "yes. Yes, we give a fuck. We give many
fucks. In fact, if you want us to, several of us will in fact have sex with you
if you want, because you have brought so much pleasure to our lives that we
would dearly love to repay you."

The  dark side of fandom, he says, is Fan Entitlement, which he describes like this:

Read more

Fanfic Blowback

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Several blogs have weighed in, pro and con and somewhere in-between, on my "Another Day in Fanfic" posting and the ensuing controversy. Here’s a sampling of excerpts:

From Crankywriter:

Fanfic is not taking food out of your family’s mouths, and it’s not
plagiarism. To call it that is an insult to writers who have been
plagiarized, like Nora Roberts, who called her experience akin to mind
rape. And yes, she’s a real writer, and Janet Dailey cut-and-pasted
Nora’s words and claimed them as hers. That’s plagiarism and parasitism
for you.

Nora Roberts doesn’t approve of fanfiction based on her work,  either. For all I know, she calls that "mind rape" and plagiarism, too.

From Banana Oil (a tiny excerpt from a long, long post):

The upshot here is that using others’ characters has a long
tradition among Real Writers, even without explicit consent. This is
not meant as a defense of fan fiction in toto, but rather as a suggestion that even Real Writers do it, so the act itself does not seem to be tainted from the outset.

I think what really bothers Lee are the people who want something for nothing, those who only
write fan fiction, taking other people’s characters and backgrounds,
playing with them like pieces on a chess board, and then proclaiming
“See? I’m a Writer now!” And hey, I’m with him, such people are
parasites and best ridiculed and dispensed with. However, I severely
doubt that each and every writer of fan fiction is such a remora (even
if many or most are), because were I to accept that premise, I must
dismiss a number of my favorite Real Writers as well, something I am
wholly unwilling to do.

From the Creative Guy:

Plagiarism is a very dangerous word to throw around.  Certainly
it has its place, but does it really belong in a discussion (if that’s
the word) concerning fanfic?  According to media tie-in author Lee Goldberg, the answer is yes.
It’s hard to know where to start with this rant, considering how wrong-headed the entire thing is.  Having had some experience with plagiarism, I know there’s a vast gulf of difference between stealing someone else’s work and what fanfic authors do.

From Shannon Stacey:

As a reader, I don’t get it. Writing about the stuff you don’t get
to see—maybe Wonder Woman’s got a dirty old lady thing for the Boy
Wonder?—is not my cup of tea. Why? Because that has nothing to do with
the writer’s story. The actual writer who created those characters
has/had a vision for them, and that fanfic story ain’t it. For
example—the Star Wars movies. I’d have nothing to do with the three
prequels if they weren’t from George Lucas. I’m sure it’s entertaining
for many, it’s just not my cup of tea.

As a writer, I really don’t get it.  It’s copyright violation.  If you’re a writer, how is that not of huge
importance to you? If you write fanfic, and then get published with an
original work, how ironic would it be if you had to defend your
original work against copyright infringement?

Another Day in FanFic

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Meljean Brook readily admits that her DC Comics-based  fanfic is a violation of copyright…but that she writes them anyway.

The first question is: isn’t it illegal?

Yes. There’s no
getting around that. I am using copyrighted characters, and using them
to write stories. The characters are owned by DC Comics, the copyrights
are current and valid….

And yet I wrote them anyway.

Don’t I have any sensibilities?
Any notion of right and wrong? Any inkling of what it is to own a
character? Why copyright infringement is a horrible thing to do?

The answer is: Yes. I do. Stealing ideas and claiming them as my own is the worst form of plagiarism.

I
don’t claim them as my own—I know exactly where the credit for their
creation lies. Did I write them? Yes. Do I own them? Nope. Anyone who
wants them can have them.

Does that little disclaimer at the
beginning of every fic that says "I don’t make any money from these"
absolve me of responsibility? No, I still violated copyrights.

So if she has so much respect for copyright, why did she do it? Because she simply couldn’t help herself.

Using someone else’s character and making that character behave in ways
the creator/copyright holder would never have condoned/conceived is
revolting. How dare I write about Batman and Wonder Woman becoming
romantically linked? How dare I write a slash fiction parody involving
Batman and Superman?

The answer is: I didn’t know what else to
do. I’m a writer—I may not be a very good one, but it is what I do.
When Batman and Wonder Woman grabbed a hold of me, they didn’t let go,
and I had to write it. There were stories in my head, and I told them
on paper like I do every other story in my head.

And because I’m a geek, and because I had no one else to talk to about this, I put it on the Internet.

I’ve heard a lot of inane justifications for writing fanfic, but this is the winner. She knows she’s using characters that aren’t her own, that she’s disrespecting the authors right to control their own creations, but none of that really matters… because she’s "a writer," so she had no other choice but to write the story and post it in the net.  She had to do it. It was an undeniable compulsion.

Because she’s "a writer."

No, Meljean, you’re not. You don’t have the slightest inking of what it means to be a writer or any respect for other writers.  A writer creates characters and stories  and respects the creative rights of his colleagues. You are a plagiarist. A creative parasite. To call yourself "a writer" to justify your creative theft and Internet publication of your work disrespects every real writer you steal from.

Now I know what you’re going to say…"I used fanfic to learn my craft. I am a writer now. A professional writer. I have a novella coming out from Berkley and I’m working on a novel.   So there!"

Uh-huh.

So why do you still proudly post all your fanfic on your site? A real writer would have more respect for her peers. A real writer — an adult —  would know better.

Grow up already.

The Day in Fanfic

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Helen Kaye has just discovered slash fanfic and she doesn’t get the appeal.

[The] "writing" tends to be based on existing television show characters where the
male actors are not gay on the show but where the slash writing puts them in
homoerotic relationships.  Yes, this appears to be a violation of, well,
everything.  Using other people’s characters?  That certainly doesn’t seem right
to me.  Putting these well known characters in situations that, at best, can be
described as out of context?  Well, that’s just wrong in my book. 

Meanwhile,  John Scalzi sees fanfic, even "slash" fanfic, as a barometer of success.

Honestly, though, if I were the creator of a science fiction or fantasy media
property (as opposed to a mere book author) and I didn’t find evidence of fanfic
online, I would be very worried. People don’t write fanfic if they
aren’t already so enthralled by your universe that they can’t handle the fact
you’re not producing it any faster, and are thus compelled to make some of their
own — the methadone, if you will, to your pure, sweet media property heroin… And if they’re writing slash (fanfic with sex!), chances are excellent that
you’re sucking in all of their take home pay that doesn’t go to rent, food and
cat products. It is the Buffy slash writers who paid for Joss Whedon’s boat (or
whatever other particularly silly display of wealth that he’s purchased for
himself).

You know how I feel on this topic, so I’ll refrain from comment. ..but yours are certainly welcome!

(Thanks to Wendy Duren and Jim Winter  for pointing me to these posts)

 

Jasper Fforde on Fanfic

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Novelist Jasper Fforde ("The Eyre Affair," "Well of Lost Plots," etc.) shares his views on fanfic.

My thoughts on Fan Fiction are pretty much this: That it seems strange to want
to copy or ‘augment’ someone else’s work when you could expend just as much
energy and have a lot more fun making up your own. I feel, and I think with good
reason, very proprietorial about Thursday and all her escapades; clearly I can’t
stop you writing and playing what you want in private, and am very flattered
that you wish to do so. But anything published in any form whatsoever – and that
specifically includes the internet – I cannot encourage, nor approve of.

Tod vs The Fanficcers

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Once again, my brother Tod takes on the fanfic universe.  First he did it with his column, now he’s doing it with Letters to The Editor.  He wrote to Writers Digest this month, criticizing them for an idiotic article (then again, aren’t most of the articles in that magazine pretty lame?)  that suggested that writing fanfic might be a good way to learn how to write.  As a successful novelist and acclaimed teacher of creative writing, Tod thinks otherswise. In part, he said:

Being handed a character…isn’t equal to the organic process you must
go through to create real, living characters. Writing fiction isn’t
about getting a shorthand lesson in creativity via someone else’s
established characters; rather, it’s the process of learning how to
create vivid characters and story lines from your own minds. Writing
fanfiction to learn how to write a novel is like filling in a crossword
puzzle with the belief that someone will hand you a doctorate
afterward.

Naturally, this has pissed off a lot of fanficcers, including some folks who are writing their own Harry Potter novels. Like this woman, for instance…

Well, Tod Goldberg, I majorly disagree. To begin with, I think
fanfiction gives people the courage to write. One, because you can put
up your work in a welcoming atmosphere and not have to go through the
self-esteem destruction of trying to get published. Two, you can get
your work read by someone other than your mother. Even if you
write something and set up a web site for people to read, you’re not
likely to get the draw that you would putting up a story at a fanfic
site. Three, you don’t have to go through the very hard work of making
up a background, allowing a writer to jump write in and write!

She has, of course, just proven Tod’s point…but I doubt she noticed.  But far be it from me to dive back into that  debate again.  I’ll leave that to Tod over on his blog.

Angst Fanfic

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Someone sent me the following "disclaimer" from the main page of the "Jesse Travis Angst Fanfiction Site." (Jesse is a character in Diagnosis Murder).

Disclaimer- The following fanfiction is the property of the author however the
characters and world of Diagnosis Murder do not unless stated otherwise, i.e.
original characters.

I find it amusing that the writer considers his fanfic "the property of the author", but he feels no qualms about pilfering someone else’s characters in his work. Amazing double-standard there, huh?

The site is, I’m told, just one part of  Angst Fanfiction World of Sparkycola.  I’m almost afraid to ask… what the heck is angst fanfiction? How is it different from hurt/comfort or a good spanking? 

I Wonder How She Feels About Male-Birthing Stories

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Bestselling author Sandra Brown  doesn’t like fanfic based on her work and wants her fans to help her find it.  She posts this note on her site

A Word About Fan Fiction

We post excerpts from some of Sandra’s more recent books so that you, the reader, can make more informed purchasing decisions. We now ask that you help us in return. Fan Fiction is illegal. Taking characters from an author’s work and adapting stories around them constitutes copyright
infringement. If you discover "Fan Fiction" of Mrs. Brown’s work, please don’t hesitate
to us.