Caution Fanfic Writers: What do Amazon's Kindle Worlds terms mean for you and your stories?

[et_tu_lj]

Caution, Fanfic Writers!

Amazon has recently launched Kindle Worlds, a publishing service for fanfiction in certain licensed fandoms. If your fandom is included, you could earn a small percentage off of the legal sale of your fanfic, but by participating, you are entering a legally binding agreement with Kindle Worlds. Because fanfic writers aren'

Comments

[andersenmom]

Yeah, this worries me, too.

[et_tu_lj]

I was worried from the first announcement, but now that the actual terms are public, it's terrifying. I can't believe what they're having you sign away.

[meridian_rose]

I've read other articles/meta on this and I agree that it's not a positive for the writers at all.

[et_tu_lj]

Excellent, I'm glad to hear the news is out there more than I've come across. I've only seen it talked about from the publishing side and those aren't the people I worry about knowing it.

[meridian_rose]

Metanews had a lot of links to articles of media, blogs, and Tumblr varieties, and the OTW signal boosted via all its platforms so anyone signed up to OTW news as an adjunct to AO3 should have heard something about it :D I am glad it is being addressed because the "ooh, paid for fanfic, shiny" is an understandable reaction, but the moment you look at the terms alarm bells should go off!

[shyfoxling]

I tried to just link to this rather than repost it, not noticing you had it locked - would you consider unlocking it, or would you rather it was simply copied and pasted?

[et_tu_lj]

Dang, every time I edited, it kept resetting to journal default instead of public again. Should be fixed now, so link away. :)

[vaudience]

I'm never going to stop thinking this is an opportunist-taken advantage of people- BAD idea.

fortunately, I don't see it going Very far- as anyone who sits down and reads the fine print can clearly realize this thing Cheats you over.

I do feel bad to the people that seem to already put their work on this abomination. I hope they dont get screwed over.

and I'm extremely confused- the kindle worlds Boasts that it currently has 50 fandoms to work with- but I looked at the website up and down and I only counted 4-5--- where's the remaining 45-8 fandoms?

can someone care to explain.

[et_tu_lj]

I know of 12. They started with the 3 Alloy holdings: Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries. Then added 5 through Valiant Entertainment: Archer & Armstrong, Bloodshot, Harbinger, Shadowman, and X-O Manowar. Then some authors jumped in directly, adding 4 more fandoms: Hugh Howey's Silo Saga; Barry Eisler's John Rain novels; Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines series; and The Foreworld Saga (several authors) Some of the names on this last list are indies that have spoken out a lot about fair contracts and author rights, or even about the validity of fanfiction itself. To see their name associated with such an exploitive program disappoints me greatly.

Where did you see the mention of 50 fandoms? I've only ever seen these, with 3 at launch, expanding up to the current 12 fandoms with later announcements. But I suppose there are likely more in negotiations that haven't been announced yet, so maybe the 50 was a reference to in progress additions?