Anybody who spends any time on Twitter might have noticed the buzz about Amazon's most recent announcement: a new division called Kindle Worlds, where works based on other works can be published. (You can read the press release here.)
How Kindle Worlds will work:
Unlike Amazon's self-published division, Kindle Worlds accepts submissions rather than blankly allowing everybody to upload their own work. The works have to stay in the original canon of the story and merely expand upon the already given universe.
There are two two separate arms: one where the original publisher licenses the work, where they've reached out to authors to write for this; and another where the authors can submit work and Kindle Worlds chooses whether or not to publish them via their guidelines. This posts focuses on the second, self-publishing (or, rather, self-submitting) arm.
It can be argued that this is less publishing fanfiction and more licensed works; it's approved by the publisher to expand the universe of stories that are already collaboratively written. Like Chuck Wendig said, it's a mash-up of tie-in licensing and self-publishing.
Licensed works aren't anything new in the realm of entertainment -- all of the Star Wars and Star Trek books you see in the children's section of your local library are licensed sub-works. However, rather than reaching out to writers who do this sort of thing professionally, anybody can submit to Kindle Worlds.
What can you write?
Amazon currently only has a deal with the company Alloy (and Warner Bros. by extension, for those books that have been made into television shows), so you can only write work for those stories belonging to them. For instance, literary agent Pam van Hylckama Vlieg was one of those who fits into the first arm of Kindle Worlds; she was asked to write four licensed short stories in the Vampire Diaries universe, which will be available in June.
As Jon Scalzi explains, "Alloy Entertainment is on board for allowing people to write what they want (within specific guidelines — more on that in a bit). Since that’s the case, there’s probably a technical argument here about whether this is precisely “fan fiction” or if it’s actually media tie-in writing done with intentionally low bars to participation."
Alloy Entertainment is also a company that, by default, creates packaged books - all of their series are collaborative, so having multiple writers isn't an issue for them.
Because of the submission rules, there are things you can't write about - including pornography.
Don't expect publishers like Scholastic to jumping on board with this anytime soon, partly because of how contracts with their authors work - we won't have to pay for Harry Potter fanfiction anytime soon.
The concerns:
There are multiple concerns within the actual Terms and Conditions for how Kindle Worlds works, including:
- the ability of Alloy or Warner Bros. to use your original creations (characters, plots) without paying the author
- Amazon owning the story for the term of the copyright, which allows them to do things with it without paying the author
The contracts and requirements for the authors who were reached out to are rumoured to be radically different from those who will be submitting, but the details on that aren't known. Vlieg was able to confirm that her contract wasn't the same as the ones for the self-submitting process, though she couldn't go into details on the actual differences, and confirmed that there were two separate arms to Kindle Worlds.
As Katie said on Twitter, there's also the issue of people submitting fanfiction that other people have written as their own - how do you know that they didn't just lift it from somewhere else?
While there isn't a huge concern for non-Alloy authors right now, this does lead to potential issues in the future for authors who don't want fanfiction of their work published. Contracts will now need new subrights clauses that focus specifically about this sort of thing.
What does that mean for fandom?
Not much, especially for non-Alloy fandoms. They can't stop original fanfiction from being put on the Internet, especially if it falls outside their guidelines - and given that they're not allowing sex, that rules out about half of the fanfiction on the Internet.
However, it does change some of the ideas of what fanfiction is and what it could be -- if you're staying in canon and in character, there's the potential to make money on your fandom; is that something that should be encouraged by fandom or not? Is it the same as being paid to create fanart of somebody's favorite character? I don't have answers to these questions, but theoretical questions are fun to ask.
If you have any more questions, drop them in the comments -- I'll be answering them as best I can and doing more reading on this as the day goes on! What do you guys think of Kindle Worlds?
More on Kindle Worlds:
Share links in the comments; I'll update the list throughout the day!
- Jon Scalzi
- Cleolinda
- Malinda Lo
- Chuck Wendig
- The Mary Sue
- Jenny Trout
- Diana Peterfreund