[Thinking Forward] – DIY Publishing and Fanfiction

I’m not a big fan of fanfiction, as I’ve said before, for one simple reason: it’s lazy. And yet the Internet has given rise to huge fanfic communities that allow fans of everything from Full House to Harry Potter to craft their own continuing adventures of favorite characters… and to get their work in front of eager audiences. Never mind that a large amount of fanfiction is just plain awful; it’s familiar, it’s fan-friendly, and it’s a fun little guilty pleasure for those who want their favorite stories to keep on going.

In the United States, fanfiction is technically illegal, but generally allowed as long as there’s no money changing hands and no claims to copyright.

Elsewhere in the world, however, fanfiction is so common that it’s often actually published and sold. In Japan, for example, amateur fans often get together to produce “dojinshi” books that are essentially fanfiction comics featuring popular characters in continuing adventures or alternate realities. One would expect this sort of thing in neighboring Asian nations that have less restrictive copyright laws (piracy and knockoffs often go hand in hand!), and not in a large consumer nation where intellectual property is big business.

But the Japanese have a very different attitude towards derivative works than people in the United States. The Japanese copyright laws are extremely rigid, but there is something of a gray area where fanfiction is concerned, since fanfiction is seen as something that helps to increase sales of official merchandise rather than take money away from the copyright holder. As long as the copyright holder doesn’t enforce the copyright, the creation and sale of fanfiction is assumed to be permitted. “Dojinshi” communities are even celebrated in certain circles, since they’ve essentially given birth to popular studios such as CLAMP and Gainax. (You can read an interesting interview with a Gainax member here that discusses this further.)

What’s impressive about a lot of the Japanese fanfiction is that it’s created by amateurs, but printed in small professional quality runs and sold in markets. Much of it is of a fairly low quality, but some of it is indistinguishable from the official products. Some of it is even arguably better. And that poses a new problem in the digital era, because while in the old days, one had to buy a physical copy of a fanfic in order to enjoy it (thus keeping the number of eyeballs seeing it rather low), the Internet allows even the crummiest fanfiction story to be viewed by millions of people from around the world.

And that leads me to wonder… now that the Internet has given fanfiction an ability to grow around all of the thorny legal issues surrounding it, is it possible we’ll see a brand new style of “do-it-yourself publishing” in the near future? It could happen sooner than you might think… and it could have major implications for the rest of the world of publishing.

I remember being at a comic book convention a few years ago where a couple of guys were selling a rather slickly produced video involving two popular comic book characters getting into a huge battle with each other. For something produced by a group of fans, it was pretty impressive — the actors fit the roles well and the special effects were quite good. The only problem was that the work was produced without the license or approval of Marvel Comics, the company that held the copyrights and trademarks associated with both characters… and the booth was promptly shut down as a result.

But as the owner of the booth argued with some convention organizers who were telling them to pack their things, he made an interesting point. “Look around, and you see artists all over the place doing sketches of these characters,” he said. “And they’re selling them. Some of them are even selling sculptures. Why aren’t they getting thrown out of here too?”

The answer, of course, is that comic book publishers allow artists to draw and sell sketches of popular characters despite the fact that the practice infringes on copyright because the works are original single-item productions that aren’t affecting sales. As far as the publishers are concerned, it’s “small potatoes” — nobody’s getting rich doing character sketches, and the publishers can’t be bothered to put a stop to it anyhow. It’s only when artists mass-produce work that appears to be infringing on copyright or trademark that the publishers get upset and take action.

That’s good and well in a small place like a comic book convention, but what about the Internet? Isn’t it possible for an creator to mass-produce a derivative work and put it up for sale without the publisher knowing about it? Of course it is. As long as the creator can stay off the radar of the publisher, he or she can easily continue the operation. Books can be easily printed and sold through a print-on-demand service and directly marketed to potential readers… which means that fanfiction can actually become profitable to its creators if care is taken not to tip off the original copyright holder.

Consider this. Right now, Harry Potter fanfiction is extremely popular. It’s entirely possible that some of the more popular Harry Potter fanfic authors could be producing their work in book form and selling it to fans directly, appeasing those who would like to build their Harry Potter collection with professionally-printed books. These authors could even argue that since the fanfiction can already be personally printed by fans that there’s no harm in producing books to save them the trouble. The issue of profit could be negated by talking about the costs associated with printing and production. The entire concept of intellectual property and copyright infringement could be legally sidestepped with a clever enough argument… and it probably will be one of these days.

What publishers need to realize is that there are certain groups of fans out there who want fanfiction, and who will always embrace it, no matter how awful it is. Rather than crank out crummy “official” pseudo-sequels and other publisher-sponsored derivative works, publishers might be smart to jump on the fanfic bandwagon and give fanfic authors the chance to legally sell their work in printed form… a win-win for everyone involved.

The trick, of course, is that the volume has to be there to accomodate print runs. Publishers aren’t going to want to sell books if they can’t print at a profitable rate. Print-on-Demand might be the ace in the hole, though, since it doesn’t require expensive runs or storing unsold copies. Publishers could simply authorize a fanfic compilation two or three times a year, pay the authors nothing (giving them exposure in exchange for the right to have their work published), and sit back and watch the money roll in.

Could this be a viable future business practice for publishers? The only issue in the way is copyright. Publishers generally don’t own the intellectual properties they produce. Authors do. And since many authors are fiercely protective of their own work, it might be hard to talk them into opening up the fanfic floodgates.

I, for one, would be very interested to see a publisher give this idea a whirl. It could be a disaster. But I have a feeling that if it were successful, it could become a normal practice in the world of entertainment media… and a profitable one at that!

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan