[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.

Read more »

[Business Planning] – Great New Ways of Doing Old Business

I talk a lot about publishing on this blog, but my research isn’t restricted to the publishing world alone — as a business student, I’ve had the chance to study a lot of companies in a large number of industries. In fact, one thing we get to do in business school is what are called “case studies” — we’re given a historical crossroads in a company’s life, filled in on the information leading up to a decision that needs to be made, and asked what we’d recommend using the tools we’ve learned in class. For someone like myself, who enjoys strategic planning and evaluation, it’s tremendous fun. But what often frustrates me is that my classmates are so eager to figure out the answer that the instructor is looking for that they don’t approach the problem creatively.

Sadly, this happens a lot in the business world. Managers find themselves in the unenviable role of having to appease stock owners, and they focus on the mantra of, “maximize profits, minimize costs.” This has led to a lot of bad decision-making, and it’s also led to a lot of good companies taking a plunge once they reach a point of maturity where they can no longer sustain rapid growth.

What I find most interesting, however, are companies that are able to look at old industries and find new ways to compete in them. I’m going to give three examples today of companies that have done a great job of thriving in mature markets by redefinig the way they do business. I’m also going to discuss some of the ways that an enterprising young publisher might redefine the publishing industry.

But let’s start with an example from another industry first: Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Read more »

Thinking Forward: When Publishing Shifts Gears

20 years ago, the recording industry operated under a fairly simple model: recording artists would sign up for an album and enjoy all of the benefits of working with a major label, and they would forfeit almost all of their profits to increase their exposure. The artists would then ride the wave of their newfound popularity by touring and make back the money they’d lost by selling out to the label. The label got rich. The artist got rich (if they didn’t suck, of course). Everybody won.

But as technology shifted, things got a little more complicated…

Read more »