The "lol Amazon" linkspam

[next_to_normal]

I'm sure y'all have heard about Amazon's new Kindle Worlds thing. My reaction was pretty much "lol no" - and both John Scalzi and cleolinda explained the reasons why pretty well. Two points, basically: (1) This is crowd-sourcing series tie-in novels, not monetizing fanfic. The people who currently read fanfic for free aren't the target market here - it's the people who bought 50 Shades of Grey because they didn't realize there's a million stories just like it available for free on the internet. (2) This is a great deal for Amazon and the copyright holders, not so much for the authors. Compared to what fanfic authors get now (i.e. zero)? Sure, something is better than nothing. But compared to the contracts authors receive for tie-in novels, it's a shitty deal.

In other news...

* Noah Emmerich talks about The Americans (among other things) in this interview.

* Homeland has announced some new additions to the cast for season 3.

Comments

[chaila]

This is crowd-sourcing series tie-in novels, not monetizing fanfic. The people who currently read fanfic for free aren't the target market here

EXACTLY. A lot of commentary I've seen on this seems a lot more concerned than I see reason to be or a lot more angry at Amazon's evilness. I honestly don't see what the big deal is! There are whole huge parts of fandom/groups of fans of things who I'm sure aren't reading free fic in the usual places who can go and sell their fic to Amazon if they want without much changing what happens elsewhere. And they're selling writers rights that they literally do not have at all! So yeah, it might be a bad deal, but it's not like fic writers can make any *other* deal and make any money. Unless they file off the serial numbers and make it neither a tie-in nor a fanfic, like 50 Shades.

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, it's essentially Amazon looking at E.L. James' massive success and saying, "How can we get in on that?" Of course, they're attempting to do it without porn, which makes it more LOL-worthy than angering, IMO. It's the erotica that's the draw for paying readers, not the fandom tie-in.

But yeah, maybe you'll see a few fanfic authors attempt to go pro this way - but it'll probably be the same folks who would've self-published anyway, as many of them are doing now. I expect it'll only be a small subset, while the majority will continue to write for free, whether because they value the free model or because they don't meet Amazon's criteria.

The only real impact I can see this having on fandom is if copyright holders start cracking down on non-Amazon-affiliated fanfic because now there's a legally sanctioned outlet for it.

[rogin]

I don't think it is generally a bad idea, but I can't help to hope that it is not all that successful. With official licensing some liberties are lost and if it gets too big, they will eventually try to crack down on the free sites like AO3.