By Anne Marble: Fanfiction is known for tropes like enemies-to-lovers. But some vendors have become the enemies of the fanfic community — by making a profit from fanfiction.
These vendors are breaking one of rules of the fanfiction world: Don’t make a profit from fanfic. Even worse, they’re making a profit from someone else’s fanfiction. And putting the whole fanfic community in jeopardy.
Along with many others, Diane Duane shared this post about people who are binding and selling fanfic:
The original post starts here. This thread shows lots of examples. You can find bound fanfic on Etsy and other vendors. You’ll find examples if you explore the fanfic category. There is even a Fanfiction Book Binding category.
Some vendors try to protect themselves by saying they are not selling the fanfic (as that’s illegal) — they are selling binding services. I am not a lawyer but that sounds like a grey area.
The important thing to note is that the fanfic writers are not behind this. They are not giving their permission — and they not getting compensated. Creators of fanart are also seeing their work sold on Etsy and other sites.
As a result of this, many established fanfic writers (and artists) have started pulling all their work from fanfic sites. So beloved stories and artwork that have been available to fans for free are now lost because somebody wanted to make money out of them.
It has also been pointed out that this endangers all fanfiction. The companies that own the rights to these characters and stories have been ignoring the fanfiction — because it does not make money. If that changes, they could very well go back to suing fanfic writers (and artists). (Point made by @ramsay_b_OFMD here.)
Fans used to print out their favorite fanfic, add their own artwork, and even share it with friends for free. This is not what is going on now.
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How terrible. BTW, Etsy’s Fanfiction Book Binding link is now dead. So maybe Etsy put their foot down.
@ Robert Thornton
The link is working for me — for now. Some of the books fetch $150 and more. That might explain why Etsy didn’t take those items down — they get a percentage of the sales. (There are also PDFs being sold for less, often stealing cover art from the publisher…)
I am surprised that those items have been available for so long. One of the vendors mentioned in the posts I read seems to have shut down their shop. (Or maybe it was shut down by their provider — I think it was Shopify.)
I made a Wayback Machine link for the Etsy link, but not everything shows up when I use that link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240226172735/https://www.etsy.com/market/fanfiction_book_binding
The vendor will just pop up again under another name–in fact, I believe they already have. (Novabindery and FantomBindery are two of the names these “services” are operating under.)
Etsy will almost certainly do nothing to stem the tide (let alone “put their foot down”) unless forced to, either by the courts of law or public opinion.
This looks like a violation of copyright laws. Some fan fiction writers might be able to collect a lot of money from these unauthorized sellers.
@ A Joseph Ross
Because it’s fan fiction, the fanfic writers might not be able to collect money. (It’s such a slippery legal issue.) From what I’ve seen, they’re more worried that these sales will attract the attention of legal departments to their fan fiction.
Maybe this will lead to more fanfic writers taking the same path as SenLinYu (the author of “Manacled”) — completely revamping their works and trying to sell them as new works rather than as fan fiction.
Just because there’s an asking price of $150 for a pirated work does t mean that work is selling for that, or even selling at all.
I once saw a limited edition package of St. Patrick’s Day Oreos listed on eBay for $300, and two CBGB figures I have here, Maxx and Bad Apple, which I paid $30 for twenty years ago occasionally gets listed for over a $1000 dollars.
I have no idea what St. Patrick’s Day Oreos were supposed to taste like as I never found a package at reasonable price online, and none of my local stores fifteen years back has them.
(I buy a lot online including odd food.)
The tl:dr here is that copyright law is broken in ways that disfavor fanfic authors – and do so substantially. This won’t change without changes to copyright statutes.
Modern copyright is a mess. It’s mostly a compilation of case law, with many of the cases involving terrible facts. (For example: author claims copyright in unsolicited treatment for film sequel; attempts to collect when sequel has some similarities with the treatment. Or “car company decides to sell cars using James Bond while trying to be cute and claiming that they really weren’t.” Both are real cases.) It’s also got a lot of features that are convenient for the courts but which are terrible doctrine when you look at them close-up (like you can have protection in a fictional character that’s independent of the protection you get for the works the character appears in).
In this situation, it’s a mess that makes this essentially no-risk for the bad actors. Here’s why:
1: Suing is a money-loser for the fan in at least 999/1000 cases. It’s almost never going to be worth it to the fan author to sue, because the copyright in the fic is not going to be registered (and may not be registerable, and may not exist). The recovery from a copyright suit will be restricted to actual damages, which will be dwarfed by non-recoverable attorneys’ fees.
2: The bad actor can defend by claiming that the fan author does not have standing to sue because the fan fic is infringing. That argument is actually worse for the bad actor than it was before an otherwise terrible SCOTUS decision from last summer, but it’s still viable. The claim there is that only the holder of the rights in the original IP can sue. Which is terrible optics for the bad actor, but they might get away with it because;
3: If I’m the IP holder, I want to sit this out entirely. If I claim that I own all the fanfic that features my IP, I’m going to get apocalyptic blowback and set a terrible precedent for me. And if I don’t, I’m setting an equally terrible and dangerous precedent for me but in a different direction. There’s some room to thread the needle (I’m pretty sure I could do it if I had to), but there’s nearly zero upside for me, some risk, and considerable expense; but
4: If the fan claims ownership, I’m potentially going to want to have a word with them and try to wave them off (ie cease and desist letter) if only to reduce the chances that I’m going to have to take a position. (See 3, above).
So, bottom line, the fan gets screwed and the bad actor has room to operate. Unless we get better copyright laws, anyway.
Cat Eldridge: I’m not sure just what “St. Patrick’s Day Oreos” are, but my wife likes the mint-cream-stuffed chocolate oreos. They appear around St. Patrick’s Day and disappear quickly. Oreo.com is currently selling 18.7 ounces (530 gm) for $4.50. $10.50 for shipping. I bought a package at Target for about $5.50 — shopped around online for a local source.
I don’t know whether mint oreos are available even from the company at other times of the year. If not, maybe some desperate addict would pay $300?