- Anti-Fanfic Bingo, part four

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

Rounds one, two, and three of Anti-Fanfic Bingo produced some terrific responses, including a great little vid for the third round. Let's see what you can come up with for the fourth row:



How would you respond to these accusations? As before, please tell ComRel!

Graphic by the wonderful Ciderpress.

Ithiliana's post that started it all is here

-- femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee

Comments

[zellieh]

You owe the writers respect for creating an ORIGINAL (TM) world!

I do respect them. Whether or not I respect the creator(s) has nothing to do with whether or not I create fan works based on a commercial product.

You're acting like spoiled children!

No. I like sharing my toys, and playing with others.

Bad fan stories will make people not want to buy a writer's work!

If this is true, then so is the reverse: good fan stories will make people want to buy more product(s).

You're raping me!

You really need to stop using that word.

It's trademark infringement!

Many legal experts are still arguing this one, so no-one can be sure if it is or isn't. Even if it is, trademark is decided on a case-by-case basis, just like copyright, so no-one can say for sure if a specific case is trademark infringement until it goes to court.

*good* fanfic and market dilution

[djonn]

If this is true, then so is the reverse: good fan stories will make people want to buy more product(s).

This is an excellent point -- and the thing is, this worries the pros significantly more than the prospect of bad fics poisoning the well, because what the (smarter) pros are worried about is the "market share" they're losing to the good fic writers.

Some numbers: the average genre novel nowadays sells a *lot* fewer copies than you may think it does. A first genre novel published in hardcover may see around 5000 copies printed, and print runs on subsequent books, if the author is fortunate, will do well to jump to 10K; the ones whose print runs bump to 25K or better are in the top tier of the genre. Now divide those figures by half to two thirds ("printed" doesn't equal "sold", and only a fraction of the novels published do well enough to sell out their print runs).

Result: the average professionally published genre novel these days may be selling in the range of 2000 (low end, first novel) to 10,000 copies.

Yes, I'm simplifying here, and those are hardcover numbers. Some quick asides on mass market paperbacks: (a) the print run numbers for paperback originals are surprisingly similar; (b) a sharply lower percentage of hardcovers make it to mass market reprint these days; (c) author income on mass markets is lower than for hardcovers (especially for tie-ins, where the royalty rates are often much lower).

What this means in terms of fanfic is this:

Fanfic writers whose individual works have more than 2000 views/downloads are "selling" as well as professionally published novelists. Those whose individual works have more than 10,000 views/downloads are "selling" as well as the upper tier of professionally published novelists. And so on. (The top handful of yuletide writers are probably at least this successful, for instance.)

In a real sense, fic writers are competing with the pros for market share...and in some respects, beating them, because money isn't the only medium of exchange in the equation. The other medium is time, and the time fen spend reading fic is time they're not spending on commercially published books -- so just as DVDs and console games and World of Warcraft are "stealing" time and revenue from commercial print fiction, fanfic's doing the same thing.

So it's not entirely irrational for, say, Laurell K. Hamilton to worry that the droves of fen who fled the Anita Blake series at about [insert title here] because they didn't like the direction things were going might flock to the works of [insert fanwriter here], whose vision of the characters was very different but more palatable to said droves of fen. (In fact, Hamilton got lucky; she picked up a new fanbase that seems to be even bigger than the old one. But one sees the point.)

(This is also one reason pro publishers are keeping a weather eye on fanwriters as a source of revenue. Irrespective of wank, Cassie Claire had lots and lots of readers -- and her pro publisher doubtless banked on many to most of them following her and buying her under the Cassandra Clare byline.)

////

None of the foregoing should be taken as polemic either for or against fanfic generally. As I commented in the exchange with doingsoso above, one of my key observations about fanfic issues generally is that they're complicated, often more so than either the fen or the pros think. This is an aspect of that complexity, and one that I think merits careful thought by all sides.

Re: *good* fanfic and market dilution

[zellieh]

Wow, that's fascinating. Thanks for that information. I already knew that most authors don't make enough money to make a living out of their writing. I was just having a similar conversation the other day with someone who told me that an author paid his family and friends to buy his books, since just buying a couple of books a week was enough to make the publisher think the book was doing well. Which is just remarkable; I had no idea book sales were low enough to be manipulated like that.

I accept your point about fanfic 'competing' with pro fic, even if it is indirectly, because I know that I've read fewer books since I've been reading fanfiction. Obviously, I don't agree that that means fanfic should be stopped, as some pro authors argue it should be. As if that were even possible at this point!

As you said, the issue is complicated, and the move to 'user-generated content' is a much wider social movement that just happens to include fanfic and fanart and favids, as well as machinima, mash-ups, RPG's, and all kinds of other things. Ultimately, authors and publishers and the wider entertainment industry are going to have to adapt to the new market conditions to survive.

Re: *good* fanfic and market dilution

[paraka]

Thank you so much for your insightful comment. That's an area I had never really considered. The internet is suddenly giving power to a lot of "ametures" be it fanfic or a video on YouTube, and I know I don't always stop to think about how the various PTB take it.

Re: *good* fanfic and market dilution

[elaere.livejournal.com]

Interesting. It seems that you know what is happening in the world of publishing nowadays. The competition of the free time of consumers is fierce. One group of people who suffer from that are professional published writers; I agree with you on that. I even admit that if there are fanfics available original works will get less of the time of the readers than fanfics.

I would like to add something, though. The whining of the writers seems to be based on the belief that if there wasn't fanfiction the writers would sell more books. I don't think that they would.

What is the factor that has the greatest impact on a writer's number of sold books? In my opinion, the answer is the strengths and weaknesses of the book in the competition with other available activities. People choose the best purpose for their money and time. The competitor could be a computer came, trip to Ibiza, a new shirt, fanfiction or whatever. If the writer's book is the best use for the money the fan can find at the moment, the fan buys it. The fan might even read it, if the time is right.

What is the significance of fanfiction, then? In my opinion: less significant than is implied by professional writers. The number of books a writer writes is the same whether there is fanfiction or not. A writer can only sell copies of the books s/he has written, nothing else. A professional writer cannot hope to write enough to fill the fans every free moment with a previously unread text. A reader can't buy something that doesn't exist.

A writer can and, in my opinion, should hope to gain a fandom that is big enough to give him/her a living. Fandom's are great marketing channels. If a writer gains a fandom, there might be fanfiction (it doesn't happen automatically), and then there is the chance that the writer benefits from the fanfiction and other fannish activities. Fanfiction keeps the interest of the fans in the work of an author alive through hiatuses between publications. However, I think that, for the most part, fictive works and their creators never gain fandoms.

Ela