Hi Chris et al - had some sleep now! Well, any publisher/author/maker
who attacks their fanbase is idiotic indeed. Anne Rice herself is
notorious for throwing a huge hissy fit at readers who thought her
books were shlocky and said so on amazon, whereupon she was made much
mock of. And still is. But that hasn't sometimes stopped corporations
(not usually authors, though there are a few that take exception) from
trying to stop fans from using copyrighted stuff. Even Warner Bros was
forced to step back from closing all the Harry Potter fansites which
had been going for years when the movies came out - but in that case
Rowling spoke up for them. (Until, that is, they wanted to publish an
HP encyclopaedia).
I think most authors quite like it. When I found out about fan
fiction, I was charmed - it seemed rather wonderful that people were
so taken with my world and characters that they wanted to make their
own stories/art/videos about it. Even if it sometimes gets all slashy.
(But that's often hilarious.)
As far as I know, the Star Trek base remains as enthusiastic as ever -
it would be one of the more powerful fanbases: most unwise to piss
them off. But this goes way beyond the Trekkie cliche - there are
fanbases for almost every kind of writing you can imagine, not just
genre literature. It's hard to imagine how anyone would actually stop
the literary fan phenomenon, which is huge and often forces publishers
to behave - witness the recent incidents where Bloomsbury has put a
white character on the cover art of novels with a coloured protagonist
- the subsequent online reader outrage forced them to change the
cover. The line, which is self policed pretty fiercely in fanfic
communities, is that people don't seek to make money from their
derivative works, although there's a little informal selling of
artworks.
Anyway, it's fascinating stuff - at least, I find it fascinating -
chaotic and anarchic and sometimes unexpectedly funny and charming.
It's at the other end of the spectrum from Google.
xA
On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-01-23 at 15:52 -0700, Douglas Barbour wrote:
>> especially the part about not worrying
>> about what's on the net
>
> I most certainly would not do anything about stopping illicit downloads
> by fans. The lessons of what happened to the Star Trek fan base, where
> fans where in technical breach of copyright and making up Star Trek
> stories using downloaded footage, or something like that, and the
> copyright holder put its foot down intending to stop this from
> happening. What happened is the fan based collapsed as if almost
> overnight and as a result far more money was lost then would have been
> gained. Don't know the outcome of this, but Star Trek may still be on
> the nose. See:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_fan_productions
>
> Non-realist popular genres have quasi illicit characteristics and this
> is a big part of the appeal, as against the proper and real. Anne Rice's
> Lestat is a good example, implicitly homosexual and filthy rich
> (vampires in gothic lit are traditionally homosexual, of course.)
>
> Stamp down on this quasi-illicit activity and kiss your royalties
> goodbye... the risk is too high. The difficulty would be knowing what to
> say if you get cornered by fans and asked about this, I would guess.
>
>
> As for google, I do read the excerpts of books I am interested in
> buying. In a real bookstore I can read as much of the book as I wish (at
> least with my bookseller since I already have a rep as being eccentric
> enough to do something like this.) I have recently ordered 2 books based
> on the google excerpts, one being Liz Grosz's book. Other then this,
> excerpts from websites I find. It is just that google tweaks the search
> to its scans. Most of these are academic titles, and it makes sense to
> target this by google given the very large market of more costly books
> which helps with google's advertising revenues which is where it makes
> its money. For myself, I would be inclined to opt in or say yes: But,
> listening to your agent or publisher may be best advice, of course.
>
> I only have one poetry book which sold around 300 to 400 copies so I
> donated my royalties back to the publisher. This turned out to be a good
> deal since the publisher posted me 20 remainer copies which sell on the
> collectors market for around $30. Obviously, a book is much more then
> what I wrote, the designer was arrested and deported after his boyfriend
> died of aids as the book went to press etc. Perhaps I should approach
> google and ask them to digitise and put it online?
>
> CAL has advised not to give copyright away on the book and my lawyers
> would probably shoot me but at least excerpts shouldn't hurt?
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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