If you file the serial numbers off your fanfic, and then straightwash it just to get your stuff on shelves? You’re offensive and gross. And if you want congratulations from members of the group(s) you sold out in the name of marketability? Fuck you even more.
Gah, I’m so torn…
To an extent, this. On one hand: go you for finding someone who wants to publish your story in any format. That’s frickin’ awesome. You have NO IDEA how utterly impressed and envious I am. (Or maybe you do.) I hope you sell a gazillion copies and make loads of royalties and have a whole section of AO3 devoted to fanfic written for your story.
On the other hand…this is, to me, cheating. You didn’t write this story for money. You didn’t write this story with the intent to sell it in a bookstore. You wrote it to make someone smile. You wrote it because you love those characters (who were someone else’s creation) so much that you couldn’t bear to let them go. You wrote it because you love the What If, and that includes circumstance and relationship status.
To just…change the names and market it under a different flag… it might not be stealing, but it doesn’t seem particularly fair. Not to the people who originally wrote those characters or to the people who loved the original fanfic. You’re not being fair to yourself, either.
Look. We’re in this fantastic period of history when we can read thousands of fantastic stories for free online. Free. And if I find out that an author I enjoy online actually has a book published – well, you know I’m going to be totally in on supporting that person, buying that book, and all the rest.
But if, upon getting that book, I find out it’s just that same fanfic I read months ago, with the names changed from John and Sherlock to Tom and Percy….I’m going to feel cheated. And I probably won’t look at them – or their work – quite the same way again.
Why would you do that to yourself? Do you respect your readers and your own writing skills that little? (And if you did change something major to make it more palatable – like genderswapping so it’s not slash fiction – wow. You were writing in a seriously underpopulated section of the bookshelves; you wrote something strong and powerful that obviously spoke to someone enough that they want to make sure you get paid for it. You contributed something of quality to an often overlooked group of people and gave them something to look towards to say, “Look, I’m normal!” And you just took that away. How can you respect them so little? Is the money and recognition that important to you?)
Someone in the publishing world thinks you rock, thinks you have the chops to write something worth selling. Give it to them. Give them something fantastic, something scary, something they haven’t seen. Use all the writing skills you learned writing fanfic and give us something new. Some things aren’t meant to be recycled – and for me, fanfic is one of them.
Man, I completely disagree with this, though. Pull to publish is completely fine, IMO. It’s not about not respecting yourself or anyone else. So many fics are so AU that the Canon characters are just there as vehicles for telling a completely different, original story entirely. And frankly, if someone DOES pull to publish, it’s not like anyone in fandom isn’t going to KNOW that, beforehand. Publishing something you’ve reworked out of fandom nets the author an entirely new audience, and there are some fandom people who will probably buy it anyway.
The idea that fic writers are somehow supposed to be completely altruistic, creating just for the creation and not ever, ever, ever supposed to be able to parlay that work into pro work or even, in extreme cases I’ve seen right here on Tumblr, care about the reaction to their work is ridiculous. Fanartists do that shit all the time – create tshirts and phone cases and sell commissions and whatnot. How is this different?
Why, if they have the opportunity, shouldn’t fanwriters get paid for the beautiful work they created, if someone wants to pay them? Genderswapping for some bigoted publisher’s comfort is one thing, but just pulling to publish? Nah. Just because someone wrote it first as fic doesn’t mean it’s somehow tainted goods and they’re not allowed to go professional with it. That just really makes me twitch. These writers ARE giving all of this work to fandom for free, it’s GOOD work and if they have an opportunity to go pro with it, with a story they created and worked hard to write, I say go for it and good luck.
But I didn’t know before I purchased the recycled fanfiction, that’s the thing. The fanfic had been completely whitewashed out of it; there was no indication on the author’s blog that the item in question had been fanfic. It was word-for-word the same fic I’d read on AO3 a few months before – and in fact is still there. Basically, I paid for her to do a search-and-replace and yeah, I kind of resent that.
I don’t think you can assume that everyone in every fandom is going to know that a particular work was fanfic prior to be published. I still run into people who don’t realize that Fifty Shades was Twlight fanfic. (And half the time, they’re Twlight fans as well.)
Maybe this is all coming from me having been burned with buying recycled fanfic. And goodness, what author doesn’t care about how their work is received? (Because, yeah, I do care about my fics. I spend a lot of the free time I have – which isn’t that much – writing and editing and coding and thinking and plotting and all the rest, and I love knowing that someone else has read something I wrote and it made their day a bit better, and knowing that makes my day better. I guess you could say I’m in it for the buzz being in that great big circle of fandom love. Nothing altruistic in that, methinks.)
But like I said. Someone wants to publish something you wrote? Fabulous! Good for you! I couldn’t be more pleased. Publish and be happy and make a million dollars. But if it was fanfic, don’t expect me to buy it.
Ok, I agree that it’s very shifty for an author to give no indication to their readers that they’ll be publishing a fic, and to even leave the fic up (I’m shocked that the publisher even allowed that, tbh). That is disrespecting the people who have supported you and most likely who put you in a position to publish in the first place.
But that’s a different and separate act from just publishing a fic as original. For all the problems with 50 Shades (and Twilight), James never for one second tried to pretend it was anything that it wasn’t. I’m sure that some of her fic fans bought it to support a favorite fic author, while some didn’t bother because they’d already read it. But they had that choice and knew that they did.
I am super-duper in favor of anyone who can and wants to publish their work, going for it. It’s not just about the money; if the right people do it (um, not EL James, for example), it can show the world that fanfic isn’t all the poorly-written Mary-Sue-riddled trash they thought it was. There is, in fact, one Sherlock AU in particular that I think would make a FANTASTIC and truly successful original novel. I never mention which it is, because I think that part of the reason it would be so successful is that John and Sherlock aren’t terribly in character to start with, so it would be easy to adapt. But other than the OOCness, it’s fantastic and I wish the author would publish it and the world would go “Wow, this started as fanfic??”
That doesn’t mean anyone who’s read a story for free should feel obligated to pay for it later. But some people will choose to, to show support. And some won’t, for a variety of reasons. And as long as they have the option to make that informed choice, I’m all for it.
I do agree with the original posts that it sucks to “straightwash” your fic just to get it published. Although, I can understand bowing to the pressure to do so. It would be a tough situation to be in, and I hope that any author who really believes in their work would have the strength to hold out for a publisher who is willing to take a bit of a risk on something they think might not have “mainstream” appeal because of something like that.
This is a great conversation. I too get reallly twitchy at the idea of straightwashing, no doubt about it. If, however, you put in the work to shift the characters far enough from the source (that is, changing the male character to female in more than just name) and then made the hetness of ththe sex integral to its meaning within the fic (that is, changing it in more than just plumbing) then yeah, I can see it.
A year ago (almost exactly, in fact) I was contacted by an editor who asked me to turn Northwest Passage into a het romance story. This is for a mainstream publisher that has several het romance imprints. The editor read Northwest Passage and my Kushiel’s Legacy crossover, The Shattered Marque, and was apparently impressed enough with both to offer me a multiple-book contract.
She was very respectful, asking if I’d be willing to 1) change the characters and scrub out the Sherlock (BBC) references and 2) change it to het. She also wanted to make sure that I didn’t lose the romance edge. The way she put it, Northwest Passage had “some of the hottest sex [she’d] read”, and she wanted to know if I could keep that heat in a het story.
Now, I’m almost 43 years old. All I’ve wanted to do my whole life was write. (Amusingly enough, I never had interest in writing romance. I much prefer sci-fi/fantasy.)
Anyway, here was someone offering me the opportunity of a lifetime. But I naturally had some concerns, and we talked them through before I agreed.
The biggest one is, she verified with management that I could keep Northwest Passage on AO3. I told her I didn’t want to take it away from my readers, and she agreed.
Second, I touched every single word in the rewrite. Some parts are damned near identical, yes — often by my editor’s request. Most of it is new, and not just in a find-replace way to change names and genders. (And no, there’s no way to find/replace “he” to “she” without screwing everything up, so any writer going from m/m to m/f is going to have to do a hell of a lot of work.) The characters are new. The backstories are new. And while yes, there are resemblances, it’s not the same story.
Here’s the thing. It’s all well and good to talk about writing fanfic for love of the characters or the world, but I need to pay my mortgage. I need to feed my dogs. In a very practical sense, fanfic doesn’t pay the bills.
I love writing. And yes, now that I have my foot in the door, my second novel is entirely original. But fanfic got me in the door. I didn’t have the chance to say, “No, I don’t want to scrub Northwest Passage, but I’ll give you something entirely new!” That would’ve put me onto the slush pile, and maybe I’d get a contract, but maybe I wouldn’t.
Let me say that again: Fanfic got me in the door.
Now, I can write professionally and keep writing fanfic.
More on filing off the serial numbers here, at my professional Tumblr.
Yeah, but there’s Torquere. Torquere or Lethe (Steve Berman is a super professional, very excellent fellow and he pays on time, as does Torquere), all equally respectable, all equally without the straightwashing. Your work is your own to do with as you like, and I have been entertained by it and enjoyed it for free, so I am only here to point out that there are reputable, easy-to-work-with queer presses that will always take a query (and read it) from a writer of your calibre, Kryptaria. They turn out beautiful books and their editors are kind people, for the most part. I wish you immense luck with your first pro endeavor. I thank you for writing stuff I have enjoyed, at a rate of production I can only dream of.
But straightwashing does damage, and I’m sorry that had to happen for you to attain your dream when… ah… it didn’t have to happen really. Next time, for example, try Sean Wallace at Prime Books and its many amazing imprints and tell him Selkie sent you; he will never shy away from kickass characters who happen to identify as female, queer, or kinky-sex-having. (And he pays mostly on time. Mostly. 🙂 )
Reblogging to remember the names of these publishers.
Also reblogging for the interesting conversation and publishing info (not for me, for my publishing studies colleagues).
But also, the comparison to fanart above – I’ve never understood why fic writers don’t try to make money out of their fic in the same way. When you buy fanart you’re buying something you’ve seen and loved in a hard copy, material form, right? I cannot tell you how much I would pay to have actual books of my favourite novel-length fan fictions. If a fic writer posted that they were selling mugs with their favourite quotations from their works, or postcards, or whatever, I would be all over that. If an artist can take 500 pre-orders to a printer and get a book printed for subscribers, why can’t a fic writer? Publishing by subscription works that you have already distributed for free, in a fancier, more lavish, enduring format, is one of the oldest tricks in the book for writers who have a community of admirers but can’t afford professional publishing otherwise.
…or maybe I am the only person left who just wants to own books.
Oddly enough, I’ve been talking with some people about exactly this lately…
But partly I think it’s an artifact of fandom history and older definitions of ‘transformative works.’ When the medium was books, especially, there was a lot less fallout from people illustrating scenes or characters—a time-honored tradition—than there potentially was from people writing their own ‘derivative’ stories based on somebody else’s story (I know, I know, but we’ve come a long way, baby).
Also there’s just a lot more, you know, STUFF in a story than in an artwork. In a storytelling sense, I mean. As a storyteller, it’s hard to claim or fear that a piece of art is going to steal your thunder, but somebody else writing a story based on your story? Well. That’s competition.
This mindset is beginning to pass, but it’s the one that stood in the domain of US copyright for many years.
Even now, though, I think a major reason why many fanfic authors don’t seek to put their work into print and have people pay cash monies for a copy is because that starts to smell more like publication to the copyright hounds, and while their power is beginning to wane, for now their lawyers are mighty yet.
The Slow Evolution of a Lifetime of Devotion: PSA