Desiderius Price

@BronxWench “Money attracts lawyers” is my more succinct way of putting it.  If @Deadman wants to pay a copyright lawyer to sit in their conference room learning the finer points of copyright law to research a theoretical loophole … I’m guessing there’s better ways to spend time & money.

Me personally… I don’t seek money in my writing, so exploring into copyright & fair use is more of an academic brain teaser for me.  I do keep my fanfic and original pen-names distinct, so there’s less to muddy if I were to setup a Patreon for under my original writing pen-name.  BUT… I do have a good day job with vacation/insurance benefits so monetizing writing isn’t a necessity.

@Deadman Channeling Mad Eye Moody’s rant about keeping constant vigilance, stay out of trouble! 

@Deadman  Even if the platform offers the option to monetize, definitely don’t enable it on fanfiction.  That’s my advice to avoid a lot of hot water over very little gain.  Consider the fanfiction a free loss-leader, a teaser to entice readers to cross over to your (monetized) original fiction.  Anything stronger, like a Patreon or similar, talk to a lawyer on how to word it such that there’s no money being exchanged for fanfiction.

@Deadman Unless you’re wanting to make court proceedings your pasttime, it’s way easier to avoid the legal hassles than it is to try to make a buck with fanfiction.

By its nature, fanfiction is a derivative work, and is 99.9999% of the time unauthorized (so, you can try to contact the all rights holder, ask them to sign a contract giving you permission to monetize likely in exchange for a big-cut/fee).  IF all IP rights are in the public domain, then you may be in the free and clear.  In either case, you’d want a copyright lawyer on call to cover your arse, and be prepared for an expensive fight.

A lot of fanfic writers claim “fair use” … one test is whether the use is being done commercially or non-profit educational.  But “fair use” is technically a defense used in court, you’ve already paid for a lawyer at this point.  And a hazard is that a court rules that fanfiction is *NOT* fair use at all, ever; not to mention other conditions that could arise.  Take Star Trek, after a big fanfic film involved lawsuit, CBS released some “guidelines” on fanfic films, restricting them to 15 minutes or less (no sequels), among other restraints – there went that fanfic studio’s dream of releasing a movie-length fanfic film.

Bottom line, serious threats loom once you monetize fanfiction.  It’s simply better to avoid it, make your money in original fiction instead.

@Deadman Keep it separate… fanfiction remains free, can even be a bit of a teaser to originals.  A monthly fee to the original content is your call.

Fanfiction is enough in that gray shakey legal area, where some people do argue fair-use, charging angers most authors.  JKR’s famously gave an approving nod to Harry Potter fanfiction so long as it was not-for-money. 

Let’s not defame sharks by associating them with lawyers…

More seriously, @Deadman money attracts lawyers.  Moment you take payment for fanfic is the moment you knock out a pillar of the fair use defense, and any money you make ain’t worth the lawyer fees you’ll incur.  (Think $100k to start.)

If you’re talking original writing where you own 100% of the copyright and the IP, then taking payment is alright.

@Deadman 9 times out of 10, I go to a website that claims “sexual material okay”, only to read the TOS/guidelines and realize they forbid quite a bit, which usually includes what I write.  Anyways, I’ve got a day job, so that’s why I don’t worry about collecting a paycheck from it.  (Of course, a jackpot style payoff would be nice, but I’m not sure I wanna write with deadlines & having to worry about “marketability”)

@Deadman My issue with finding platforms for posting is usually in the TOS/guidelines that more or less forbid the type of material I write.  Thus, I find places like AFF & AO3 due to the openness afforded in terms of content allowed.  So any cyberattack on one of these platforms irritates me because it stomps on an avenue I use for my speech.

@Deadman My potter fanfic relies heavily on letters & articles, so I find that it helps to set them apart in the narrative.

As to search… noticed some gripes in the AO3 subreddit, so yeah, not a super-great feature.  Likely also complicated by the tag restrictions I mentioned above.  I only use the search when getting statistics, so bit tougher to assist.

@Deadman Ah… I’ve used AO3 as an author, not as a reader. 

As an author, I can use the AO3 skins to, say, block out a newspaper article or a letter, make it stand-out.  Here or on FF.net, you’ve got the stricter anti-hack HTML filtering so I’ve got to resort to a funky effect with characters to give a similar feel, but it’s not the same.

And fairly recently, (maybe past year or two??) AO3 began imposing a tag limit, and I was rather annoyed that I had to trim down my comprehensive tag list (lots of warnings & pairings) to be underneath their limit.  Maybe that has an adverse effect on searching?

@Deadman  Bit weird, as overall I find AO3 pretty easy to use.  Additionally, the ability to customize the CSS (ie “skins”) makes the formatting a bit easier too; something I wish AFF had (no, not pestering as I know we’re a one-person operation when it comes to the website code).

Yep, it started early Monday.  They’ve taken advantage of some of cloudflare’s anti-DDOS stuff, so it’s mostly back as of a bit earlier today.  You can see the AO3 sub-reddit for some details.