![]() Groups like OTW are pushing back at Amazon’s exploitation of their genre. “Amazon’s doing an experiment, and the good thing about not paying advances is there's not a huge amount of overheads,” she explains. Rebecca Tushnet, a member of the legal committee of the Organization of Transformative Works, a noncommercial online fanfiction archive, is skeptical of Kindle Worlds. Drug and alcohol consumption, for example, are banned in Jason Starr’s Harbinger “homosexuality and explorations of gender identity are not frowned upon in the least,” in Silo Saga by Hugh Howie, according to Kindle Worlds’ Content Quality Guide. ![]() Specific worlds adhere to stricter policies, depending upon the agreement between the original writer and Amazon. Pornography, offensive content, copyright infringement, misleading titles, poorly formatted novels, excessive use of brand names and "crossover" stories including characters from different worlds are banned. Fanfiction writers must also agree to a “no reversion” policy - their work cannot be removed from the site at a later date - and adhere to content regulations enforced by Amazon. Amazon sets story prices, which currently range from $0.99 to $3.99, and fanfiction writers must agree to the Kindle Worlds Publishing Agreement, which grants writers the right to produce fanfiction based on material from any particular licensed world. In less than two months, Kindle Worlds has published 106 works of fanfiction which span nine licensed worlds. Licensing agreements see fanfiction writers receive 35 percent royalties on stories over 10,000 words (25 percent on shorter works) the remaining 65 percent is split between Amazon, the licensee and the original author. Through a legally sound licensing system and royalties framework, the online retail giant has created a regulated commercial platform which sees original writers, fanfiction writers, licensees and, of course, Amazon itself benefit financially from pseudo-original content creation. ![]() The company’s hope? To snare the next e-book phenomenon. Thus far, worlds licensed by Amazon include Warner Brothers’ Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries. Spurred by the success of 50 Shades of Gray (which began as Twilight fanfiction and went on to sell 70 million copies), Amazon has purchased the rights to several high-profile “worlds,” or the people and places featured in a particular television program or novel’s storyline. Nancy’s mom might not be a fan of Zack’s new lease of life as a Bono wannabe, but the 99-cent story has sold well on Kindle Worlds, a fanfiction-publishing platform launched by Amazon back in May.
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