nekosmuse:

saathi1013:

Your fandom weather report for the day: The sky is not falling, but you’ll want an umbrella, because we’ve got a heavy shitstorm settling in for the duration.

Okay, so I woke up today to the news that Amazon is now launching Kindle Worlds.  [ Press Release ] [ Kindle Worlds page ]

I have spent the entire day trying to come up with a coherent response.  It’s such a massive topic that I don’t know where to begin - but coming on the heels of yesterday’s post about publishing & fanfiction (which was specifically about fanfic that gets the ‘serial numbers filed off’ before publishing), I felt an obligation to write a follow-up in the light of Amazon’s announcement.

You should probably read those links before you freak right the fuck out, because it’s totally okay to get outraged, here, but probably not for the reasons you think.

Now let’s dissect the likely reactions from all quarters and compare them to the actual facts:

Read More

Well fucking summarized. Especially this:

This is Amazon blatantly taking advantage of the fact that most fanficcers have less experience and business savvy than professional authors, which is already a super-low bar.

Seriously, I’m speaking to you now as both a fic writer and a professional writer. I wouldn’t do this with my original stories (which hey, I get paid by the word upfront for) let alone my fic. This is a scam, pure and simple, designed to take advantage of fic writers. Run.

DrSilverfish adds: “[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft.”  
David Graeber Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011)