(Not sure if this is the correct forum, if it is not my apologies)
Is it legal to publish fan fiction?
Is it legal to publish fan fiction?
Publishing fan fiction
- Thread starter NoOneFamous
- Start date
No.
OTOH, Amazon does have Kindle Worlds, which is as I understand it basically a license for publishing fanfic for certain properties. I haven't looked at it since it first came out a few years ago, since nothing I was interested in was available to work with.
Pkmatrix
Monthly Donor
No, not without the copyright holder's permission. The only way around it is if the original work that you're writing fan fiction of is already in the Public Domain, then you're okay. It's either that or hope your FanFic is one of the properties covered by Amazon's Kindle Worlds.
Pkmatrix
Monthly Donor
My understanding is that fanzines publishing fan fiction only goes on so long as the copyright holder tolerates it. G-Fan, the main English-language Godzilla fanzine, used to publish Godzilla fan fiction in the 1990s and early 2000s until Toho Studios, Godzilla's copyright holder, finally sent them a cease-and-desist letter and ordered them to stop.
It's funny that: when it's not in the Public Domain, then people sneer at fanfic, but when it's a sequel or whatever to some great classic, they fall all over it (see Death Comes to Pemberly).
While it is certainly legal, without a doubt, to *write* and upload fan fiction to the Internet, at least(here in the U.S, such is covered by the Fair Use Act of 1976, as is criticism of a work, and uses for educational purposes, etc.-otherwise, FanFiction.net would not exist, nor would many other sites like it.) even if the author of the original doesn't particularly like the idea.....in order to actually publish said fanfiction(as in, for a profit), you *must* ask, and receive, the permission of the creator of the original work before doing so, otherwise, you likely will be sued, as copyright holders generally do not at all appreciate somebody making money off their works without their consent.
Edit: okay, I should clarify that, of course, anything that has since passed into the public domain is also fair game for official publication, and, as Pkmatrix pointed out, there are even a few exceptions with still copyrighted works, such as with G.I. Joe.
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Pkmatrix
Monthly Donor
He's not wrong to think so, because it's not entirely illegal either. You can, for example, legally publish G.I. Joe fan fiction. And as I said, if the work is in the Public Domain already there's no problem either: you can, just as quick examples, publish Dracula, Frankenstein, Wizard of Oz, or Sherlock Holmes fan fiction legally.
The trouble, of course, is that the stuff people generally want to write fan fiction of - contemporary works - is almost exclusively off-limits without first getting the copyright/trademark holder's permission first.
Which, as I recall, is how either Twilight or Fifty Shades Of Gray started out (can't recall which one, possibly both).
Also, some types of fanfiction appear to count as fair use under "parody" - this is why there are so many obvious Harry Potter parodies around (Porry Gatter [my favorite], Tanya Grotter, Barry Trotter, Larin Pyotr, A Boy Named Harry And His Dog Potter, and a few others I forgot, plus anything by that one Ukrainian guy who legally changed his name to Harry Potter and proceeded to publish a bunch of very vaguely related books under that name).
And Russian laws must have been a lot more relaxed at some point in the 1990s (not sure if it's still the case now), because there weren't any problems with publication of The Last Ringbearer (which is pretty much complete fanfic, if rather well written).