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“Amazon Publishing will acquire all rights to your new stories, including global publication rights, for the term of copyright.” What this means is that when you publish a story on Kindle Worlds, you’re giving Amazon the right to do whatever they want with your story, forever. They can sell it electronically, digitally, carve it into a rock, or give it away. It’s up to them, and you have no say. Ever.

“You will own the copyright to the original, copyrightable elements (such as characters, scenes, and events) that you create and include in your work, and the World Licensor will retain the copyright to all the original elements of the World.” Awesome! Exactly the kind of license I would want. Except …

“When you submit your story in a World, you are granting Amazon Publishing an exclusive license to the story and all the original elements you include in that story.” Want to publish your fan fiction on FanFiction.net? Tough. Amazon is the only entity legally allowed to publish your material. And if they decide that they want to stop publishing your material? Sucks for you. You have no other outlet.

“This means that your story and all the new elements must stay within the applicable World.” This is a huge, flashing warning sign, a big neon Danger, Will Robinson! When you submit a story to Kindle Worlds, you give Amazon all of the rights to your new ideas, even ideas that came solely from your head. Come up with a concept for an awesome new character who just happens to interact with a Salvatore Brother? You can never use that character anywhere except within a Kindle Worlds story.

“We will allow Kindle Worlds authors to build on each other’s ideas and elements.” This means that people get to write fan fiction about your fan fiction. Kindle Worlds is essentially a viral license. I don’t exactly have a problem with that. It would be cool if there was a way to be compensated when another author uses some or your original ideas, but I honestly don’t know how that would even be possible.

“We will also give the World Licensor a license to use your new elements and incorporate them into other works without further compensation to you.” One of the big issues authors have traditionally had with fan fiction is the possibility that a fan fiction writer would claim the original author stole the fan’s ideas and incorporated them into their work. This is why even authors who explicitly allow fan fiction almost never read fan fiction. This sentence does away with that fear entirely. If you submit a story to Kindle Worlds, the original creators can use it however they want. Just think! The next season of Vampire Diaries could be based on your story! Except you won’t be paid for it.

…

The exception is the license to new concepts developed within a Kindle Worlds story. That is uniquely the author’s own, and submitting to Kindle Worlds locks it up forever. Stories are an author’s lifeblood, and you should never give that kind of control over your ideas to someone else. Fifty Shades of Gray would have never happened under Kindle Worlds, because Amazon would own all of the rights to that story, not EL James. She wouldn’t have been allowed to change the character names, flush out the story, and publish on her own. Amazon would have owned that work, not her.

Pretty sure all the awesome fandom folks I know are smart enough to have realized what a steaming turd the new Amazon thing really is, but just in case you have to get into an argument over it with someone (yes, these are things I legitimately prep for) here are some clear talking points.

Also, no porn, graphic violence, crossovers or’excessive’ use of curse words. So, like, all the fun stuff about fanfic.

(via bewaretheides315)

Just curious here, as I’m not familiar with Kindle Worlds, I’ve looked into publishing my own books on Kindle but haven’t finished a work I’m ready to publish, but I want to make sure that, there is monetary gain for publishing with them, right? Like the point of publishing to Kindle Worlds, I assume, is to make a small profit off of the work?

Because, if so, then none of these points really seem all that nefarious to me.  They seem pretty standard for the world of publishing.  First off, the first paragraph doesn’t say you sign away your rights forever, it says for the  term of copyright.  If somewhere else it says that the copyright terms are forever, then fine, that’s a problem, but that’s rarely the case in publishing.

As far as not being able to publish your work elsewhere, such as FanFiction.net, yes of course that’s a restriction. They wouldn’t want to try to sell your writing if you were giving it away for free elsewhere. That’s just part of the deal when you sell your creative art.  You lose some power over it.  Read the interview in the Onion’s AV club about the creator of Carnivale, and how he can’t publish a book to tell the rest of the story because HBO has the rights to his work. That’s why Marvel created Marvel Studios, so they could have their own production company and keep the rights to their materials with internal control, rather than simply being optioned and having Sony or Fox control them, such as is still the case with Spider-Man and X-Men.  They recently regained the rights to Daredevil for example because the option expired, and now they plan to fold that character into the Marvel Studios, “Avengers” film universe. 

Got a great character that has an awesome back-story and you really want to be able to use him in your own work later? Then don’t piggyback him into a story with the Salvatore brothers. Save him for your own work.  The reason for this is expanded below.

As far as the part about the original author getting the rights to things added into their story, the break down of it explains exactly why that needs to be in there.  Otherwise you’re going to just have constant lawsuits about who wrote what and when.  This is how it works with cover songs, by the way.  When you publish a cover of another artists’ work, they actually get most of the rights to your music.  This is what happened with Jonathan Coulton and Glee.  He had no legal recourse regarding his arrangement of the music being used on the show because the original “Baby Got Back” rights weren’t his.  The only thing he had a case for was whether or not they sampled his actual recording in the show, which is something he legally deserved compensation for.

And the final point about EL James and Fifty Shades of Gray is the same point as the FanFictio.net one.  Yes, had she given over the publishing rights to Amazon Kindle Worlds, then she would be sacrificing the ability to change the work and publish it elsewhere. She also can’t change the names, slightly alter the story, and publish on her own under her current deal either, her publisher could sue her for that.  Which is just a case for needing to be really satisfied with your work as well as understanding what you’re signing away  before you just rush your work out there in a hope of getting paid for it. 

There was another brouhaha today on Tumblr where one trans* person took it upon himself to declare what people are or aren’t trans* again.  I thought about responding to it, but then I just went right on living my life.

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