kindle worlds

Just got wind of this, this morning and I am a bit undecided about it. There are definitely pros and cons about this thing. Here are the guidelines they published with their release statement.

Pros:

• money for fanfic. I am basically all for people making money with something they love to do and there are works out there that I would definitely be willing to pay for.


• legality. No fear of being shot down by a network or original author who does not like fanfic.

Cons:

• loss of diversity: I'm thinking here both of content and of qualitative diversity. The guidelines state that you can do for examples no crossovers and it is also clearly not a platform for short fiction. And naturally they have quality standards, which is a good thing but also sets it apart from the freescene, which allows everybody to get their feet wet. Yeah sure, everybody is complaining about 12 year olds writing badfic, but that is the way everybody starts off.


• The rights rest with amazon, so you can't just take it down or flock it if you do not want it out there anymore.


• no porn. Fanfic is the only female dominated porn source, I ever came across. Everything else is either directed at straight or gay males or perpetuating the male gaze in massive self objectification (romance novels).

doubts:

• If there is a legal fanfic scene, wont it become jealous of the illegal scene? Especially since the free scene will always have the porn and the crossovers to be more interesting. Isn't there a risk that the pay sites will eventually try to shut down sites like a AO3?

I think the idea is perfect for stuff like Stephen Brust's firefly fanfic, but for the largest part of the scene it is useless due to the limitations and I'm a bit worried about the longtime effects of this.