Amazon To Launch Fan Fiction Platform

Retailer and publisher Amazon has announced that fan fiction authors will be able to sell some of their work on the Kindle e-book platform.

Fan Fiction is a growing market for online readers with a wide range of television shows, books and even novels spawning various fan fiction stories. Fan fiction is written by fans of a particular show/film which expands on that particular universe.

The genre is quite controversial with some such as authors of novels or companies which own the respective copyright.

BBC News reports that Amazon is now planning to allow writers to publish fan-fiction stories on its Kindle platform after signing a deal with the television arm of Warner Brothers. The deal will allow fan fiction based on three television shows to be published; The Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Lairs and Gossip Girl – a mere drop in the ocean compared to how many fan fiction series there are out there.

Authors will be upload fan-fiction based on the three shows via a new platform called Kindle Worlds and stories over 10,000 words will earn authors a 35% royalty payments. There will be a 20% royalty payment for stories between 5,000 and 10,000 words.

Perhaps the most famous example of fan fiction is the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, written by EL James, which originally started out as fan-fiction based on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga. Authors such as Joss Whedon and Stephenie Meyer are supportive of fan-fiction.

Popular shows which have spawned fan-fiction include Star Trek – in all its carnations, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Doctor Who, Blakes 7, Bad Girls, Sunset Beach and Crossroads. There are sub-genres within the fan-fiction genre such as slasher which features sexually explicit storylines – often homosexual – involving popular characters. Another popular sub-genre is “crossover” in which characters from different shows or films come-across each other.