Posts in Business Models
OTW Fannews: Improving on the Original
Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat had positive words for fanfiction in a recent interview. Asked for “the best or funniest piece of Sherlock fan fiction or fan art you’ve seen” he replied, “A load of it has been superb. There’s a tendency to disparage it. I don’t agree. Even the slash fiction, that’s a great way to learn to work. No one really does three-act structure, but just trying to put words that make somebody else turned on, that’s going to teach you more about writing than any writing college you can go to. It’s creative and exciting. I refuse to mock it—because I’m a man who writes Sherlock Holmes fan fiction for a living!” He added that “[EL James] turned her fandom of something into something that’s an industry in itself. Why are we not applauding until our hands bleed? No, we mock her. We say, ‘Oh, it’s not very good.’ Except she managed to write something that everybody wants to read…By what standard is it not good if loads and loads of people love it?'”
OTW Fannews: The Mirror Writers
- A number of media articles have recently mentioned fanfiction in relation with the pro side of writing. One was in TIME where Rhys Griffiths discusses the continuation novel. Describing various works not written by the original authors, Rhys calls them an attempt “to obscure the act of literary ventriloquism that is occurring. The continuation novel differs from fan fiction (also enjoying a purple patch, which is unlikely to be a coincidence) chiefly in its ‘official’ nature. The books are commissioned by the deceased author’s estate, written with its approval, and marketed using both author’s brand associations.”
OTW Fannews: Commercial Weirdness
A post at Wired featured images from a new book on science fiction zines of the 1940s through 1960s. “Despite being produced with a limited tool set, and existing in a vastly different milieu, these hacked-together pamphlets laid the groundwork for modern day fandoms. ‘The most surprising thing I noticed about the zines was how closely the format—editorials, letters, essays, reviews—paralleled the format of blogs,’ says co-author Jack Womack. ‘All this stuff is proto-blog, proto-Instagram, proto-snark, proto-troll, and naturally, also an active exchange of ideas that motivated some very weird people to do great things in their life,’ adds co-author Johan Kugelberg.”
OTW Fannews: Spreading Around Fanworks
Public radio station WBEZ announced they would be producing fan-written minisodes of its historical drama podcast PleasureTown. “In minisode 1, we meet Esther, the town seamstress, who spins a yarn about her lost heritage and life under the watchful eye of the menacing Miz Janine. The PleasureTown legend continues… this time, at the hands of its fans.”
OTW Fannews: Shades of Fanworks
The release of Fifty Shades of Grey in theaters led to a wave of stories connecting it to its fanfiction roots. A post at MoviePilot though, focused on fan art for the fandom.