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There is already licensed fan fiction out there. Star Trek and Star Wars have huge numbers of novels, which are essentially fanfic, sticking to their own universes. Last year at Comic Coin Del Rey put out feelers for anyone who wrote fanfic in certain areas (for which they had rights) to come bring their works to their booth. And then there are novels where the 'proprietary content' is altered so that they can be published. 50 Shade of Grey comes to mind. Still, this is a step in the right direction.

But they're done through their owner's consent. I was reading Paramount owns the Star Trek movies, but not the 1960's series, the 1970's cartoon, comics or merchandise. That's one of the reason it took so long to get the new Star Trek movie going - the changes they were making would affect the merchandise and the other owner wasn't happy about it. All of the Star Wars books were published through Lucas Entertainment prior to the sale to Disney and you can bet Disney would not allow just anyone to publish something with Star Wars without their permission. As a published author, I'd have a fit if someone tried to publish something using my characters in order to make money.

I get a bit worried when I read things like this - What if now copyright holders actually try to regulate fan fiction more? And come down like a ton of bricks on fanfic writers? Is this too far-fetched? I certainly hope so, but...is it?

I would think if they were going to come down on Fanfic writers, who do it for fun with no plan to make money on it, they would have done so already. But throw in an attempt to make money on someone else's creations - that's inexcusable in my opinion.

Much as I love Amazon, this goes too far...

This shouldn't affect not-for-profit fanfiction, since that has been historically protected by the fair-use clause in copyright laws. For copyrighted and licensed work, it shouldn't make everything a free-for-all because owners/authors would have to opt into it. What has me concerned is some of the analysis in the second link. Other than trying to make a piddly amount on a hobby, the main reason for taking advantage of something like this as a fanfic author would be to get name recognition as an author and possibly with the franchise. However, if the owners of the franchise have free use anything published, that sort of negates that option. Personally, I don't see any authors taking advantage of this. Anything that is so old as to be public domain is fair use to publish any way. What I do see as being useful for is reemerging franchising, people trying to rebuild a fanbase.

I've been pulling all the articles I can find and skimmed them. Thus far, Amazon has made agreements for 'Gossip Girl', Pretty Little Liars' and 'The Vampire Diaries' with Warner Brothers, who owns the shows. It say the fanfic author will get 35% of the list price - the rest of us authors only get a normally lesser percentage of the wholesale price - and the rest is split somehow between Amazon and Warner's Brothers. My question is what about the original author? They don't appear to get anything. Did they sign over their rights when the TV shows were created? The TV shows don't always follow the book. Is that why? What if Stephanie Meyers (Twilight) agreed to it but then doesn't like what's written about Edward - like he's really gay and was only using Bella to get close to her father? Sick but possible. Would she be able to do anything about it?

Yeah, I've been paid to write for someone's fictional world, I'm familiar with the work for hire "add content to my property" model. It's not quite the same as fan fiction since it's 100% legal, given that the copyright holder hires you to do it. The discussion thread under the 2nd article is very interesting. It hits a lot of the pros and cons, and there are pros as well as cons, though I'm not sure I'd sign on to this program as is (it's not an issue since I don't watch those shows) but those are rights that you'd be giving away for the most part even if you did work for hire for the series, and you'd make a lot less than 35%. (not to mention the fact that work for hire often involves no royalties, at least in my experience) I believe it said in the press release that the rights holder (probably a publsher or corp) receives a cut. Whether the original creator does would entirely depend on the rights holder, but it was the creator's choice to sign or not sign that contract. You can bet that from now on, that's going to become a factor in all future fiction contracts. I see this, as TJ said, as a step in the right direction. I'm very curious to see if it's going to get any traction and, if so, what properties are going to follow into that licensing pool.

I see this only involving television and movie franchises, whose rights belong to a company rather than an author. I can't see any author agreeing to it, unless they get a big cut.

I suppose it would depend what the author wants to do with the property. If they're done with it, but there'es still public demand, then they could use this as a way to get ideas to continue it further.

Also depends on what rights the original work's author sold to their publisher if they went with a publisher, instead of doing it themselves. Plus, a lot of these movies and TV shows were derived from books. It's a very tangled mess of rights to navigate.

Thanks for posting, Chris. It will all become much more relevant when the new Gatch movie hits theaters and revives the fandom and Tatsunoko comes to us for help.

There's a story about it in the BBC online news magazine - sorry can't add link now - the title is "Kindle worlds: Do fan fiction writers want to make money?"

Gotta love oversimplified questions. It depends on who you're talking to, and even then, on what piece they're talking about at any given time.