Self-Publishing: Publishing Your Fanfiction is a Bad Idea

It's a hard thing to do in a title without sacrificing consistency, but self-publishing your fanfiction is a Bad Idea. It might even be a Very Bad Idea depending on how wild your imagination for repercussions can be. Here's why.

1. Fanfiction is technically illegal.
It is considered copyright infringement. Whoever owns the copyright can sue for infringement. Selling fan-created work for profit is pretty much guaranteed to bring lawyers down on you.

2. The relationship between copyright holders and fans is delicate and should not be upset.
Plenty of copyright holders--like authors Anne Rice and George R. R. Martin--have taken a hostile stance toward fanfiction. There have been cases of copyright holders changing/relaxing policy (Lucasfilm, Poppy Z. Brite) but for the most part, creators are firm. Fans respect the official stance and those of us in fandoms that allow fanfiction and other fanwork are grateful for the encouragement or ignorance. If, say, Lucasfilm or CBS/Paramount found out that fans were profiting from copyright infringement, I can easily imagine cease and desist showing up in the offices of every archive, on the doorsteps of every author and artist. It might crush online fandom. Am I overreacting? Possibly. But I'm old enough to remember the thriving Vampire Chronicles fandom before Anne Rice shut it down.

3. Self-publishing is easy and universally accessible but that could change.
There are zero controls on self-publishing right now. Anyone can do it with any quality of work. But that could change. Lawsuits and/or cease and desist letters could shut down places like Smashwords or force Amazon to shut down KDP. Or maybe they'll have to implement quality control measures and we'll end up with a whole new realm of gatekeepers in the form of hired hands vetting the work submitted for sale. Right now, self-publishing is a pretty sweet deal. It wouldn't take much to change that.

4. Selling fanfiction amounts to theft of intellectual property.
See character. Steal character. Profit from character. It's the same thing as stealing someone's car stereo or cell phone or selling bootleg DVDs. As writers, we should understand that. How would you feel if someone read your book, loved it, wrote their own story with your characters, and then sold it? Exactly. So think about that if you're considering putting your fanfic up for sale.

This post doesn't come to you out of the blue. I have actually seen fanfiction for sale (the worst example, Wesley Crusher: Teenage Fuck Machine, seems to have been removed from Amazon), but you can still download (for free, admittedly) Star Wars: Awakening and Star Wars One from Smashwords.

And none of this list even touches on the general icky feelings I get from everything Cassandra Clare (also known as Cassie Claire) has published or the entire Fifty Shades trilogy (which began as Twilight fanfiction and didn't get much better from there). That's profiting from fanfiction (and bad fanfiction at that, seriously) in a whole new, gross way.