Nele Noppe, Mechanisms of
control in online fanwork sales: A comparison of Kindle Worlds and Dlsite.com,
12 Participations 218, 231 (2015) (citations and footnote omitted):
This research also suggests that
while the establishment of Kindle Worlds may have been a watershed moment for
fanwork sales in the U.S., its apparent failure should not be taken as proof
that all fans are inherently opposed to the monetization of their works. DLsite.com
alone serves hundreds of thousands of fans that are interested in selling and buying
digital fanworks, including many English-speaking fans. Fanwork monetization is
neither new nor exceptional even in parts of English-speaking fan culture. To
provide just one example, ‘filing off the serial numbers,’ or changing
identifying names from fan fiction in order to publish it as an ‘original’
novel, is a practice with a long and storied history that is currently popular
especially in the Twilight fandom from which Fifty Shades of Grey hailed. The
existence of ‘filing off the serial numbers’ and other strategies of fanwork
monetization suggests that Kindle Worlds is not failing because all fans are
uninterested in selling fanworks, or because all fans believe that fanwork
exchange should only be ‘non-commercial’. I would argue that Kindle Worlds is failing
because it does not add enough value for fans – value to their fannish
experience, or to their commercial aspirations. This implies that fanwork sales
could be successful on the English-speaking Internet if a better business model
were found.
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