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Selling Fanfic is Illegal: Here’s Why

If you haven’t heard, some people are selling bound fanfiction on Etsy and other fanwork they have no rights to.


Here’s the problem with that: it’s illegal. Plain and simple. There’s no grey area or loopholes. 


Stack of journals and notebooks.
Photo by Mart Production

Anne Rice and the 2000s

I did some digging on the internet and came across this article that discusses the incident in the 2000s with author Anne Rice and her attack on the fandom. Anne Rice made her stance on fanfiction clear: she did not support it, and even sued several individual fanfiction authors. 


Another article says, “much of the early Anne Rice fanfiction from the 1990s to the late 2000s has vanished off the Internet; that’s because in the 2000s she used her lawyers to get them removed from the Internet. Entire websites and communities vanished.”


At the time, she had legal grounds to do this, but ultimately, “Non-Commercially distributed fanfic is seen as legal in the United States as long as it's a transformative work.” Non-Commercially essentially meaning not-for-profit. The minute money passes hands it becomes Commercial and therefore illegal.


This is due to intellectual property and copyright laws. 


Intellectual Property and Copyright

Generally, copyright is the exclusive legal right to produce, reproduce, publish or perform an original artistic, literary, musical or dramatic work. An original work includes, but is not limited to:


  • Artistic: photographs, paintings, sculptures

  • Literary: books, computer software, website content

  • Musical: musical notations, musical compositions with lyrics

  • Dramatic: motion picture films, plays, screenplays, scripts

  • Compilations: datasets and spreadsheets, databases


In simple terms if you’ve written say Harry Potter or Marvel fanfiction, you are not the original creator/owner of these works and profiting in any way from this fanfiction is breaking copyright laws. 


Fanfic Author Rights

Now, there is an additional aspect to consider. 


Dr. Betsy Rosenblatt, a law professor teaching intellectual property law at U.C. Davis School of Law says, “Fans own copyright in their own original contributions to a fanwork—they don’t own anything about the underlying work it’s based on, but they do own what they have made." 


Heidi Tandy, an intellectual property attorney, also states, “if you wrote a story and someone uploaded it to Amazon without your permission, even if they change the names, they're infringing on your copyright.” She goes on to add that, “fanfic writers and fan artists can register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office, or their nation's copyright office.”


The above article is focused on the laws in the U.S. However, Canada has the non-commercial user-generated content (UGC) exception to copyright infringement in section 29.21 of the Canadian Copyright Act which allows individuals to use copyright-protected works to create new content for non-commercial purposes.


Copyright Duration and the Public Domain

The one way to avoid copyright infringement altogether is to use works already in the public domain. 


In the U.S. and Canada copyright lasts for the life of the author, plus 70 years after the end of that calendar year. In Canada, when this protection ends or expires, the work falls into the public domain and becomes accessible to the public (meaning you have the right to reproduce or republish the work). 


This is why the Lion King exists as it’s basically just Hamlet fanfiction. The same can be said for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.


Fanfic Turned Published Novel

Additionally I would like to note that if the work has changed enough from the original it can become its own copyrighted work. For example, My Life With the Walter Boys started out as Vampire Diaries fanfiction and it’s clear there is no mistaking one for the other so they can exist as separate entities. The same can be said for After originally being One Direction fanfiction. The new work is so far removed from the original that it couldn’t possibly be mistaken for that original. 


Ethical Concerns

Lastly, there are ethical concerns here. If you’re binding fanfiction, especially fanfiction which you are not the author of, and then profiting from it you’re discrediting not only the original author, but the fanfic author as well. 


Fanfic authors write in their spare time, they are doing it because they have a passion and love for it, not because they can make money from it. They do not own the copyright of the original work but they have still put time and effort into writing these stories for the public to enjoy and expect absolutely nothing in return. 


Final Thoughts

Fanfiction is free and it must remain free. 


Binding fanfiction for profit is illegal and discredits the original author and the fanfic author. Rebinding novels for profit is illegal because you don’t own the rights to reproduce or distribute the copyrighted work. 


Please stop doing this and report anyone you find doing this. If it ever comes to the point where legal issues are brought up and taken to court, these individuals are not going up against people like them, they’re going to be facing large entities and corporations with a team of lawyers.


One last time for the people in the back: Fanfiction is free and it must remain free.



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