I'm interested to see what it does to the tie-in novel arena - whether this will replace the hiring of professional writers to produce books that (IMO) generally fall well short of the quality of top-notch fic, or whether the two can/will exist side by side.
The copyright issues folks are questioning also exist in the tie-in arena. I wrote two of the Quantum Leap tie-ins, was paid a flat sum ($4,000) for each of them, and then had NO say about much of anything. I was told that if I wanted to promote or market the books in any way, I needed to obtain prior permission from Universal Legal. And of course, I have no right to post any of the material online, even though the books are now long out of print.
I think it comes down to a situation of "What do you WANT from your work?" I suspect a noticeable number of fic authors would be very interested in making some dough from their fic - and in gaining the additional notoriety that publication via Amazon would provide. I do think it would make sense for any author to have someone familiar with contract law take a look at the details of this arrangement before they sign up and submit their work.
Then, too, I would hope that Amazon has a staff of people ready, willing, and able to reject anything that's... crap. (Even though they're already selling a shitton of Kindle e-books that are absolute garbage.)
I'll mention this, too - I got stuck with paying Self-Employment Tax to our good friends at the IRS, which ate up HALF of the $4,000. Turned out to be a *lot* of work (writing 80,000 and 114,000 words) for about $2,000 apiece. In my experience, there just isn't a big pile of money to be made with this stuff, unless you grab the gold ring (a la the 50 Shades of Gray author).
no subject
The copyright issues folks are questioning also exist in the tie-in arena. I wrote two of the Quantum Leap tie-ins, was paid a flat sum ($4,000) for each of them, and then had NO say about much of anything. I was told that if I wanted to promote or market the books in any way, I needed to obtain prior permission from Universal Legal. And of course, I have no right to post any of the material online, even though the books are now long out of print.
I think it comes down to a situation of "What do you WANT from your work?" I suspect a noticeable number of fic authors would be very interested in making some dough from their fic - and in gaining the additional notoriety that publication via Amazon would provide. I do think it would make sense for any author to have someone familiar with contract law take a look at the details of this arrangement before they sign up and submit their work.
Then, too, I would hope that Amazon has a staff of people ready, willing, and able to reject anything that's... crap. (Even though they're already selling a shitton of Kindle e-books that are absolute garbage.)
I'll mention this, too - I got stuck with paying Self-Employment Tax to our good friends at the IRS, which ate up HALF of the $4,000. Turned out to be a *lot* of work (writing 80,000 and 114,000 words) for about $2,000 apiece. In my experience, there just isn't a big pile of money to be made with this stuff, unless you grab the gold ring (a la the 50 Shades of Gray author).