Amazon has announced their fan fiction buying-and-selling website Kindle Worlds is now open for business.
Kindle Worlds is the first place for fan fiction writers to legally write and sell their own fan fiction about a select number of fandoms. Currently Amazon has deals with 50 fandoms including The Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, and Gossip Girl.
Fan fiction writers can earn up to 35% per story purchase. Amazon and the creator of the fandom receive the other portions of that pie.
Checking out Amazon’s Kindle Worlds store front (which looks similar to most areas of Amazon), the online retailer appears to be putting particular emphasis on The Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, The Foreworld Saga, Gossip Girl, Archer & Armstrong, Shadowman, Harbinger, and XO Manowar.
There are numerous concerns about Kindle Worlds from a fandom and writer perspective. For one, the creator of the world is allowed to use the ideas you create in official works in the future without giving any credit to you.
In other words, you could come up with an amazing plot twist for Damon and Elena in The Vampire Diaries and see it show up in the books or television show, but you would never be compensated monetarily or verbally.
Another concern is that Amazon is banning pornography. Fans are upset by this rule because the majority of fan fiction at least includes one or two sex scenes. Without them, the appeal of diving into some fan fiction and enjoying an alternate fandom world where there’s only light romance is not appealing.
Amazon may’ve been afraid of Fifty Shades-level stories appearing in Kindle Worlds, or the authors only agreed to including their fandom if there was no sex involved.
A final major problem is that you have to pay for fan fiction. For as long as the internet has existed, fan fiction has been free to obtain on numerous websites. Amazon is now looking to monetize the fan fiction market so that they can open a new book store which has, literally, endless books available.
Will you give Kindle Worlds a try by either selling or purchasing books to read on your computer, mobile device, or Kindle?
Visit Kindle Worlds to learn more about how it works.