Unofficial Fan Fictions - How can I Secure Them?
For a long time now, I have been writing fan fictions based off of the storyline of a board game. I have posted these fan fictions on a website dedicated to the same board game. I am not the only writer doing so.
However, the time will come when I want to publish a real book, and I am finding that my inspiration is flowing from my fan fictions. This is not a problem, as most of them are very removed from the board game. With a little tweaking, I can separate them entirely.
My problem is this: Though I trust my readers, my fan fictions are on the internet, where anyone can walk by and grab them. I have attempted to thwart this by making them PDFs with the copying and printing turned off - but my proofreader can copy and print them just fine.
How can I secure my unofficial fan fictions against plagiarism? The website they are posted on does claim everything on it as copyrighted, but I would like to be doubly sure. If it comes to it, I will have to simply delete the fan fictions. I may have to do so anyway if I begin publishing.
Note: My problem is NOT with copyright. I am drawing only inspiration from these fan fictions, not actual aspects of the game. I want to be sure the plot of my fan fictions cannot be stolen, as they will be similar (similar, not exact) to the published work.
P.S. To be clear: I am not a published author, and these are not fan fictions based off of another author's work. They are based off of a board game storyline. Many others are writing similar fan fictions as well, so it is not a question of getting into trouble with the owners of the game (which is discontinued anyway).
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If they're on the Internet, someone has a copy of them. They are free now, and you will never have full control of them again.
I won't swear to it, but I think when EL James got her book contract for the Fifty Shades trilogy, she deleted all the posted versions of those stories (which were after all Twilight fanfic). I seem to recall that older versions were available in various online archives (maybe the Wayback Machine), so deleting them from wherever they were hosted didn't make them go away entirely.
The upshot is that once you make something public, there's no way to completely prevent people from accessing it, and once they can access it, they can plagiarize it.
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You are worrying about the wrong thing. No one wants to steal your stuff. Unpublished fiction on the web is of zero commercial value. There are far more people writing it than there are reading it.
The only people who should worry about being plagiarized are successful authors who are, first, making money, and, second, have a fanbase of people who admire and may want to emulate their work. Only then would anyone have a motive for plagiarizing it.
In other words, your work is not worth stealing until it is published. Once it is published, it is available to anyone who wants to plagiarize it, and the remedies lie in the courts.
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