How does one get Fanfiction "Published"?
When the final chapter of "The Legend of the Sword of the Day and the Sword of the Night" was translated to English I kept hearing on the chatroom where it was posted that we had best read it now before the author asked the translation to be taken down off the site.
The Author also made this post
Thanks Crazyla for your work and for finishing the translation, I know it was not easy (the long chapters and some of the words used in it).
Hehe, I would had posted the epilogue one or two days after the final chapter (as I did with the original in Spanish), it was funny (as a writer) to see peoples reactions to that end ;)
And, as Crazyla said, read and enjoy it while is up, I don´t know when I going to ask to take it down, but my publisher is actually studying the possibility of publication, so the sign of a publishing contract is not that far away.
Now from my understanding it's set in the Nanohaverse and uses the same characters while adding new ones so it's not a entirely different story with coincidental characters going by the same names, however I have always been told that Fanfiction could never be published unless the original creators adopted it which to my knowledge the author hasn't.
So how does one get Fanfiction "Published", does the original creators need to be contacted to get permission?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/14761. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
We aren't lawyers, and I don't think there's a single hard and fast rule for this. Rights can vary depending on geography, time, and author preference.
- There are works which are now in the public domain which anyone can adapt, so, for example, any Sherlock Holmes story which uses elements which Conan Doyle wrote before 1923 can be legitimately published or broadcast. (Yes, the BBC Sherlock is technically fanfic).
- Some authors invite you to play in their universes (Mercedes Lackey oversees anthologies of short stories written about her worlds and characters) and some don't want you even to assemble an encyclopedia of what's been printed if that encyclopedia is for sale (JK Rowling).
- Parody may be acceptable to the author/estate (Bored of the Rings) or not (The Wind Done Gone).
- Amazon set up a deal with some writers and TV shows which gave people permission to sell fanfic in specific universes as Kindle books.
Honestly, the only way this writer can try for publication is to talk to the author of the original 'verse and try to work out permission. And there's no guarantee the fanfic writer will get it.
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