Before we pick up where we left off, I’m sharing a comment from my friend Jeremy (you met him in the National Treasure and NFT issues) regarding my footnote on Ethereum becoming more climate conscious:
Ethereum made the switch from proof of work to proof of stake (a switch that has been so long in the making that many, including myself, thought it would never happen). Proof of work is where you do a lot of unnecessary math and burn a lot of energy, which is what bitcoin, the most popular crypto network, uses and probably always will.
Proof of stake uses far less energy but exacerbates inequality (to your point about who these kinds of systems would benefit). In proof of stake systems you offer up some of your coin (the stake) and then the algorithm probabilistically chooses who receives the new token where a larger stake increases your odds of winning, meaning if you have more tokens to stake you have a higher chance of getting the next one. It doesn’t take a lot of work (pun intended) to see how this favors the already wealthy.
For me the environmental issue was never the crux of the problem with crypto because ultimately that is a solvable problem, whereas trying to foist artificial scarcity and a zero-sum mentality into digital space are inherent to the idea of crypto and are fundamentally stupid.
Thanks, Jeremy! That is a great explanation about why crypto is stupid and, oops! approaching yet another crash. We’ll turn now to Part 2 on that article I Read So You Don’t Have To (read Part 1) because now I want to talk about fandom and monetization.
do: your research. don’t: underestimate fandom
Last time, I kept returning to the question of why this enterprise of reader investment in books needs to be backed by crypto, and Griffin has an answer: if an author’s original characters are backed by the block-chain, they can track, license, and monetize the reuse of those characters in other projects, such as fanfiction. Griffin argues that the crypto-backing of these books would be a boon for fanfiction writers, who could then license characters from their favorite media and likewise profit off of their use.
This proposal irks me for two reasons. First, it operates from a completely warped definition of fanfiction. Second, it indicates to me that neither Griffin nor the crypto venture capitalists she interviewed have done their research.
I’ll start with the first point: Griffin argues that block-chain-backed books would allow fanfiction writers to incorporate licensed characters into their work and likewise profit off of the sale of that work, with some proceeds going to the original rights holder and some going to the fanfiction writer. This model would remove the “legal gray area” of fanfiction production that Griffin alludes to.
While there are indeed fan authors and fanartists who take commissions and receive compensation for their creations, there is no such “gray area” in writing fanfiction. Fanfiction, or the transformative incorporation of copyrighted characters, places, worlds, or concepts into new works, is legal under the fair use clause of US copyright law. That is, provided that practitioners do not profit from the use of these entities in their non-licensed works (and the majority of fanworks are not licensed), it’s legal. Archive of Our Own, the internet’s largest repository for fanworks, abides by and enforces this interpretation of copyright law—if you’re a fan creator and you post a link on one of your AO3 stories to “Support me on Ko-Fi!” or “Subscribe to me on Patreon!” i.e., advertise for-profit compensatory practices from your fan works, you risk getting booted from the site. AO3 doesn’t mess around: they want fanworks to be safe from legal challenges, so that means abiding by copyright restrictions.
So, sure. If a rights holder wanted to license some aspects of their intellectual property for use in fanworks, and stipulated that those fans could then use those aspects and profit off of them in their own right, then yes, fan creators could make money off of their works. But 1) then these works would not be fanfiction and 2) this assumes that fan creators want to make money off of their works (returning to the question of who is actually interested in this model).
Though it differs across fan media (e.g. fan art versus fanfiction), the portion of fan creators who seek compensation for their works is relatively small. Most fanfiction authors write fanfiction because they love it. That is Griffin’s fundamental misunderstanding: prevailing definitions of fanfiction (fic) preclude profit. Three of the tenets of fic, as defined by Francesca Coppa in The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, emphasize fic’s location adjacent to profit: fic is “created outside of the literary marketplace,” “rewrites and transforms other stories currently owned by others,” and “is made for free but not ‘for nothing.’” That is to say, fanfiction is produced and circulated outside of the traditional gatekeepers of literary agents and publishing houses, it riffs on works that are owned by other people, and is made for reasons besides compensation (such as affirmation and reciprocal gifting).
Semantics aside, in practice, plenty of fan communities outright reject attempts at monetization; those that do accept the idea of fan creators receiving compensation often do so only when said compensation directly supports creating more fanworks or contributes to that fan community writ large. These fan practitioners do not expect to profit and live off the compensation they might receive from commissions. They justify accepting compensation by reinvesting it into their practice. In the case of fanbinders (who print and handbind fanworks into hard-copy books), the upfront costs of supplies and equipment to handbind books is significant; commissions allow some of these artists to defray the costs of their hobby, and many “repay” the greater fanbinding and fancreator community by binding and gifting copies of fanworks to the fanauthor or fanartist.1 Here, compensation underwrites hobbies that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive and allow fanbinders to partake in meaningful relationships.
With this definition and these examples in mind, if fanfiction authors were interested in profiting off their work (of whom the majority are not) and if fanfiction authors were to pursue this path that Griffin suggests—create fanworks within an authorized framework to receive compensation for their transformative creations—they wouldn’t be creating fanworks. No longer “outside” of the literary marketplace, the resulting writing would transform into freelance content creation for media conglomerates and IP owners. And we already know how that turns out because two companies attempted this license-based profit model to spectacular failure.
In 2007, the same year that Kindle launched, the platform FanLib created a commercial portal for fans to publish fanfiction based on popular movies and television shows in exchange for prizes, e-publication opportunities, and the attention of television production partners (sound familiar?). In 2013, Amazon created KindleWorlds, which allowed writers to publish their works for sale on Amazon’s website for participating brands. Essentially, both companies attempted to create the very system Griffin suggests, wherein they licensed specific IPs that fan creators could then use in their own works and post on the platforms. All three parties—the original rights holder, the platform, and the fan creator—would split any profits.
Both platforms faced considerable criticism from fans, who levied that neither company was interested in fostering collaborative fan communities but were preoccupied with profiting off of others’ work without reinvesting that profit in said communities. Both platforms shuttered within a few years: FanLib in 2008 and KindleWorlds in 2018. My colleague Kim and I wrote about these platforms and the precedent they set for compensatory-based fan practices. It’s very readable. Not to toot my own horn, because I am in no way an expert, but this is what gets my goat about reading pop-media articles about fanfiction! The research is out there, my friends! Fan studies scholars are doing a lot of work to document the phenomena and history of fandom. Fans are consistently ahead of the technology curve, adopting devices, platforms, and interfaces long before other groups. They have already tested these models, and the commentary in this article indicates to me that writers, venture capitalists, and the crypto crew are not doing their research.
I will concede that there are a handful (and at this scale, admittedly, a handful could be thousands) of fan writers who would love to develop their works into traditionally published novels. But they’ve already been doing that (so…we still don’t need crypto!). “Pulling to publish” or “filing off the serial numbers” is the practice in which fanfiction authors edit out the copyrighted characters and worlds from their existing fic, replacing them with new names so they can publish the text for profit. You’ve never heard of this? Actually, you have. One of the highest-selling book series of all time was a pulled-to-publish fic originally entitled “Master of the Universe”: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James.
“Master of the Universe” began as a weekly installment of Twilight Alternative-Universe fanfiction (meaning, without the vampires and werewolves) hosted on LiveJournal (may her memory be a blessing). James solicited reader comments and suggestions to develop her story into the BDSM-lite romp that FSG became.2 It was such a popular work that The Writer’s Coffee Shop, a publishing house specializing in pulled-to-publish Twilight fic, published “Master of the Universe” online as Fifty Shades of Grey. FSG was in turn picked up by Vintage, an imprint of Penguin Random House, which deliberately downplayed the fanfiction roots of the work in promotional materials (this was 2012 and fanfiction was still seen as nerdy and taboo). The publisher also incorrectly claimed that FSG was an entirely different work from its fic version. Although the fic version no longer lives online—removing traces of fic from the internet is the “pulling” part of “pull to publish”—screengrabs exist, and side-by-side comparisons indicate that the text is nearly untouched, save for a few shifted commas and the name changes.
While Fifty Shades of Grey was a smash success, for better or for worse, its publication by Vintage caused consternation in some fannish circles. Fans may reject pulled fic because they see authors refuting the fannish space from which the fic was born; in the case of “Master of the Universe,” James drew considerably from fan contributions in the weekly comments section (recall that I mentioned last time that authors already communicate with their fans, no crypto required). Some of her readers then viewed her abandonment of that collective process as a betrayal of their trust. Others didn’t care, of course, and cheered her on for grabbing and running with that big old cash bag—and it was big. James sold 150 million copies worldwide within six years of publication and each of the three film adaptations has made over $350 million dollars. But even without accepting money, fan creators risk alienating their friends and followers if they betray collective values. Griffin’s assertion that fanfiction is the next cash deluge for the publishing industry suggests to me a misunderstanding of fannish motivations.
Fic writers have used their fanfiction to practice their writing skills, to develop storylines, and, yes, eventually edit their works for submission to traditional publishing. But most fanfiction writers are not primarily interested in aligning themselves with the traditional publishing industry. Many writers deliberately depart from that industry to tell stories they don’t see elsewhere, or don’t want to see elsewhere, or to create artworks or merchandise that doesn’t exist online to fulfill whatever aesthetic niche they’re in search of. Many fan creators are not interested in making money at all; they see their work as a hobby that is reciprocated in other ways. They don’t need a purported path to legitimization and monetization hypothesized in yet another crypto crack-up of an article. Fans could engage in the system Griffin suggests. I would then argue their creations are no longer fanfiction but freelanced, deputized content creation for a corporation.
Seriously, I wrote my entire MA dissertation on this.
crypto can’t (and won’t) crack monopolies
Finding ways to better compensate authors underwrites this crypto scheme. Undercompensation of authors is a systemic failure that is not driven by secondhand booksales (as Griffin suggests), but by the vast monopolization of the publishing industry, which is attempting to cannibalize itself to have any shot at competing with Amazon. In the case filing in favor of the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster (which would have turned the Big Five publishing houses into the Big Four), the defense basically argued that publishers were too incompetent to figure out how to succeed on their own, so they needed each other. What an indictment! Not to be like, “and it all comes back to Jeffrey Bezos,” but it does.
Amazon shivved independent and chain bookstores for three decades by undercutting their prices, watched the entire industry bleed dry, and now publishers think their only hope is to strap their weakening conglomerates together, further reducing competition and exacerbating already crushingly low wages. That Amazon attempted to create a fan-driven content-generation platform in KindleWorlds is no coincidence: it was another step in their attempts to consolidate power over and profits from intellectual property.
One of the patterns emerging in crypto-related ventures is reinventing the wheel, but then backing that wheel and its manufacturers with an unstable, inaccessible, energy intensive currency. The crypto crew peddles in extrapolated visions that totally lack reality. They have been sold a very expensive scam that does not actually address the real and solvable structural inequalities at the root of the problems in which they stake their claim.
The solutions to undercompensation (or housing or transportation, or whatever Problem of the Week the Crypto Kids glom onto) are not glamorous. They do not live in the metaverse or atop coded money or digital monkey art. They lie in breaking up monopolies, developing affordable housing, establishing universal income…things that will allow people to live with dignity and make art without worrying about dividends.
I’m not trying to come across as a luddite—There are certainly kinds of books and stories that are better suited to digital formats. The Guardian recently covered the publication of the manga “One Piece” in codex form, which basically amounts to an unreadable book sculpture. Such long-form serial stories (visual and/or textual) are sometimes more accessible in digital format. The print predecessors to these digital-born stories, such as newspaper comics, are hard to compile and store. In the Spring, I curated a small exhibition case at the Lilly Library of Steve Canyon comics from the collections of Michael O’Connell and Richard and Dorothy Bauman, the latter of whom collected every daily comic over forty years and stored them in scrapbooks. The 88 scrapbooks were individually wrapped in cellophane bags and housed inside four large cardboard shipping boxes: neither easily navigable nor readable. I believe in the power of digital access, and transitioning to digital formats can enhance the reading experience in simple ways. But neither of these concepts hinge on complicated tier systems or dubious currency, and privatized companies have proven to us that they cannot be trusted with access.
This is the heart of the issue: the monopolization of publishing, and media in general, dilutes the poignancy of the stories we have available, reduces competition, and weakens authors’ power to negotiate fair contracts with mega-conglomerates. Last time, I pointed to the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger that wiped hundreds of shows and movies from their back catalog, including television series with final seasons ready to air and fully-completed, highly-anticipated films. Early reports indicate that most of the layoffs among top executives were of people of color in departments driving the most innovative, inclusive, and diverse shows on streaming services. These decisions announce a clear ideological stance on what the company wants to produce and why: humglum, run-of-the-mill marketable content that appeals to the “middle ground” (take a gander as to whom that euphemism refers). After a short stint in the spotlight, diversity is now being cast as a market risk rather than a market gain. Paying to play, it turns out, doesn’t guarantee access and diversity.
Consolidation hurts storytelling. It means there are fewer opportunities in an industry that already privileges white people: in the last 70 years, 95% of books published in the United States were by white people. In the last four years, that number has dropped just slightly to 89%. Stakeholders are keen to buy and sell stories that are guaranteed to make money, which means fewer risks and less innovation. If you’re a capitalist, you should hate monopolies! Big mergers are bad for that free market competition. And if you’re a democratic socialist, you probably already hate monopolies, because that money is going into the pockets of owners, not workers. Monopolies mean we lose stories that call to us from the shelves and stick in our ribs far after they’re through; we lose authors and artists who show us new ways of being with those stories. We don’t need to have stock, especially crypto stock, in those stories, except in how we hope they end.
housekeeping and birdseeking
house
What I read last week: Mansfield Park and Persuasion by Jane Austen. If you love Persuasion and you’re mad about that Dakota Johnson adaptation, this is my favorite essay on the failures of the film from the incomparable Brandon Taylor.
What I’m currently reading: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.
bird
Friends should be like puffins: friendly and caring about your interests.
More later.
I know that the BDSM community has big issues with the way BDSM is depicted in Fifty Shades of Grey. That is not on today’s agenda, but thank you for raising the point.
NGL was a little gobsmacked by the number 95% in the last 70 years, that's atrocious