naivette

This isn’t really a rant per se, but I just wanted to get my thoughts out there since I’ve been seeing a lot of this kind of discourse on my dashboard and timelines recently while doing research into printing fanfics.

I think a lot of the negativity towards fanfiction writers who want to have a physical representation of their work, and maybe sell at a marginal cost (i.e. cost getting something printed and shipped, plus like a dollar or two extra for their efforts), is unwarranted.

Yes, AO3 is correct, people should not be monetizing their fics, and doing that so openly on a site that is the last bastion of legal defense against copyright holders is not good! (Do not mention or link to donations/payments/stores on AO3). According to copyright law, it is illegal to violate the intellectual property rights of registered works. The Fair Use defense only works if a work is transformative, and for non-commercial purposes.

But there are thousands of zines and doujinshi created by fanartists, that sell for real money! Again, most of it is for marginal costs, to cover the cost of printing and distributing, plus a little extra for the artists. Those zines/doujinshi are violating the same laws that a fanfic zine would. Those artists are making profit! Some of those fanart zines have print runs up to 1000 copies.

Yet people go out of their way to harass any fanfic writers that dare sell their works on the down-low (again, not on AO3) wanting the same thing. These are works that are selling maybe 5-20 physical copies maximum!!

I really think Japanese doujinshi culture is correct on this point. Both fanartists and fanfiction writers are selling their works in low quantities, and sites like Pixiv Factory make it really easy to set up your work for print on-demand. Obviously, if rights-holders object, it gets taken down. But guess what? There’s very few chances of them objecting, if you keep it small.

The older zine culture from back in the Star Trek slash days understood this. Some people made some money, but 99% of it was within hobby levels.

I just want the same thing! I wanna see my works in a physical form!

Above is a collection of Pumpkin Scissors doujinshi, along with my own fanfic doujin at the bottom right.

Guess how many copies I sold of my doujin? Three! One of which is my own. I hardly even made enough money to cover the cost of my own copy, never mind shipping from Japan. Which is fine! I appreciated people liking it enough to order it to begin with.

Fanfic writers shouldn’t be harassed about wanting to get their doujins/zines printed. Rather than forcing readers to format the book themselves, and go through the tedious process of bookbinding each individual book, it would be better if the author could just offer the formatted file, or an actual copy, for sale. Fanbinding is super cool, but it’s too high of a bar (and cost prohibitive) for someone who just wants a nice, printed copy of their stuff.

I might follow up this post with a “How to” on getting works printed through pixiv factory. I learned a lot during my process, and would be happy to share the information.