Amazon Jumps Into the Fanfic Business
Amazon announced Kindle Worlds today, describing it as “the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so.”
I didn’t know this was coming, but I’m not surprised, exactly. Amazon has been a very successful business, and if they see a potentially profitable area they can branch out into, they’re gonna do it.
I found out about this through Chuck Wendig’s post here, wherein he talks about the press release and proceeds to fragment his own brain into tiny, shiny pieces.
I’m still digesting and processing this, and I suspect some of it will boil down to having to wait to see how it all plays out. But some of my initial reactions are…
- This isn’t a free-for-all. Amazon has licensed these rights from the rights-holders, and it’s for a specific and limited list of properties.
- But wait, if they’ve licensed the rights, is it really fanfiction or is it an open call for licensed tie-in work?
- They’ve got a no porn rule. Fair enough. If anyone’s going to write 50 Shades of Blue: A Goblin’s Erotic Awakening, I think it should be me.
- My understanding of the fanfiction community is that there’s a strong value on not profiting from your work. This seems like a potential culture war between Amazon and the community they’re trying to court.
- That said, no community is perfectly homogenous, and as a writer, I have nothing against getting paid for your work, so long as it’s done legally, which this would be.
- Also, as someone who isn’t a part of that community, I could be TOTALLY AND EMBARRASSINGLY WRONG ABOUT THIS PIECE.
- Who decides whether to license a work, the publisher or the author? Can DAW license Libriomancer fanfic without my approval? Can I do it without theirs?
- Amazon takes all rights to your fanfiction story. Which isn’t entirely unreasonable in a work-for-hire situation, but will make a lot of folks uncomfortable.
- Why would people pay for fanfiction when so much is available online for free?
- Then again, why would people pay for licensed tie-in work when so much fanfiction is available online for free…
- Should prolific fanfic writers look into getting agents? I’m not sure the benefit of an agent in this situation, but I also cringe at the idea of writers who aren’t very, very business-savvy signing contracts without someone else looking it over.
- Does this mean fanfic could now qualify for SFWA membership?
- Waiting for various heads to explode at that question…
- Finally, Amazon is not pro-author, nor are they pro-reader. They’re pro-Amazon. (This doesn’t make them any worse or better than most businesses, by the way.) When Amazon’s interests overlap with those of readers or writers, great. But don’t lose sight of their bottom line, because I guarantee that’s what they’re watching.
I’m sure there will be many, many discussions and arguments about this, and I have no idea how it will all play out or whether or not it will work. But I do think it’s a fascinating step in the ongoing evolution of the industry.
Marjorie McAtee
May 22, 2013 @ 11:12 am
Should anyone be reading fan fiction? Ouch, this makes my head hurt.
Martin
May 22, 2013 @ 11:26 am
Can’t imagine it’s a large market business-wise. Some few instances (e.g. Star Trek) might show a profit but on average there won’t be much revenue.
On a personal note: i don’t manage to read everything from the authors i wish to read everything from (and i’m reading 100+ books per year). So i wouldn’t know where to fit fanfic in.
Jim C. Hines
May 22, 2013 @ 11:30 am
My thought is that people should be reading whatever they love, as long as they’re reading.
Paul (@princejvstin)
May 22, 2013 @ 11:58 am
If anyone’s going to write 50 Shades of Blue: A Goblin’s Erotic Awakening, I think it should be me.
I will never see Jig the same way again… 😉
Michael M Jones
May 22, 2013 @ 12:11 pm
Jig held his breath as Smudge walked slowly down over his naked, scrawny, blue body. Hot little footsteps caused pin-prickles of pain and delight in their wake, and he tried not to wriggle too much in barely-contained ecstasy. If he moved, the fire spider got hotter and hotter.
“Don’t you dare move,” Golaka commanded. She smacked her infamous spoon against one hand, giving Jig a stern look.
“Y-yes Mistress,” Jig moaned….
(Sadly, since Jim has made his intentions clear, I’ve deleted the rest of the 175,000 words of this erotic masterpiece…)
Martin
May 22, 2013 @ 12:12 pm
Another novel eternally ruined …. (never found a way to un-imagine images) 😉
Jana Oliver
May 22, 2013 @ 12:13 pm
@ Michael –
ROTFL. I so needed that laugh today. Bless you!
Jana
David Dalglish
May 22, 2013 @ 12:18 pm
What? That’s *craziness*? Where the heck is your inner literary snob, Jim? There should be outrage here, absolute moral outrage! Dang fanfic writers, getting paid to do what they love. Dang readers, being able to pay for what they want to read. This is clearly heading towards absolute anarchy.
Kindle Worlds–Fan Fictioneers, Are You Ready to Get Paid to Play? | Melanie R. Meadors
May 22, 2013 @ 12:26 pm
[…] […]
Sarah Wynde
May 22, 2013 @ 12:34 pm
On the decision to license a work, read your contract. It most likely gives your publisher the right to make licensing deals on your behalf (and without your permission). That’s pretty standard and I’m sure this would fall under that clause. At one point, my company’s standard publishing contract spelled out the rights we could license, and it included amusement parks! Then they got vaguer, but even more all-encompassing.
I suspect that the biggest issue is going to be that it will be extremely hard to convince fanfiction readers to pay for something that they can get for free. You could argue that it’s just like tie-in novels, but most of the work won’t be edited, so it’s really not.
As for whether the fanfic community places a strong value on not profiting from your work — eh. Some members of it do and are vociferous. But that certainly hasn’t stopped Twilight fanfic authors (not just EL James) from making some seriously big deals. I doubt that’ll really be much of an issue.
The most interesting aspect of the idea to me, though, is the promotional potential for indie authors. If I cared about or knew any of the fandoms they’ve got the rights to — I think just the three of them right now? — I would totally jump on this, not with any expectation of making money from the fanfic stories, but from the possibility of driving readers to my own original stuff. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been as successful an indie as I am (not very, but $10K in my first year is nothing to sneeze at), is because readers of my fanfic often go on to pick up my original stuff. And fanfic readers tend to write reviews, too. I’ve got 80 five-star reviews on Amazon on my first book and while I’ve got no idea how many of those reviewers are from fanfic readers, my guess is quite a few. (I’ve never done anything more to get reviews than post a note in a few fanfics that directed people to the book on Amazon and remind them that reviews are nice, so…) And I wrote fanfiction mostly for an obscure television show, not a popular fandom.
TL;DR Licensed fanfiction might be a great promotional opportunity, even if there’s not really any money in it.
C M
May 22, 2013 @ 12:45 pm
Every part of the fanfic community I have seen over the past 16 years has been against profiting from fic. People who try to charge are generally mocked by all but their devoted fans.
Daniela
May 22, 2013 @ 12:56 pm
Fandom has always been a bit torn about the whole not-for-profit aspect. Yes, that’s the general idea behind it but for years now fan-artists have been selling their art and even created paid fanart based on requests/orders from fellow fans. There have even been cases where fanartists wanted to be paid for submitting a piece of art to a fanfiction magazine.
On devianart it’s possible to buy prints of fanart and if you hit etsy and look for let’s say *Iron Man* you gets tons of hits from painting to jewelry to clothing. All of that falls loosely under *fan art*.
There has been some grumbling about that, especially among the writers who so far only got *paid* in feedback. Some will continue to do it because it’s a hobby they love. Others might look at it as a business and marketing opportunity like Sarah mentioned. The rules for those licensed tie-ins will probably be so narrow (they already said no porn, but didn’t define what they meant by porn. And what about slash?) that they won’t be of interest to many writers. And so far the shows they have aquired aren’t really huge in the fanfiction-world.
E.L. James also wasn’t the first one or the only one who filed the serial numbers of her fanfiction work and published it. The majority in fandom, at least from what I’ve seen, has no problem with that, although there have been grumblings when the re-working was absolutely minimal and the original source easy to figure out.
It will definitely be interesting to see where this will be heading.
Josin
May 22, 2013 @ 12:56 pm
Fanfic communities DO usually discourage attempts at profiting from fanfic, but it’s an attitude developed out of respect for the original authors. You’re playing with someone else’s toys; you don’t get to take them home with you.
However, this is a different animal altogether. There’s no issue of disrespecting the wishes of the original writer. (There *are* several issues with the rights and lack of reversions, IMO). This isn’t writing a fanfiction and filing the serial numbers off by changing name, location, and the animal your MC can shift into, it’s actual acknowledged “derivative” work. You’re not going to see a lot of lash out from the fanfic community until the favored writers jump ship for paying pastures.(This is mainly concerning The Vampire Diaries because vampire fan communities can be nearly feral – I know, I’ve belonged to a few.) This is also the point that the fic writers discover that writing a serialized adventure is nothing like writing a novella, novelette or novel.
A lot of fanfic is flash fiction of less than 1,000 words, so I’m not sure how that’s going to translate to this system. However, Alloy might be able to find a few talented writers they could hire for new packaged series if this works well.
Jim C. Hines
May 22, 2013 @ 1:10 pm
The worst part is that this is significantly better than what I had been thinking 😛
Rob A.
May 22, 2013 @ 1:28 pm
“If anyone’s going to write 50 Shades of Blue: A Goblin’s Erotic Awakening, I think it should be me.”
*mouth opens*
*mouth closes*
*mouth opens*
… I… I think it should be, too.
Erika
May 22, 2013 @ 1:44 pm
I’m not sure I’m getting it all correct but one thing I took from this is, if they like your idea they get to use it anyway they want and don’t have to pay you for it ever again. Not just reuse your story, but your whole idea to create a new story elsewhere. If I’m right on that, then that sucks big time.
Annalee
May 22, 2013 @ 1:47 pm
I used to be much more heavily involved in the fanfic community than I am now, so the culture may have shifted.
That said, the prohibition against profiting from fanfic was always, as Josin says, rooted in respect for the authors–and fear of legal reprisals. The relationship between authors/rights-holders and remix culture is symbiotic, but right-holders don’t always realize that. It’s not in a symbiont’s best interest to come to the immune system’s attention.
Rights holders have a brand and a bottom line to protect, as well as their legal and moral rights to a commercial monopoly on their property. If ‘bad apples’ give them the impression that remix culture is a threat, there’s a very real fear that they could try to shut down all fanworks. That’s why remix culture tends to police commercial activity–sometimes even more harshly than the rights-holder themselves would (LucasFilm sent Lori Jareo a polite cease and desist. It was Star Wars fans who ran her out of town with personal attacks and harsh critiques of her writing skill).
This is a whole new kettle of fish, though, because it’s licensed. The only threat to the fanfic community is the same threat it always faces: that rights-holders will decide they’ll only tolerate licensed fic.
So while I’m personally not terribly interested in either the properties Amazon has licensed or the terms they’re offering, I do hope that remix culture at large doesn’t unleash the hounds on writers (and readers) who decide to participate. If the rights holders’ immune systems aren’t going to be bothered by this, there’s no reason for ours to trigger on their behalf.
Jim C. Hines
May 22, 2013 @ 1:48 pm
I believe you’re right on that. And it definitely sucks, though I’m not sure how exactly that clause compares to traditional work-for-hire contracts…
AMPillsworth
May 22, 2013 @ 1:57 pm
Yes, that part raises major red flags for me. You might want to save any really juicy original characters or ideas for your own fiction; otherwise you’re working as an unpaid idea generator for the rights holders.
Annalee
May 22, 2013 @ 2:02 pm
I think gender’s a major factor in why fanart gets treated differently from fanfiction, in this regard.
Fan artists have been selling their stuff at conventions for time immemorial, and most of those folks have been men. So while there are women who do fan art, it’s not considered a ‘women’s thing’ in the way that fanfiction is.
It’s also a lot easier to explicit find fan art by and for straight men than it is to find erotic fan fiction by and for straight men. So erotic fanfic gets disparaged as yucky (eeew, women having sexualities that have nothing to do with straight men, grooooossss) where explicit fan art is treated no differently than explicit material from original sources.
#EverydaySexism, plain and simple.
KatG
May 22, 2013 @ 2:18 pm
It should be that both the author and publisher have to agree because if not, it’s infringement on both, the author on copyright, the publisher on their license to publish the works. So it would probably be handled as a subsidiary rights licensing deal, but it would need the author’s agreement as it’s not a standard deal. The question is, what money is Amazon giving back to the publisher and original author on sales of the tie-in fiction and what is Amazon’s intent? Amazon is not doing this to make money. There’s very little money involved, at least at first. (Yes, E.L. James wrote fan fiction, but she substantially changed the story for publication and it bears little resemblance to Twilight. If you didn’t know she’d started it as fan fiction, you’d never guess.)
Amazon is perfectly willing to take a loss on this operation if it gets them other things. For one, it gets them a licensing right claim stake in the authors who participate, and possibly a way to get other deals with the author. It also attracts ambitious writers and gets brand loyalty with them (so they’ll buy stuff from Amazon,) same as the self-pubs, and can help popular tie-in authors doing the fan fiction then build a self-pub empire, from which Amazon will benefit.
I don’t think authors should sweat no-pay fan fiction. But I’m not sure this authorized pay version is a good idea. It sounds like lawsuits waiting to happen.
Daniela
May 22, 2013 @ 2:23 pm
When I wrote my comment, I hadn’t even thought about the fanart aimed at straight men, but the one that’s more focused on female fans (slash-fanart or just character pieces of male heroes/villains), but you definitely have a point. 🙁
Does erotic fan fiction by and for straight men even exist? 😀 I’m sure some of it is lurking somewhere but you’re right, fanfiction is predominately female and men are rare whether as readers or writers. I only know a few.
Harry Connolly
May 22, 2013 @ 2:28 pm
I just wrote a novel for a very small gaming company, and that clause was in the contract. My understanding is that it’s very common.
I suspect it’s mostly a matter of protecting the IP owners in the event of parallel development.
KatG
May 22, 2013 @ 3:04 pm
John Scalzi had a piece re the deal: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/22/amazons-kindle-worlds-instant-thoughts/
So it sounds like it’s primarily a deal with Alloy Entertainment for now. Alloy is a book packager and film/tv company that has had great success in YA — Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, etc., with franchises that are multi-media. The books are written by writers for hire who get name credit and a cut but can be replaced, as they did with the author of Vampire Diaries, as Alloy owns all or most of the rights. As such, they are letting these writers play with the more widely known t.v. shows and movies more than actual books. And they own what those writers write, and so can use ideas from the “fan” stories for their own product lines. That this is an Alloy/Amazon team up makes a lot more sense and it’s a marketing method that extends their merchandising more than anything else.
Sam P
May 22, 2013 @ 3:55 pm
The extant audience is more massive than you know.
Michael M Jones
May 22, 2013 @ 7:53 pm
I’m sorry, Jim. Even when trying to do parody, I can’t help but give it my all.
Well, maybe not my -all-…
(What’s even worse is that I just finishing listening to the audio of Goblin Quest so the voices, from Jig’s brogue to Golaka’s tirade to Smudge’s um… chitter? are fresh in my head.)
Jim C. Hines
May 22, 2013 @ 7:58 pm
What did you think of the audio book? I’ve only heard the sample so far.
JB
May 22, 2013 @ 9:04 pm
Certainly by straight men, as I am aware of at least one such… who has quite the audience, both for his blog and his stories. For straight men… well, I don’t think his (or most) stories are particularly targeted at any orientation or gender, except in that a fandom audience is likely to be heavily (not completely) female and majority heterosexual.
Michael M Jones
May 22, 2013 @ 9:17 pm
I quite enjoyed it.
The narrator (Nanette Savard) was a little jarring, though she’s a very familiar voice to me since I’ve listened to a lot of Graphic Audio productions. I think I would have preferred one of their regular male voices, or maybe just something a little more neutral. It was just a tiny bit too strident for my complete happiness.
However, other than that, it was perfect. The GA folks do a superb job of turning books into audio events, and they did everything else beautifully. I’m amused that the goblins basically got Scottish brogues, very much like Shrek, and I adored the voice they gave to the elven girl. (And of course, it’s always funny when I hear a character voiced by an actor I know from another book… it leads to so many cases of ‘Hey, it’s that guy!’)
I’ll definitely be picking up the second and third books.
Em
May 22, 2013 @ 10:04 pm
Absolutely! Anyone who eschews fanfiction misses out on Aeschylus (Greek myth fanfic), the New Testament (that’s classic Mary Sue fanfic, that is – it turns out the protagonist from the original book has a kid! And they come back, and they’re boringly flawless, and everybody loves them, and they take over the niche that made original protagonist useful, and then they die heroically and tragically saving the world!), Shakespeare (who cribbed shamelessly from Italian theatre), Milton (Bible fanfic), The Second Shepherd’s Play (Bible fanfic), Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (Bible fanfic with an Iliad crossover), the excellent “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, most of the King Arthur stories (imagine never reading Mallory!), a lot of Robin McKinley’s excellent work, any historical novel featuring real people (Real-Person-Fic is a thing!)… I could go on, but you get my point. Something using pre-existing characters and settings does not preclude it being of excellent quality. Particularly setting-wise; most lit-fic uses an existing world. It happens to be the real one, but it’s still there, with all the worldbuilding already done for the author.
kaystiel
May 22, 2013 @ 10:07 pm
part of the delight of writing fanfiction is doing anything you want with the world and characters, so a lot of that gets taken away if the work has constraints and has to be approved. Also the knowledge that anything you create is now owned by someone else is problematic. Mainly, I don’t think fans will pay for fic, when they can get great stuff now for free.
capra_maritimus
May 23, 2013 @ 12:49 am
Yup. Fanlib was one such previous example. There was another one but I’ve forgotten the name.
capra_maritimus
May 23, 2013 @ 12:54 am
*applause*
Megpie71
May 23, 2013 @ 1:50 am
I suspect the “no porn” rule will probably wind up being policed a lot like the way a similar ruling is policed on Fanfiction.net. Namely, it won’t be.
Seriously, in order to genuinely be endeavouring to police the rule, you’d need to have at least one human editor reading everything as went in for submission. Which would slow down publication speeds tremendously (and also be a job with a fast turnover). Instead, they’ll have the “no porn” rule, and it’ll be “policed” mainly through the same mechanisms as are used on fanfiction.net – if someone decides to get all purist within or about a particular fandom and starts reporting things, those items which are reported will be taken down. In other words, policing by vendetta.
It’s worth noting this doesn’t mean there isn’t mature-rated fanfic on ff.net.
Martin
May 23, 2013 @ 2:11 am
I don’t doubt the number of readers but the money to be spent on it ;-).
Reziac
May 23, 2013 @ 10:35 am
To avoid repeating myself myself, I’ve left a longwinded comment over yonder:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/22/amazons-kindle-worlds-instant-thoughts/#comment-476069
Daniel D. Webb
May 23, 2013 @ 11:40 am
I’m one of those people who has a strong philosophical aversion to anyone profiting from fanfiction. However, the waters are muddied by the fact that they are licensing these rights from the rights holders. Where that remains a cloudy issue is that the person who holds the rights is not necessarily the creator, and given certain business practices that have existed in the publishing industry since its inception, they may have been acquired from the creator in less than compassionate or fair circumstances.
I’m curious if you ever pondered these issues in writing Libriomancer, which is arguably a work of crossover fanfic. I mean, you can carefully avoid calling it a lightsaber but we all know what it was. That troubled me a bit upon first reading; it’s clearly not fanfiction in the classic sense, but strong elements of fanfic pervade it and it was written for profit.
That’s meant to be a question, not a criticism, by the way; I feel uncertain on the subject. If I thought you were doing something outright unethical I would let you know, loudly. As it is, I really loved the concept. It just seems like it might have given you a relevant perspective on this issue.
Reziac
May 23, 2013 @ 11:58 am
Dunno nothin’ about Libriomancer, but I first encountered the concept of an energy-bladed sword, basically the same thing as a lightsabre, in some 1950s space opera (I don’t recall what, but off in the same direction as the Lensmen books). Just because Lucas put the concept into popular view doesn’t mean he uniquely invented it.
Elf
May 23, 2013 @ 1:06 pm
Does this mean fanfic could now qualify for SFWA membership?
Not unless Kindle Worlds starts giving out advances or pays by the word.
***
While there is a portion of the fanfic communities that goes into pearl-clutching theatrics at the idea of making money off fanfic, most of it is more concerned with the balance between creativity, rights, and income potential: is it worth giving up the freedom we have in fanfic, to explore *any* kind of story and share those stories with anyone we like, in order to make a few bucks? (Or, in the case of E.L. James, a few million?) Most of us aren’t so much anti-money as anti-loss-of-liberty, and money tends to come with strings that would damage our communities.
The worry in Kindle Worlds is that the terms aren’t well-defined; the “no porn” rule is standard for all Kindle publishing–although they have a huge selection of erotica titles. Anecdotal evidence suggests Amazon defines “pornography” as pictures, not text. The “no offensive content” rule is also standard for KDP, and just as blurry; both of those boil down to “if we don’t like your story we can pull it without explaining why.”
The rights grabs aren’t clear at all. Presumably, when the program gets closer to launch, an actual TOS will be posted, not this brief overview in casual language.
I would love to see some posts comparing the Kindle Worlds system to standard tie-in novel contracts, rather than normal publishing contracts.
sistercoyote
May 23, 2013 @ 2:39 pm
IMO
I write fanfic (largely pseudonomously, which is funny if you consider that “sistercoyote” is already a pseudonym). I also write original fic (and have had some published).
If I want to get paid in $$ for my writing, I write original fiction and submit it to places I can get paid if it’s accepted.
If I just want to share a thought I had, or re-write a piece of canon so it’s more pleasing to me, then I turn to fanfiction. Also, I write with a co-author when I’m writing fannishly, and it’s a great deal of fun. I would not want to get paid for the fanfic. I think this is a tremendously Bad Idea.
Jim C. Hines
May 23, 2013 @ 3:56 pm
Daniel,
I’ve definitely pondered fanfiction in relation to my own work. I had a blog post a while back talking about the Princess series and their overlap with what we think of as fanfiction. I think there are both similarities and distinctions, and I’m pretty comfortable with both.
I don’t think Libriomancer really qualifies as crossover fanfic myself, but it doesn’t bother me if others consider it such. I deliberately avoided pulling *characters* from other people’s work. Smudge is from my own goblin books, and Lena’s books were made up. For me, that’s one of the boundaries as I’ve been working on the series. Playing with ideas is one thing, particularly when most of those ideas have been used and reused so often in the genre. But I want the characters and stories to be my own.
Does that make sense?
Daniel D. Webb
May 23, 2013 @ 5:41 pm
“Does that make sense?”
Makes perfect sense to me. And yeah, for a given definition of “fanfiction” what happens in Libriomancer is definitely related but of a different nature. It does seem to come from the same underlying motivation, a love of the source material. Forgive me if I’m applying the death of the author there.
I’ve been toying with doing a similar concept as a webserial, and was very interested in the perspective of the only person I know of who’s done such a thing in print. Thanks for your thoughts!
Archane
June 2, 2013 @ 11:41 am
In think that the fear of legal reprisals which you mention is an important part of the prohibition against getting paid for [traditional] fanfiction which often gets glossed over outside of fanfic spaces in favor of the more altruistic (but equally true) author’s rights reasons.
It is commonly understood within many fanfiction communities that fanfic is on the legally acceptable side of a very fine line as derivative works under the Fair Use doctrine in U.S. law. Getting paid for derivative works is prohibited by the doctrine. Asking for money as compensation for fanfic crosses to the other side of that line and risks lawsuits not only agains the author, but also against any site hosting the work, which could affect hundreds (or in some cases, thousands) of other authors, and open the entire genre to legal scrutiny.*
In most cases, fanfic authors have tremendous respect and admiration for their source authors. The cultural opposition to charging for fanfic is also one of self preservation. I don’t see any conflict with either of these in Amazon’s licensing. I do see the potential for major explosions within fanfiction communities, however (and this may be my cynical side coming out), over the perceived risk that the common acceptance of licensed fanfic will bring increased scrutiny and legal challenge to unlicensed fanfic.
* I am not a lawyer, and this is not meant to represent legal advice, or even legal truth, necessarily, but to express the ‘common wisdom’.
Carol S.
June 10, 2013 @ 10:13 pm
Seen the number of Star Wars-related titles available now? It’s got to be over 500. Someone’s making money there somewhere.
Sheogorath
June 19, 2013 @ 10:24 am
KatG said: “E.L. James wrote fan fiction, but she substantially changed the story for publication and it bears little resemblance to Twilight.”
Actually, if you put the ‘Fifty Shades’ trilogy and the ‘Master of the Universe’ series through a plagiarism detector, the results are 98% similarity. That’s a much higher result than my stories, ‘Harry Potter and the Arachnotaur’ and ‘Jayden and the Arachnotaur’, which, despite their almost identical titles, have only a 60% similarity. Also, ‘Fifty Shades’ _wouldn’t_ have a huge similarity to ‘Twilight’ because ‘Master of the Universe’ was written as an AU fic. Try entering ‘Snowqueens Icedragon’ into the Wayback Machine at http://archive.org
Sheogorath
June 19, 2013 @ 10:26 am
To add to the above, 98% _should_ read 89%, but that’s still a pretty high figure.