At the suggestion of the admins I'm splitting my post for advise in two and posting the copyright questions here and the technical aspects of it on the file conversion forum. I'll explain my project first ...
I'm a Star Trek fan who writes under the name of Kirok of L'Stok and over the years I've written for, edited and published various newsletters and fanzines as well as organised various online events which has solidified into one I've been doing for the past two years called "The Twelve Trek Days of Christmas" (
2007 and
2008) where over twelve days I organise twelve "giveaways" of various types to do with fan productions. Last year I publicised the work done by fans in
fan films,
paper models and
gaming as well as doing an independant series of
podbooks/audiobooks
The position of fan productions in popular media is changing but we still live by the grace of the copyright owners. Every production, whether it's a written fiction, a fan film, an audio drama or a music video has a disclaimer to the fact that the writer or producer does not exercise any legal right over the intellectual property that the copyright owners lay claim to. If you want to pursue the topic further I've got gobbins of stuff about it on my fanzine,
Acrux ... I also waxed lyrical on the subject
HERE.
Recently I was made director of publications and media at TrekUnited and this gave me some pretty nifty connections and resources so I decided that this year we would seriously break some new ground by expanding the publication of Star Trek fan fiction into ePublications. Up 'til now fan fictions have been posted on message boards like the venerable
alt.startrek.creative, lodged on archives like
TrekFiction.com or published, piecemeal, on forums like our own on
TrekUnited.
This makes the fan fiction community pretty close-knit and friendly but it isn't really reader-friendly. Technology-wise it's sort of like using a nailgun as a hammer or correcting your word-processing mistakes with "white-out" on the monitor! In other media, fans have embraced technology and now have access to the worlds of cinema, animation, comics and computer games to combine their fan experience with their creativity to achieve some pretty impressive things.
Why not fan fiction, thinks I?
- Why not have them available as downloadable pdf's that can be browsed online using an embedded viewer like ISSUU?
- Why not make them available to the world over the Scribd network?
- Why are there no archives of downloadable eBooks that I can read on the train with my iPaq?
- If there is free five-minute fiction daily online, why isn't it common to see RSS used more?
As far as I can see there are no insurmountable philosophical and technical problems that can stop this.
I've been
pimping for submissions for over a month now and so far we have six books in different stages of development. Basically what I'd like to do is to take a manuscript and ...
- Host and, depending on response, help arrange a cover graphic that can also be downloaded as a mini-poster
- Host a link to a "Print on Demand" ready pdf in A4 and US Letter.
- Host the book in an embedded Issuu browser, so that it will be available on the Issuu network
- Lodge the pdf on the Scribd network giving it a potential audience of 20 million monthly visitors worldwide!
- Link to a downloadable eBook in Mobipocket format. NB eBooks can be advertised on the free eBook forums.
- Link to a downloadable eBook in either eReader or Stanza (which uses ePub) both of which can be read on mobile phones like the iPhone.
This is where you come in: here are the issues that I can see I'd appreciate your input on them ...
- When I say a "Print on Demand" ready pdf, the main reason is to make the pdf look better online rather than because of an expectation that users will print out the books in any great numbers - however this would be a good option to have. Does printing out a fanfiction violate copyright any more than publishing it online? The actual sin happens when the author publishes his fan fiction because of the Intellectual propery violation, if they take this file to a "Print On Demand" printer and get him to make up a hard-bound or paperback copy of it then he (the printer) is simply performing a service for the customer by processing the file given to him. It could be a grocery list for all he knows! The printer can expect to make a profit for his printing since the customer is paying for the printing service BUT there is no exchange of payment for the intellectual property of the book. Frankly I feel this is going to be a rare occurrence at the best of times. An author might want a copy of their book, a club might like to see a copy in their library, but beyond that? [Of course if the author were so stupid as to try to sell copies of his book that would be an actionable offense and I would be the first to shop him!]
- I've had no feedback from ISSUU or Scribd about their attitude towards fan fiction but, by the same token, I've not seen anything specifically against it either. Anybody know anything about them?
- Ethically I can see no difference between us creating, hosting and making available for free an eBook copy of a fan fiction and someone who produces a fan film, an audio drama or any other form of fan production - the only difference is in the media. As long as we make it abundantly clear that the authors and producers make no claim to the intellectual property of Star Trek, there is a clear precedent that we can follow.
My own belief is that a strong fan production community is more likely to open up new markets for the copyright owners and their licensees by "whetting the fan's whistle" for the Trek franchise than it is likely to harm it.
For discussion on the technical aspects of our programme please reply on the thread I have on the Format Conversion subforum. I look forward to your feedback.
Cheers
Kirok of L'Stok