Hm. This seems like essentially a self-published tie-in program. I'm not at all sure it will work, although they've chosen their trial fandoms reasonably well. A lot will depend on the scope. If it's just a way to find good tie-in novels for cheap, that could be successful. If they want to become a fan space in their own right, I can see many problems.
Fandoms have usually defined themselves as exploring narratives that authors won't or can't, and publishing tie-in works won't play into that narrative. Fanfic writers already have several places that they can publish to for free, lots of electronic and physical third spaces to meet and collaborate, etc. AO3 is growing daily and a wonderful place to find and publish fic, including downloading every fic in epub and mobi.
How are they going to handle the illiterate hordes who want to write and publish a fanfic? The quality issues with fanfic are huge. I don't think Amazon has the infrastructure for the discovery methods fans are familiar with, although that could change.
How will they handle well-known authors wanting to publish through them though? Will they ask that all the author's free works be taken down? All the free works in the specific fandom? I know that's happened with fanfic authors who decided to go pro before.
And I'm curious to see how Amazon will adapt to fandom terminology. Going to need more specific filtering and searching for this.
