I'll explain my project first and then I'd like some general advise on my course of action.
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.
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 submissions 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.
Here's the issues that i can see and i'd appreciate your input on them ...
- When I say a "Print on Demand" ready pdf, the main reason is because full-bleed graphics look better online as well as on paper. if a reader wants to 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. The customer is paying for the printing service and 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?
- 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.
- ethically I can see no difference between us creating, hosting and making available for free an eBook copy of a fan fiction and 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.
- Technically, I've said Mobipocket because it's commonly used, I've used it and been happy with it myself and it's got a wide set of handy options including the RSS aggregator which I reckon would make a good message board reader once I iron out a bug (see seperate thread).
- Whilst both eReader and Stanza can give us access to iPhone (I'm betting on eBooks booming with them) I like the idea of making our fan fiction available in ePub which is, correct me if I'm wrong, a more 'open source' platform.
- ... and finally, what is the status of listing out eBooks on this forum? I've read through the pinned copyright discussions and, well, frankly we are in a no-man's land in that we are admit our lack of legal standing yet simply want to share our creative work without causing the copyright owners any loss of revenue. Let's face it, although there's some great fanfic out there, the chances that a reader will decide that he doesn't need to download a professionally published eBook because he can get fanfic for free is slim-to-nil!
My own belief is that a strong fan production community is more like 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.
I look forward to your feedback
Cheers
Kirok of L'Stok