J K Rowling might be interested to see that suing people who make derivative works based on your own creations isn’t necessarily the best option. YA author Stephanie Myers Meyer took the opposite approach by encouraging her fans to produce a Lexicon of her Twilight Vampire books, and as a result has engendered a hard core of people who evangelise the books on her behalf. [via TechDirt]
Word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing there is, so they say – and getting someone else to do the hard work for you seems like a smart move in a networked world. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the importance of fan-fic in building an author’s career is set to increase over time, and it is in author attitudes to fan-created works that we’ll start seeing the split between writers who have embraced the internet and those who cling to the old paradigms of print.
Well, JK Rowling didn’t have any problems with the HP Lexicon when it was a website either – I believe she gave it some sort of fan website award – it was when it became a book which might compete with her own future plans that the lawsuits started.
I agree it’s a smart move to try and build up a fan community, especially when your fan community is as entertainingly batshit insane as the Twilighters are, because it’s providing me with hours of entertainment.