Fandom and Profit

Profit from fan works is a long-discussed debate, ranging from issues of fair use and copyright to even plagiarism. This article attempts to clarify the issue, however some parts of the subject may be unclear.
==The Fannish Social Contract==
* some about fandom as a gift economy
=="Fair Use" and Infringement==
In addition to the cultural prohibitions against profit in fandom activities, there have been (and still are), some practical legal issues that have shaped fannish attitudes about profits.
Most fanworks from before roughly 2010-2015 contained a disclaimer that seeks to shield the fan from legal liability while also signaling that their activities are non-profit. One example: "All rights reserved to the author, artist and this publication. This is solely a not-for-profit fan activity, and in no way intends to infringe on copyrights held by Paramount, Deslilu, Filmation or other professional Star Trek agencies." Disclaimer found at the beginning of the zine In a Different_Reality. By 2020 this was growing increasingly rare, particularly on platforms such as Archive of our Own (where the website itself was sometimes considered the disclaimer) and Tumblr.
All fan fiction runs the risk of being considered an infringing act in that is borrows and builds on copyrighted material. It is the fair use defense that can shield fannish activities as an authorized use of copyrighted material. In turn, the fair use defense depends on a number of factors, and profit (or the lack of it) is one of those factors. However, several courts now dismiss the 'profit' factor in order to find a whole host of previously 'fair use' activities to be acts of infringement.See Tushnet's User-Generated Discontent: Transformation in Practice, 2008 in which she argues that the non-profit aspect needs to play a more central role when courts analyze transformative works. The "don't sue me, I make no money!" disclaimer may no longer be worth the paper it is (or is not) printed on.
Some people allege that the "infringing act" problem runs in the other direction too. Marion Zimmer Bradley, who wrote the series Darkover, supposedly did not publish a planned book due to the complications regarding her close involvement with fans and fanworks. See Marion Zimmer Bradley Fanfiction Controversy. This may have caused other writers Bradley knew to became extremely strict about not letting fannish activities take place (ie. McCaffrey's Pern series had many, many restrictions on fanfiction and roleplay for a very long time, not that fans actually obeyed it).
This is also affected by the differences in copyright laws between countries. For example, in Japan there is no such thing as a fair use defense, and yet they have a flourishing doujinshi culture. This is because many high-profile manga artists got their start in and actively protect their fans' ability to make doujinshi, and the companies they work for cannot afford to anger them.
There may also be a difference in fandom culture, often influenced by the companies or creators. For example, in c-media fandoms, particularly danmei, it may be common fan culture to only have P4P fan merch sold; a big example is MXTX fandom. In other fandoms, including the juggernaut fandom of the Chinese mobile game Genshin Impact, fan merch (even for-profit fan merch) is explicitly allowed and encouraged.
==Author Permission==
Some writers, such as J.K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett, have given their blessing to only noncommercial fanfiction, and/or told fans to specifically not show them any fanfiction. 
Kindle Worlds was a program launched in 2013 that allowed the selling of fanfiction for specific writers or franchises that opted into it. The program was roundly hated by fandoms for trying to walled-garden them, saw little uptake and was shut down in 2018.
==Making a Profit vs Covering Costs==
Defining "profit" can be tricky.
* Was profit making enough money to cover the cost of the next zine one plans to publish? Garnering enough from clickable ads to cover the overhead on one's website?
* Is profit making money when you sell a fanwork for more than you paid for it?
** A fan in 1999 said: "It was selling a good portion of my collection in 1992 that gave me the down payment for my house (most of those zines were sold for a profit). I lucked out in the timing, because within a couple of years after that, zines quit increasing in value because everyone always kept them in print, since desktop publishing (and high quality xerox machines) had made the overall printing process much cheaper." VenicePlace, accessed 12.15.2010
* Is covering costs adequate by the simple repayment of the postage when a fan has lent and mailed an item to you?
** From S and H #16 (December 1980): "To anyone who needs xeroxing done: I would be willing to xerox whatever you need (providing the zine editors permit it) if you pay the postage and the cost of xeroxing. I have become quite adept at handling the machine and it takes very little time to do it. Just let me know what you need. (I hope I don't regret this offer!)"
* And what is "equitable compensation"?
** One fan tutors others: "There are a number of people... who have been very generous in sharing eps, songvids, blooper reels and other taped bits that feature our boys... The duping of tapes is time-consuming, wearing on the original tape, and considering the cost of tapes, zines, postage, and the wear and tear on VCRs, involves both money *and* effort. While most... are very generous in sharing tapes, it is also considerate of the receivers to offer an equitable compensation." VenicePlace, accessed 12.15.2010
==Fandom and Censorship==
A 2015 comment by Betsy Rosenblatt from the interview Fansplaining: Buncha Lawyers:
==Profit, Fun, Compromise, and Freedom==
In late 1983, a fan commented on the topic money getting in the way of fun and artistic freedom. In her response to another fan's comment that: "We should all look for ways to make money from doing what we love to do (i.e. anything having to do with Star Trek)," she said:
 
==Different Fandoms, Different Norms==
Showing the differing exceptions of different fandoms, in 1989 a fan comments: 
A fan in 2011 comments: 
This has led to an especially odd collision of norms in the Homestuck fandom. The fandom has a very large proportion of anime fans, and the anime fans brought their "we can sell our fannish output" attitude with them... right up until the company that manages the Homestuck IP told them that they were absolutely not allowed to sell, or exchange money for, anything related to Homestuck except for onetime two-dimensional art commissions.http://www.mspaintadventures.com/salesfaq.html This included charging for material costs only. The people who were still selling Homestuck merchandise after this announcement anyway then received strongly worded letters (as well as getting their stuff DMCA'd off sites like Cafepress, Zazzle, or Etsy).
==Early Zine Publishing and Profit==
===Some 1975 Rumbles at Paramount===
In 1975, fans became concerned about some of Paramount's sabre-rattling regarding their Star Trek: TOS fanworks. 
From a June 1975 editorial in 2-5YM: 
Paramount apparently followed through on their plans to extract licensing fees and commissions from zines sold at conventions. In February 1976, Sharon Emily wrote an essay addressing these fees and proposed some ways to alleviate the cost of selling zines at cons. From The Fanzine Conglomerate: 
===A Very Thin Bottom Line===
Doing the math shows how close these editors came to financial disaster, and in other (much rarer) cases, made a tidy profit. Below are some examples.
In 1980, a Starsky and Hutch letterzine had roughly 120 subscribers. Each issue was $1.25. When the editors explained they were going to have to cut the art or limit the letters, due to expenses, one writer said she'd prefer to have them raise the price, or "charge enough to at least make a little profit for yourselves, and may give the front cover artists a free issue... " The editors' reply: "We appreciate and understand this reasoning, however, our budget simply doesn't allow contributor's copies." (from the June 1980 issue of S and H)
From The Halkan Council #20/21: 
A zined responds to fans complain about the high price of zines: 
Not all editors cut it so close. Universal Translator was one zine in which a number of fans debated copyright, profit, and the rights of editors and fans. A fan steps into the debate of whether or not fans had the moral right to copy out-of-print fanzines for their own use. She points out that an editor's copyright extends only to her or his material in zine, not the whole zine itself and brings up the snarl that is profit and supply and demand: 
Another zine ed asks: 
A fan discusses profit and fair use: 
==Fanfiction and Profit==
Generally, money has played little role in the desire to create and exchange of fan fiction. In fact, the buying and selling of fan fiction has been almost universally condemned across Western media fandom. The sole exception would be the contributor's copies that fan writers received of the fanzines in which they were published. On occasion, during the early years of print fanzines zine publishers would offer cash prizes to fan writers; however, many fans expressed worry that the practice might cause TPTB to come down hard on fan fiction. To most fans, the lack of profit - or in this case the exchange of funds for fan fiction - was seen as their fig leaf of protection against potential copyright claims.
===Fanfiction and Cash Prizes===
When the zined of the Star Trek fanzine Alien Brothers offered a cash prize for fanfic, other fanzine publishers took issue:
===Fanfiction and Changing Norms Regarding Platforms===
The taboo against profit only strengthened when fan fiction shifted away from print fanzines as the main distribution method to online distribution. To fans who first encountered fan fiction being offered freely on the Internet, the idea of asking for money in the context of a gift economy was socially transgressive.
One example of fans' outrage regarding charging other fans for their online fiction occurred in 2000 in the Starsky & Hutch fandom. A longtime fan, TLR, whose stories had been posted to Starsky & Hutch's main archive asked to have them removed, citing her newly-acted upon religious convictions regarding profanity. Fans were angry when they learned that the removal from the internet was to instead have sequels to these previously free stories sold on a computer disk for a large amount of money."I've got information about this. And I'm not happy to report it, either. ... you're free to pass this on to your other list or anywhere else you want. TLR is a friend of mine. I met her through the archive and got her onto SHfanfic when that was alive, and in general introduced her to fandom. At one point she had most of these stories on the SH gen archive where they resided for a long time. Then, suddenly, one day, she insisted I take them all down immediately, because, she insisted, as a Christian she had promised God she would never use profanity again and all these stories had S&H using profanity and she wanted it taken out. ... I was worried about problems pulling those stories down would cause me, but she insisted they were her stories and she had the right to determine where and how they would be distributed. Not two days later did I see her comments on a Fanzine list I am on asking how one goes about distributing "e-zines." These are NOT zines. They are basically formatted word processing files on a disk. They should cost what it costs for the disk--approximately 10 cents--and postage. They can be sent electronically so there is no need at all for postage or a disk for that matter. A zine is a published book, edited, crafted, with art. And if anyone gets one I'd like very much to know if TLR took the "profanity" out of them. It had taken me dozens of hours to format her stories for the archive, one of which was a long elaborate script which alone took me THREE WEEKS to properly format so that she could try to make money off fandom in this way. To say I feel outraged and betrayed is putting it mildly." -- comments by Flamingo, May 16, 2000, at VenicePlace, quoted on Fanlore with permission
===Fanfiction and Charity===
The use of fan fiction, however, to raise funds for charity, chipped away at these social norms. Numerous examples of charity drives exist in the mid 2000s where fans would offer fan fic, fan art or fan vids to help raise money for victims of natural disasters (ex: Help Haiti) or other need based groups (ex: Sweet Charity). Not all fans felt comfortable with the practice. As Morgan Dawn explains:
After charity fanfiction fundraising drives took hold, other fannish events began using fanworks to help raise funds. Starting 200x, Vividcon auctioned off custom made to order" fanvids to pay for the extra equipment needed to run the convention. In 2013, DashCon "fandom committees" (groups of tumblr fans arranged along fandom lines) auctioned off fanfiction and fanart to raise funds for the convention as well as to help fund their convention attendance.
===Fanfiction and Commissions===
In more recent years, writing commission offers have emerged. Some are by fans who are struggling with financial issues, others by fans who simply want to be paid for their work.
This has led some fans to ask:
And:
The general approbation against offering fanfic for money still does not stop some fans for asking:
See much more at Writing Commissions.
==Fan Art and Profit==
See Selling Fanart.
==Fan Companies==
While the vast majority of fanworks were/are given away or traded, some fans set up organized systems to sell fannish goods. This ranged from very small-time, under-the-radar affairs, to formal, bigger outfits.
Items sold included: t-shirts, fanart, buttons, stationery, fan films, doujinshi, zines, clips, calendars, keychains, jewelry, scripts, and other merchandise.
Some pre-internet examples: List of Fan Run Star Trek Merchandising Companies.
Several of these people and companies have taken their expertise in fan-produced goods and branched out into reselling copies of the works themselves, acquiring official licensing for their merch, selling unbranded generic objects intended for use alongside the merch (such as card sleeves or display stands), or even producing fully original non-fannish content. If they remain fan-run, keep their markups small, and maintain relationships with the fandom, this is generally well-received, under the theory that people need to pay their bills somehow. However, companies that "sell out" to an outside interest and/or shun their fandom origins are thought of as betraying their "roots" and met with active hostility.
==Fangames and Mods==
The attitude of videogame companies to fangames - as well as the attitude of fans to other fans about whether something is "acceptable" - often uses the breakpoint of whether the fangame is being used to produce profit. However, this varies by company and by franchise.
At one extreme, Valve is exceptionally tolerant (due to the company being founded by game modders); some fangames, in fact, are even sold for profit! Similarly, some game developers actively encourage modding under the theory that it increases the game's lifespan; Stardew Valley's 1.6 update was originally intended to be almost entirely internal changes to increase modding compatibility, with the only outward-facing updates being bugfixes.
At the other extreme, Nintendo is notoriously strict, cracking down even on fangames and mods. Game mods such as Pokemon Brown and Breath of the Wild Multiplayer, and even fangames that have no shared code at all such as Pokemon Uranium, are routinely taken down by copyright notices."Why is Nintendo so Overprotective of its Intellectual Property?" - Moon Channel, published January 28 2023
Yet despite this attitude, Mother 3 has a comprehensive fan translation to English, and reproduction carts are available for sale, and none of this has been touched. This is presumably because the Mother/Earthbound series is a very small IP, and Mother 3 is likely too fatally entangled in music licensing issues to ever rerelease (it has an optional rhythm game as part of its battle system).
Reproduction cartridges (for use on original hardware) of some out-of-print games, and of popular game mods and translations, are sometimes found for sale on a gray-market basis. While these do usually work, they may be based on old versions of the mods, are impossible to update, and practically never give any money to the original authors. Since there are universal/reprogrammable cartridges that can be used to load any game from ROM, they are really only for people who enjoy displaying their video game collections.
==The WSA Program==
The WSA Program was a fannish organization created to protecting fans from fraud.
From Warped Space #18: 
* other similar fan organizations/guilds?
==Meta/Further Reading==
See Timeline of Fandom and Profit Meta.
*Fanfic and Monetization by rosethornewrites
==Academic and Extra-fandom Commentary==
* Karen Hellekson. "A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture." Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 113-118.
* Abigail De Kosnik. "Should Fan Fiction Be Free?" Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 118-124.
* Noppe, Nele. 2011. "Why We Should Talk about Commodifying Fan Work." In "Textual Echoes," edited by Cyber Echoes, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 8. doi:10.3983/twc.2011.0369.
* Scott, Suzanne. 2009. Repackaging fan culture: The regifting economy of ancillary content models. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0150.
* , by Susan P. Batho (2009) (an academic paper which studies the effect of the Viacom Crackdown and Australian fan clubs)
* What is fanfiction, anyway? by Elizabeth Minkel (2015)
==References==
Category:Discussion
Category:Fandom & Profit Meta