Any interest in summing up, for those avoiding like the plague for fear of aneurysm and in favor of reading fic instead?
Hold on, let me dial my sarcasm level down to around three or four instead of eleven...
Looking at the FanLib FAQ and "About Us" ("Our mission is to bring fan fiction out of the shadows and into the limelight.") gives me the impression that the FanLib creators believe that fandom has been unable to figure out how to either legitimize or commercialize fan fiction.
Historically, fic writers have been female. It's certainly true of the initial wave of fanfic, dating from the Trek era. My segment of fandom, still overwhelmingly female. Slash writers, overwhelmingly female.
The FanLib board of directors? All male, and none of them have any established cred in the fan fiction world that I'm aware of.
So the whole thing reads to me like a group of rich white guys who secured $3 million in venture capital so they could swoop in on an unexploited source of revenue and profit off of (mostly) female fans' work.
icarusancalion put together a summary of the FanLib situation here
That's a good summary. That does seem ill-considered. If you can't answer the basic "why would anyone use this product" then good grief.
Aha, found the press release that really ticked me off:
The launch of FanLib.com represents the coming of age of fan fiction, or "fanfic."
[link]
How the heck are they going to make money off of something that depends on the studios not serving us all with cease and desist orders?
Gah. Now I wish I hadn't asked (knew I wouldn't like the answer). Though, I didn't have a rage outlet yet today, so that's handy...
Fanlib is ticking me off and I haven't even gone to the page.
::backs away::
Must get back to work.
How the heck are they going to make money off of something that depends on the studios not serving us all with cease and desist orders?
They claim (or at least a couple of employees have claimed, when pressed) that the studios are changing their attitudes towards fan fiction. So, you know, it's a "fair bet" that no one will get sued.
Who wants to be the first person to test that theory and post some underage Harry Potter slash?
I figure it'll turn into fanfic.org
"It'll be just like YouTube, but for fic!"
From that press release:
packaging it for mainstream audiences
Wow, how far off the mark is that?
Just going to the main page for a few moments made me feel ill. Packaged, trite bullshit. (I wonder if that's where the badfic will go to live...)
