Publishing Scandals

Snarryfan wrote:I am going to write an erotic novel about the adorable stalker who falls for the creepy klutz. Millions, I tell you, I will make millions!

I would totally read that and do a fanfic based on it. Which will be turned into a movie starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.

I probably should have thought of this sooner--let's move further discussion of this to the Publishing Scandals thread, it's also been brought up over there.

So wait...Bella is Pepe Le Pew? And Edward is Penelope Pussycat?

This changes the books for me.

The creepiest part about Master of the Universe for me was that Edward had all these mommy issues, actually referred to her most times as "the crack whore", and then at age 15, ended up in a BDSM relationship with an older woman. And this is NEVER really shown as the sexual abuse that it was. Like Bella is regularly shown to be irrational in her hate for this woman, and she just needs to understand that she SAVED Edward from his evil mother or something. I don't know if this made it into the book, but it was really maddening in the fic.

As someone who has written the occasional fan fiction, what bothers me about Fifty Shades of Grey is that I almost feel . . . not quite offended, but very irritated by the whole situation. I work hard to make the few fics I've written in-character, set in the same world, and work with the plot that the author set out. Getting a seven-figure book deal for a story essentially incubated in someone else's fictional universe that the author made a few minor changes to (as seen in the turnitin example) feels squicky to me. I can't articulate how it's different from retelling a fairy tale, or a myth, or writing a high school AU like Avalon High or Troy High, but it feels very different to me.

I'm less squicky (in general) about AU fics being turned into for-reals published books--if it was still all vampires and whatnot I'd be raising my eyebrows much higher. However, in this particular case, the author's tendency to include some of the physical quirks and tics of the actors who portray Edward & Bella is definitely troublesome to me. Then again, I ask myself--if I didn't KNOW that this was originally fanfic, would I know that the heroine bites her lip because Kristen Stewart does? I don't think so, but it's hard to un-know something once you know it.

There's another BDSM AU fic from the Twilight universe that met with moderate success--The Forbidden Room, I think it's called, but I don't know what the name of the original fic was. (It's Edward/Jacob slash, with a bit of Bella thrown in, but she apparently gets killed in a sequel to allow the twoo wub to emerge.)

I'm kind of a nut for the creative commons and open cultural sharing, but Ms. Meyer did not license her work to allow commericial derivatives, so I'm curious about how all this works from a legal standpoint.

I think fictionalized versions of famous people are usually okay - you see thinly veiled depictions of people in fiction a lot, so I think using Kristen Stewart's tics is probably kosher too (is my non-expert guess).

Apparently Dear Author is going to have a copyright lawyer/law professor blog about fanfiction legality stuff, which should be fun. Hopefully this situation will be one of the questions she gets (hard to imagine it wouldn't be after all the publicity!).

As a heads up, in case you're reading back over the thread and it looks wonky, we made a mod decision to move Fifty Shades discussion from Psychotic Fans to this thread. So I split and merged the posts. LIKE A BOSS.


... I are smart

What bothers me about it is the title is so close to Jasper Fforde's recent novel, 'Shades of Grey,' which is a truly brilliant book.

There are a few books out right now with a similar title. There's a YA novel called Between Shades of Gray. I can easily imagine a teacher assigning the YA novel in class and a parent flipping out because that book gets mistaken with 50 Shades of Gray.

I hope that someone accidentally picks up Fforde's "Shades of Grey" while looking for 50 Shades of Grey, because it is a terrific book. I can't wait for the sequel. I've had a request at work for 50 Shades of Grey, so it's spreading. What does "50 Shades Freed" mean? "50 Shades Darker" I kind of follow, but the final title of the trilogy confuses me.

I hadn't heard of this whole phenomenon until it had hit Yahoo News, but coming here to find out that it's basically a crappy AU Twilight fanfic AND that it's from the same woman who gave us the unicorn orgasms wank AND made an epic online flounce when she decided to go pro has given me the best laughing fit I've had in ages. Good lord, it's like a perfect storm of wank - I'm suprised it hasn't hit Fandom Wank yet again, with all the buzz it's gotten and the distaste most of the romance novel review sites have for it.

Seriously, though, I've no issue with its fanfic past - plenty of authors started out that way. The fact that she barely altered it is sad and rather lazy - jeez, when Cassie Clare makes more of an effort to hide her old fanfic than you do, you have problems. What few excerpts I've seen through this thread only demonstrates the crappiness of her prose, even by the generously purple standards of romance novels. I think what bothers me most is that people are getting so excited (pun not intended) over such crappy smut. I bet you could browse through your average Barnes and Noble and find a good handful or two of bondage-based romances that are far better written (or at least feature better and more interesting smut) than this.

Brainchild wrote:I think what bothers me most is that people are getting so excited (pun not intended) over such crappy smut. I bet you could browse through your average Barnes and Noble and find a good handful or two of bondage-based romances that are far better written (or at least feature better and more interesting smut) than this.

This is what has me kind of gobsmacked about this whole thing. It's so very obviously badly written that I don't understand how anyone could get any kind of sexual thrill from it. Have fans of this crappy book been so embarrassed to purchase an actual erotic novel that they're now glomming on to this? Because the readers don't seem to be shy in being publicly excited about it. It's sad to me that they think this is some primo example of the erotic genre.

Exactly. I could list a handful of erotica novels off my Good Reads list that are probably 10x better than this.

I also am not that shocked that they are talking about this being a movie.

I think that the whole thing just makes me disgruntled. There are tons of talented writers out there and there's these people who somehow just get all the attention.

But at the same time, the people who are scouring with publishing know she's got a built-in audience with this so they don't have to worry about marketing. I'm starting to think of this as the minor leagues and then when the publishing companies see a lot of buzz for someone, they'll approach.

It is a business after all, but it also makes me so cynical.

Brainchild wrote:I hadn't heard of this whole phenomenon until it had hit Yahoo News, but coming here to find out that it's basically a crappy AU Twilight fanfic AND that it's from the same woman who gave us the unicorn orgasms wank AND made an epic online flounce when she decided to go pro has given me the best laughing fit I've had in ages. Good lord, it's like a perfect storm of wank - I'm suprised it hasn't hit Fandom Wank yet again, with all the buzz it's gotten and the distaste most of the romance novel review sites have for it.

It's not the same author as the unicorn orgasms. That author is the one who got into it with this author when she first pulled her fic to publish. Sadly, despite the easy unicorn punchline, she's actually a much, much better writer than "E.L. James".

Apparently E.L James works in public relations, which makes a lot of the hype over this book make more sense. I have a feeling the articles and reports about this being a phenomenon with mommies on the Upper East Side happened before it actually BECAME a phenomenon with mommies on the Upper East Side.

Aw, that takes away a little of the fun. The idea of this crossing two wank streams was just too delicious. Oh well.

But the Unicorn Orgasm girl was the one accusing James of saying she was all in it for the money! It totally counts!

The latest rumor in the 50 Shades saga is that the book that began as fanfiction now has its own fanfiction. I wonder if Cassandra Clare has a fanfic community too?

That's just freaking meta. The only it could get moreso is if people started doing remixes of that fanfiction, so it would be a fanfic of a fanfic about a franchise based on a fanfic.

And now my brain hurts.

What if people then publish their fanfic-fanfic? What if people write fanfic about the published fanfic-fanfic?

What if someone writes an AU fanfic where they're all vampires?

And instead of BDSM the vampires are all about hanging out in high school for eternity and playing baseball in the middle of the night!

Ahh... that's just stupid. No one would go for it.

And then there's this cheerleader, who lives a secret double life cause she's really a vampire killer...no, wait, that's not it....

Sony Offers $5 Million for Fifty Shades.

You should see my face right now. It looks something like this: - ______ -

I am completely disgusted by that.

I don't care that it started out as fanfic--it's badly written and portrays the kink lifestyle as a mental illness. (Granted, Chris is a dangerously bad Dom, but the author writes him as if he's typical.) I'd rather Sony spend $5M on The Night Circus, the NaNoWriMo novel that was published recently.

Puke.