Fan Entitlement – Examples and Consequences from an Author’s Perspective

(Or, “Wherein I morph an essay into a soap box announcement.”)


This has been said plenty of times before (and more eloquently than I’m about to say it), but I’d like to share some thoughts anyways, so please indulge me.

Connection

The act of writing is a solitary act. The act of reading is more collaborative. The writer is then working with the reader to bring a world to life. Writers, I feel, are only half the equation—we need an audience. Sometimes readers connect with our work—really connect. They see the characters as real, the story as valuable, and this is extraordinary to me. Understand that we writers spend our time isolated telling, well, lies, and these are lies that we sincerely believe. (There is truth in the lies, yes, and I firmly believe all good fiction has emotional truth, which is the most important part...but that doesn’t change the fact that, as writers, we are making things up.) So when a reader not only finds our lies believable, but treasures them the way we do, it’s amazing.

It’s a shared story telling process. Yes, one person is talking, but it’s critical that someone else is listening. When these worlds, people, and lies that writers have created also take up residence in the reader’s mind, the reader feels a certain sense of ownership as well. Don’t we all? Who hasn’t been so involved in a work of fiction that everything becomes real? I sobbed for weeks over the deaths of fictional characters. Writers want readers to be so invested that they believe the lies.

Derivative Works

This sense of shared ownership, however, often leads to readers (viewers, if you want to talk TV) wanting to express some of these ideas themselves. Fan-fiction, which can involve anything from exploring character relationships as they exist to inventing something totally new; fan-art; fan-videos; unauthorized sequels, etc. Although I can say that I’ve never understood why someone would want to use another person’s creation to tell a story rather than make up their own, there have been a number of valuable contributions made this way (example: I’m unsure how Bronte would have felt about Wide Sargasso Sea, but I thought it was an interesting “what if” to take an untold part of the story and different perspective...and also, who doesn’t love the idea of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?). And years ago, I made Buffy fan videos for fun (I think Fox has had them all removed from YouTube, though).

A lot of these things are harmless, to me, and I think can strengthen the reader’s connection to the work. From my perspective as a writer, I’m honoured by the idea that my work has touched someone so much that they created a character portrait, or some kind of fan video. For many readers, this kind of thing is a sign of respect. Some of my readers also used to take turns writing funny fan-fic chapters for my serials if I was late posting one. It was all in jest and everyone was entertained.

There’s a darker edge to fan connection, however. There is fan entitlement.

Sometimes, readers feel their ownership is greater than that of the creator’s. Because they’ve been allowed into the world the writer has made, they own some piece of it.

Naivety

I, and many other people, have some work available with a Creative Commons License that permits derivative works. Derivative works can include fan-fiction, fan-art, adaptations, etc. We do this because it is an honour and a sign that we’ve done our jobs right as storytellers when someone is so influenced by our work that they want to spend their time creating something related to our worlds. The CC License, legally, entitles others to use our intellectual property in their own way.

It doesn’t, typically, occur to even the most cynical of us that this trust—and that is what we’re doing, trusting the reader to respect our creations—could be misplaced.

But let’s talk about Buffy again for a moment: everyone has already heard about another Buffy film being made without the original creator’s input or approval. And to the rest of us, it’s absolutely horrific—who could possibly feel so morally entitled to someone else’s creation that he or she would see nothing wrong in using it without the creator’s approval? Did Whedon, when he signed away the rights so many years ago, believe that someone would do something like that? Just because they legally could make a film without his permission or input doesn’t necessarily mean they should.

And that’s something I think creative people should remember when licensing others to do what they want with their work. The benefit: more exposure. The danger: someone who doesn’t have the same respect for your work does something awful with it. And I think until you’re in the position of having someone abuse your work, you might not fully realize how damaging it can be.

Borrowing vs Stealing

I think the difference comes down to the character of the reader and their intent behind derivative work. I, for example, have chosen to create derivative work (fan art, fan videos, and even a poem) for fellow writer Elaine Corvidae because I love her work and wanted to in some way show my appreciation for what she does. I did everything I could to honour the essence of her stories and her characters.

And that’s the crucial part. I recognize that these are her toys that I merely borrowed.

On the other side, we have the type of person who has decided that he or she has a certain ownership over the work, as if the characters and story, by virtue of being published and available to the public, are in fact public domain. A shared idea that anyone can take a piece of and turn into anything they want. These people don’t borrow toys—they steal them because they think that everyone else’s property is theirs.

I’m not making a legal argument about this. I don’t care about the legalities. I’m talking about certain, basic morals that the average human being with sense and feeling ought to have. I’m talking about the violation felt by a writer when someone else wilfully disrespects his or her creation. And make no mistake, that’s what it feels like: a cold, violent betrayal of trust.

Adaptation

To speak personally for a moment, I had a reader ask to adapt one of my works without any changes made, and I was delighted and agreed. Little communication followed until I was asked for ideas for a sequel he wanted to do, and he made mention that he’d made “quite a few” changes, including a different ending. And when I expressed my concerns about the disrespect to me and my work, I was told—quite flatly—that my permission wasn’t needed and he was going to do whatever he wanted with my work anyway.

Now, this situation is currently being worked out amicably. There was some miscommunication but things have more or less been smoothed out. But this does, however, serve as a wake-up call for me (and hopefully will for others).

Again, legalities aside, there is a moral problem I’m bringing up here with one person taking ownership over the characters and story of another with no care or consideration for the creator. It’s a violation, plain and simple.

I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t personally created an entire world, populated it with “real” people, and been on the emotional journey of writing a story, can understand how deeply affected a writer is when someone bastardizes his or her creations. Now, having been through the editing process many times, I’m very used to checking my ego at the door to listen to someone else, and I don’t feel my words are golden. There is, however, a stark difference between an editor changing things when her job is to help clarify the story the author wants to tell, and a reader taking someone else’s characters and warping them into something else entirely.

This sense of entitlement and ownership—and betrayal of the trust writers have for readers—extends beyond derivative works.

Piracy

It extends to the pirating of work.

I get hits on my name that lead to pirate forums where readers discuss books that they’ve obtained illegally, which they then offer to share with others. I, personally, have witnessed posts praising my work and people saying what a great book River is...and then they give someone a link to an illegal copy. (This isn’t just fan entitlement to make copies and distribute illegally, I’d like to add—I think a lot of it comes down to people either not knowing what they do amounts to theft, and/or simply feeling entitled to do what they want with it because a creator’s creations is somehow seen as openly available to anyone who wants to obtain it. I just want to be clear that I’m not boiling e-piracy down to one cause—I’d simply like to focus on one aspect of it for the sake of this post.)

People enjoyed the work and characters, and then felt that they had the right to reproduce it and give it to other people without any consideration for my rights as the intellectual property owner, or the publishing rights my publisher purchased from me.

“Free”

I feel that, in part, much of this comes from the sense that if it’s electronic and has no physical form, it should be free. We attach monetary value to physical things, but when someone spends thousands of hours of his or her own time creating entertainment (writers, musicians, artists), everyone feels entitled to that entertainment if it’s not presented as something we can physically hold in our hands.

And it has become quite clear to me that fans feel I should create content for them, for free, because they are entitled to have something they have no wish to pay for.

The writers out there putting short stories or even entire novels/web serials on their sites are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts in most cases. Those of us who are commercially published already are doing these things to grow an audience for our other work. We aren’t under any delusion that we’re going to get rich from free serials. A fellow eSerial writer said to me recently, “nothing I do will get me the sort of audience that I'd like.” This is someone whose skills and talent far outweigh mine, or most other writers I know. And it’s true—we writers know, going in, that we’ll never be compensated fully with any kind of support, be it financial or otherwise.

We’re investing incredible amounts of time into creative work and seeing, in most cases, absolutely nothing in return.

For every hundred readers of my freely available work, five or less show some kind of support. This includes donating, reviewing, or commenting in discussions, and this is a fairly average statistic for all the writers I know with work online. That means under 5% of readers bother to show any appreciation for the time and energy I put into entertainment for them. They don’t feel the need to give anything in return—they feel entitled to my work for free.

Nothing, however, is free. It’s costing someone something. My writing “free” stories for other people costs me hours upon hours of my own time every week, hours the webmaster has spent on site design, money spent on site hosting fees... Our time has value, and we see little to no return on our investment because readers feel no obligation to show any.

Would my readers ever go to work, every day, working an eight hour shift at their job and then think it was okay that they didn’t get paid at the end of the day? Because that is what I and other writers are asked to do with our jobs.

Value

I’ve been providing free fiction on my site since 2004. I’ve never openly asked for financial support until last month. The fact is, I work solely in the arts. My income is unpredictable. My outside part time job is for a non-profit agency and it’s contract work, meaning I don’t go back until October. My savings are rapidly depleting thanks to some unexpected expenses in August. This means that, by September, I will have to choose between groceries and prescribed medication I’ve been given to lessen my already heightened risk of cancer. This means that I can’t get my dog to the vet to get a tumour on her chest checked out because just getting in the door will mean I can’t pay rent that month and my landlord will evict me.

So I asked readers directly, for the first time, for some financial support. If even one hundred of them donated $10 each, that would be $1000. That would pay my bills and expenses for a month and a half; that would get my dog into a vet for tests and help with surgery if it’s needed.

And the response was from two people who already actively buy and support my other work. Out of hundreds. It came to $55 USD less some PayPal fees and I was extremely grateful for it.

But it became startlingly clear to me, then, that readers don’t actually place any value on my work. I ask them to support financially—nothing. I’ve asked to them take ten minutes out of their day to review my work or help spread the word—nothing. I have tried to come up with ways to drum up support in the past with rewards. Write reviews, hit a membership goal, donate, etc and get bonus stories. It became clear pretty quickly, however, that I can’t do that. I don’t have the time to invest—not when I have other work to do that results in real money with which I pay my bills.

It comes down to readers feeling entitled to my time and energy without any desire to give in return.

Semi-Retirement

After a lot of thinking, I’ve decided to more or less cease producing “free” fiction.

Curio Killed the Cat will finish up its run of twenty-two chapters for Volume One, and will remain on the site, but there is no plan to continue the story beyond that, or at least not at this time. It’s too time consuming to keep up every week with no support.

Children of the Apocalypse has chapters written up until December, however the chapter posted on August 1st will be the last one I freely share.

My work and my time are not valued by the vast majority of readers, and will never be. Plenty of writers know this—I always did—but they manage to keep on doing it, hoping it will get better. But my time would be better spent on books that my publisher—and others—will give me actual money for. While I may not have gotten into this to get rich, I’m not a masochist, and I can’t keep up this level of dedication and effort only to be met with disappointment every single month.

Even if readers were actively commenting and discussing things, I’d have felt the work was more valued...but I just posted a critical chapter of CotA with some game changing moments and there’s been, more or less, silence from ninety-nine percent of readers. And this was a point where I was sincerely hoping to hear reader reaction and get some feedback, but most can’t even be bothered with that.

I don’t want to lump all readers together—some have been fabulous. There was a time when they were the ones sustaining my hope for things to get better. So anyone up until this point who has donated or freely written reviews and are registered with my site will be moved to a special user group. I will continue posting Children of the Apocalypse chapters until the end of December, and they will be the ones able to read it. At that time, I will re-evaluate how I feel about things. The hope is that by sizing down the community and sharing only with other people who value my work, I might feel less hurt and burnt out, and reenergized to continue.

Other Changes

The Creative Commons Licenses for much of my “free” work is being changed to disallow derivative works. If you’re one of the handful of people I know in the past who have created and sent me fan-art, you officially have my written permission to continue because I trust you with the work.

If anyone reading this is the kind of person who attempts to steal my commercially published work via illegal downloads, I’d like you to realize it is theft of income from me, the editors, the cover artists, and the publisher who invested a lot of time and money into producing the work. You wouldn’t walk into a store and take a book off of a shelf, but that’s what you’re doing when you download my work without paying for it. By stealing income, you’re making it less likely that anyone will invest money in my work in the future, which means my career as a writer will cease to exist.

If you’ve enjoyed the stories I’ve been providing for years and would like to show your support, I’d certainly accept and appreciate it. And if I woke up tomorrow to several hundred in my bank account and a couple dozen story reviews, I admit I might rethink this decision. I did consider other options, like set a target donation goal and continue the story once we’ve met it, but, honestly, a) I’d just be setting myself up for more disappointment, and b) it sounds almost like extortion.

In the meantime, if you want to read beyond the most recent Children of the Apocalypse chapter posted, you need to earn fifty points. I don’t care how you do it. You get one point per dollar donated. Ten points for every review posted somewhere (minimum one hundred and fifty words). One point for every comment (excessive comments that consist of only one or two words will result in point removal, however). There’s a whole list of ways here: http://www.skyladawncameron.com/cota/points One reader, already, has amassed eighty-one points through reviewing, donating, and commenting. I know plenty of people have about as much extra cash as I do, so I’m not requiring anyone to buy anything. But you do a) have to register so you can read future chapters, and b) do something to give back to this community. If you have any problems at all, send an email to webmaster@skyladawncameron.com and someone will get back to you.

And should readers choose not to register and try out the points system because they don't think it's fair, that's fine too. There are plenty of other serials out there of varying quality that people can read for free without giving anything back.

Selfish? Yes.

Am I being a selfish bitch? Probably.

But, you know, as writers, it’s pretty engrained in us that we’re supposed to just suck it up. Keep our mouths shut lest we sound like ungrateful divas. Just keep working no matter how emotionally and financially draining it is. Suffer for our art and maybe, one day, we’ll be valued and appreciated.

Well, I lived that life when I was a housewife for six years to a manipulative, abusive prick. I wasn’t valued, I wasn’t thanked, and I was expected to shut up and take it. And I’m not the kind of person who does that anymore. Either you give back, or you get nothing from me. I’ve had enough of entitlement from people. The reality is that I was happier as a writer five years ago doing Catharsis when I had maybe a couple dozen readers but five who regularly commented and participated. And I need to get back to being happy, or I’ll quit from serialing entirely.

Everything up written until this point is remaining freely available on my websites. That includes one entire seventy thousand word novel (Catharsis), the first two books in the Children of the Apocalypse series (sixty thousand words and one hundred and twenty thousand words, respectively) as well as the various short stories posted and the first seven chapters of Part Three, and all of Curio Killed the Cat when it’s done (which will be about fifty thousand words). If you were buying these novels in stores, each reader would be spending at least forty bucks, so I’d say readers shouldn’t have too much to bitch about.

Comments are turned off—if you have hate mail to send, please feel free to email me.

Thanks for tuning in.