Naomi Novik

	This creator appreciates fanworks, but hasn't promised to be cool about fans making money.

Naomi Novik created the Temeraire series, Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and the Scholomance trilogy. Novik thinks fanworks are good both for the fans and for the original creator, and would love to inspire non-commercial fanworks, although she won’t read them. Novik played a key role in founding The Organization for Transformative Works, which hosts and offers legal protection to fanworks.

Statements

September 24, 2020

I myself started as a fanfiction writer. I wrote fanfic for about ten years before I ever tried to write anything commercial, so I feel it’s safe to say that I learned everything that I needed to learn from fanfic.

…

Nobody really asks anyone, when they are jamming on a guitar with their friends, “Why aren’t you a professional musician?” That’s because we recognize that music, playing around, that’s just something you do for fun, it doesn’t have to be something that you do as a commercial, professional, work thing. And one of the reasons that matters is because, you don’t actually have to become a commercial writer—you don’t have to become a professional writer; you don’t have to become an original writer. If you enjoy writing fanfic, you can just enjoy writing fanfic.

…

I don’t really believe in pure originality. Every story that exists is in conversation with other stories, and if you truly wrote something that was 100% original, it would be incomprehensible. If nothing else, you have to share a language with your readers, and an understanding of individual words. Every single story evolved from other stories.

September 21, 2020

I started writing as a hobby—I started writing fanfiction while I was in college, and I continued doing it for ten years purely for pleasure. It’s really where I learned my craft; it’s also where I learned to love writing, and to really deeply feel like an artist, and to value my own creativity, value my own interests. It was just a wonderful—and it still is, I still write fanfiction—it’s a wonderful community. It’s a place to play.

August 13, 2008

What I love about fanfiction is that it is a peer community where all of you are telling stories about characters that none of you owns. Nobody has the right to authority, and because of that, everybody has a right to tell whatever story they want, and they are all equally probable.

...

If the author starts visiting, it's not a peer community any more. But it makes me happy that people write fanfiction about my books. I want to write worlds that feel real to people, and when my stories are done I would not want the characters to just live happily ever after. The stories are living on in these readers, and that's what I love.

December 13, 2007

The mission of the OTW is first and foremost to protect the fan creators who work purely for love and share their works for free within the fannish gift economy, who are looking to be part of a community and connect to other fans and to celebrate and to respond to the media works that they enjoy. These fans create vibrant and active communities around the work they are celebrating, tend to spend heaps of money on the original work and associated merchandise, and encourage others to buy also. They are not competing with the original creator's work and if anything help to promote it.

If you want to sell your derivative Harry Potter novel, on the other hand, you are going to have to make a strong case for allowing you to do so without authorization from J.K. Rowling. The courts are going to be justly skeptical that you are borrowing her property for any reason other than to make yourself some cash off her characters.

It’s still not automatically infringing -- there are already plenty of cases where transformative works legitimately circulate in the for-profit marketplace as well: parodies such as The Wind Done Gone (the retelling of Gone With The Wind from the perspective of a slave), critical analyses that quote extensively from an original, "unauthorized guides," and other types of transformative works have long traditionally been sold.

But that really isn't what fanfic writers and fan creators in general are doing, or looking to do. We just want to enjoy our hobby and our communities, and to share our creative work, without the constant threat hanging overhead that an overzealous lawyer at some corporation will start sending out cease-and-desist notices, relying not on legal merit, but on the disproportionate weight of money on their side.

The OTW does not at all oppose the derivative works right that allows copyright owners to authorize a mass-market film adaptation, for instance, or allows Anne McCaffrey to authorize Todd and not somebody else to commercially publish Pern sequels. We do however support a broad understanding of fair use to protect fanworks; we're saying that this is legitimate creative work, and that fans have the right to respond to the works that capture their imagination.

December 12, 2007

Our shiny new website, written and revised and designed and built by the work of a great many incredibly talented fans, says it all better and in more detail than I can, but here's the basics: the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fanculture in its myriad forms. I myself have been and am a fan long before I am a pro, and the community of fan creators in particular is really in many ways my home. I believe deeply that transformative work enriches both those who do it and those who inspire it, and I am so very excited about this project.

May 17, 2007

We need a central archive of our own, something like animemusicvideos.org. Something that would NOT hide from google or any public mention, and would clearly state our case for the legality of our hobby up front, while not trying to make a profit off other people's IP and instead only making it easier for us to celebrate it, together, and create a welcoming space for new fans that has a sense of our history and our community behind it.

...

If I had thirty seconds more time I would just try to do it, but I don't right now, and so I am throwing out this plea into the ether. And I'm putting myself out here right now to say that I would help as any/all of an advisor, a fundraiser, a promoter, and I would archive my own stuff there. I would even take on coding parts; I just can't take on project management.

June 10, 2006

I think my own fanfic writing dates from the age of 3, when I started pestering my mother for revisions of Peter Pan for me because Captain Hook was my favorite character and I didn't want him to be eaten by the crocodile in the end. (The pirates all ended up on a desert island where they had survival-type adventures and eventually made friends with Peter et al.)

I love fanfic and am delighted that people are writing it about the Temeraire series. I can't read fanfic written about my own work because of the potential legal issues, but you can find communities and other interested lj'ers by searching interests for "temeraire".

March 30, 2006

I thought I would mention for any interested people that there is a lovely temeraire_fans lj community, if you would like to discuss the books or share fanfic/fanart -- I am not personally involved in this and promise I will not be reading it all the time or jumping in, so you do not need to feel like the author is there peering over your shoulders, I am just mentioning it as a PSA (and, all right, because it fills me with ridiculous glee that there is a community for the books! that I didn't make myself! where people have actually posted! *cough*)

June 16, 2005

I for one would be thrilled to know that people loved my characters and my world enough to want to come on in and play, not to mention that I would be wildly grateful for the free publicity. I would love for people to put up posters and make costumes and invent their own stories and fantasize about my characters. If they did, that would mean I was doing something fundamentally right -- that I was creating characters that people wanted to make part of the shared culture by which we communicate with one another. And if enough people feel that way about my characters, I am going to get to keep doing this work that I love. Not only would I not look down upon that kind of fannish activity, I would love to do whatever I can to encourage it.

Some fanfic writer out there who is having herself a good time with friends, doing creative work, trading her stories around -- she is not threatening me. She is not defiling my work, even if her story has (gasp, shock!) sex in it, even if it has content in it that would upset me to read. I won't be reading any of the fanfic anyway (just not worth the potential legal headaches), so what difference does it make to me? Chances are this fanfic writer bought my books and so is helping to pay for me to keep doing this. The last thing I want is to chase her off -- I want her to stay and invite all her friends to join in.

December 8, 2004

My sentiments remain that fanfic is a valid form of reader response, and is and should be entirely beyond the author's control. Once you've written the text, what the reader gets out of it is out of your hands -- and will inevitably be filtered through the lens of the reader's past experience and desires. That goes for fanfic as much as for other kinds of fannish discussion.

...

For purposes of discussion, I can imagine a case where someone was posting fanfic of so high a caliber that the original author's work compared unfavorably, with the result that fans deserted the original author and started only reading the fanfic writer's work.

As far as the likelihood of this -- fanfic typically inspires people to seek out the original source material rather than otherwise. But in at least one case, I've heard a handful of people say that they've quit reading a particular author's sequels because those have become unsatisfying to them, and instead are relying on fanfic based on the earlier novels in the series for their 'fix'.

Though even in that case, it's not really the fanfic that's had an effect on the author. These people didn't stop reading her books because they were satisfed by the free fanfic, they stopped because they were dissatisfied with the books, and kept reading fanfic because they so loved the original books. If anything, it's still a net win for the author, because those people do still recommend the early works.

But anyway, let's say it's possible. The fanfic would have to be distributed widely enough to realistically be the source of any impact on the author's success. Posting in an online fanfic archive or livejournal these days really doesn't qualify, but maybe some kind of future distribution medium will potentially reach this mark.

So if it somehow happened that a fanfic writer managed to supplant the original author, does that change whether they have the right to write fanfic or not -- it's an interesting question.

Personally, I think my core principle is to come down on the side of the reader. If what the fanfic writer is doing is at least in the opinion of the wide body of readers so much more satisfying than what the original author is doing -- it just doesn't feel right to me that the author should be able to shut them down *because* they're doing something so successful and pleasing to the readers.

From a legal standpoint, I suspect that interference to such a degree, if it could somehow be *proven*, would make a difference in litigation in the author's favor, but IANAL and that is purely a guess. ... I guess here's the catch-22 of coming down on fanfic: if the fanfic is awful or wildly OOC, such that the characters are being diminished or the universe badly portrayed, then it's not operating on the same plane as the original and thus isn't interfering with the author's ability to make a profit on their work. On the other hand, if the fanfic is good enough art to interfere with the author's success, then to me the ethics of shutting it down to eliminate the competition are murky, even if the legal power to do so would in fact rest with the author ...

More generally, I think the talent and skills involved in coming up with an original universe concept and powerful, inspiring characters is not the same as the talent and skills involved in writing about those characters and universe in a compelling way, particularly on an ongoing basis. Obviously the two frequently overlap; I don't mean to suggest it's an either-or situation, just that they don't necessarily occur in tandem or in equal degrees in everyone who does have even a great deal of one or the other talent.

Personally I don't inherently privilege the first over the second. Copyright law does, and hence you pretty much have to be able to do the first to get published professionally, even if your gifts lie more in the second. And then in turn, there's a commercial benefit to continuing sequels that drives authors to go on producing them, even if they're bored or have run out of ideas in that universe or with those characters, or even if their best talents lie in coming up with new and inventive universes for themselves (and others) to play in.

So coming back to the hypothetical case: if there really was a situation where a fanfic writer was overshadowing the original author at her own game, as it were, I suspect that it could only occur if the fanfic writer had a ton of the second kind of talent, and the author was much more gifted in the first type. If the original author wasn't especially good at the first, their work would never inspire writing/reading any real quantity of fanfic. If the author also was especially good at the second, I just don't believe a fanfic writer, even one very gifted, could possibly overshadow them -- the power of being commercially published and distributed is just too great.

On the practical side, if ego could be taken out of it, it seems to me that the win/win result in this situation would be for the original author to license their universe to the fanfic writer and have the fanfic writer's work commercially published on a schedule that would interleave with the author's own books, if the author did want to keep publishing in that line, or just hand off the line to the fanfic writer and move on to new universes. Just imagine if the Star Wars prequels were being made by someone who had an enormous quantity of the second kind of talent and less of the first. I claim this would be a much better world. *g*

October 22, 2004

In other news, msagara talks about her feelings about fanfic, in two parts, here and here; an entirely common-sense view of fanfic, and also matociquala's previously posted views.

But, both msagara and matociquala are pro writers only; I'm a longtime fanfic writer just going pro, and my own feelings towards fanfic go somewhat farther than theirs. I'm feeling inspired to try and lay my thoughts on the subject out here -- I welcome any thoughts and observations.

So here's where I differ: I believe that writing fanfic is part of the reader's right to respond to the text, and not something that the original creator of the text should have a say in at all. I don't believe that the author has the right to prevent the writing of fanfic, so long as that fanfic is not published commercially.

The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...

That's from article I, section 8 of the US Constitution, which is the basis for US copyright law. I don't quote this because I want to make a legal argument -- if you're interested in such I can't do better than point you to Rebecca Tushnet's memo on the topic. It's because I personally think that this should be the principle governing the author's control over their text.

As soon as I share an idea, it has its own existence in the mind of the person I shared it with, and may develop in directions I didn't anticipate. How long does that idea remain mine, before it or its fruits become as much hers? If she shares her modifications with me, and they change my own version of the idea, is it still mine? When you really think about it, the notion of owning ideas is bizarre. Ideas are the original digital files -- easy to transmit and copy, completely portable -- and we all can see how well efforts to control the free sharing of digital files are going for RIAA.

We allow people to stake a claim to an idea not because ideas are like physical objects, naturally possessed or used by one person at a time, but because we want to encourage people to share their ideas for that reason defined in the Constitution: to promote progress. It is a social good for people to be willing to discuss their ideas in public, when otherwise they might hoard their ideas for private benefit, with the end result that those ideas might be lost, or someone else might have to come up with the same idea and duplicate the work. We want it to be more profitable to bring ideas out in the open, exactly so that those ideas can inspire others to build upon them and take them in new directions.

I am wholeheartedly in favor of copyright law giving the author the sole right to profit from her work. After all, we are not communists. ;) But there's an immense difference for me between the right to profit from the work, and the right to control response to the work, which begins to interfere with the reader's right to free expression.

Satire and criticism are explicitly protected for obvious reasons. Imagine if we required the author's permission for someone to create and share a negative review of his text -- I think most of us would agree that this would be an example of giving too much control over the text to the author. Ditto for a mocking satire. And moving towards fanfic, people frequently write essays on their interpretations of fannish texts, which I think most would agree are equally valid.

I don't see the hard line between these and fanfic. When I personally have an argument to make about a source, or thoughts about it that I would like to share with other readers, I don't want to write an essay, I want to write a story. I'd much rather convey my interpretations and make my arguments about the source through the medium of fiction. Writing fanfic isn't a dialogue between the fan and the author, but it is a dialogue between fans. Many fanfic writers are writing specifically to participate in the fannish community, rather than create works of fiction; and even among those fanfic writers who are more serious about craft and telling their own narratives, the participation in the community is a critical aspect.

So I feel writing fanfic is an equally valid response, and so long as I'm not threatening the author's bottom line (which I don't believe any fanfic writer can do, as long as they aren't getting published commercially), I don't believe that the author has a right to tell me not to do it, any more than the author has a right to tell me not to review their book on Amazon.

And yes, when you've got a living author who says they don't want fanfic based on their work, it's kind of rude to go on writing fanfic anyway, and you shouldn't be surprised when the author gets offended as a result. But I also think that it should be acknowledged that the author is asking her readers to give up part of their right to respond. That's not a trivial request, and it becomes increasingly less trivial the more popular the original text is and the more people relate to each other through that text.

Anyway, that's why I draw the line somewhat differently.

The other thing I'd like to ramble about is the notion of fanfic affecting canon. msagara made the point that she doesn't want other writers defining canon in her universe. I believe she was referring to the theoretical possibility of someone publishing a fanfic novel that would compete with the original author's creation, which I would object to on the grounds that it violates the principle of reserving to the author the right to profit from her work. But I think this notion of fanfic affecting canon is also an interesting thing to talk about more generally, from my experience as a fanfic writer and reader.

I would argue that on the contrary -- though this may be even more threatening, in a way -- fanfic undermines the very notion of canon.

Anyone who's read more than a handful of fanfic stories has read completely contradictory stories set in the same universe. Most fanfic writers, for that matter, have written stories that contradict each other. Neither readers nor writers have any difficulty with this in the fanfic community -- it's understood, and unspoken, that the stories are all equally real for the duration of the reading process, that they don't and aren't intended to close off possibilities to other readers or writers.

Other writers may adopt some ideas and interpretations from one author and carry them over to their own work. In this way, a degree of "fanon" -- interpretations that have been widely accepted among fans and are repeated through many works -- may develop, but this isn't canon, in the sense that anyone can still write a story that defies fanon, and no one (reasonable) will argue that it isn't a fanfic story set in the original universe.

It's a natural extension from this process to taking only what you like from the original work, creating alternate universe stories, putting together relationships between characters who aren't connected in the original except by being in the text together -- or not even that, in the case of crossover stories. Fanfic readers blithely read AUs and futurefic and "Jossed" stories (ones which have been contradicted by source released later) and never bat an eye.

msagara writes, I don't want to have the "but they would never do that" reaction, because obviously -- to the people who did write the story -- the characters would. This makes me somehow feel that I've been incompetent; that I've failed to write the characters in such a way that they're clear enough that this would be obvious.

As anyone who's read in Harry Potter fandom knows, the author is in no way shape or form to blame for what fanfic writers create, and particularly what pairings they come up with. I don't mean to deny the gut level negative reaction -- I can get worked up when someone writes a fanfic story set in a universe I didn't create when I think they've written the characters wildly wrong. But that's not a failure of the original creator to convey their characters successfully, it's all about what the fanfic writer has brought away from the text and how she's been inspired to respond, what of her own tropes she's been inspired to map onto the source, and what she wants to communicate to her audience of fellow fans.

And sometimes, what she wants to communicate is that it would be a lot of fun to be a gorgeous red-haired elf who gets to braid Legolas's hair in the middle of the Battle of Helm's Deep. That's not Tolkien's fault. So, so not. (Possibly Orlando Bloom's fault, but let's be generous and blame the fanfic writer. *g*)

I think we bind ourselves to the idea of canon perhaps too strongly. Obviously you don't want to start rewriting continuity at every step to avoid confusion, but as readers of fantasy, we're used to believing a thousand impossible things before breakfast. Believing in the characters a writer has created is a lot harder than having five alternate endings for the book coexist in the imagination.

Which I suppose may be the very reason for fanfic.