The Way of the Editor:
Lori Jareo, Fanfiction Hero?This is the most amusing trademark and copyright violation I’ve heard in weeks.
April 25, 2006 Update: Amazon.com has officially closed the listing for Another Hope and the page is no longer available. A statement from an LLC representative can be found on the Scifi.com website.
It’s the usual for me on a Sunday night. The cats are sleeping, deadlines are slipping, and I'm making my rounds on this interweb thing before turning in for the night. And then it catches me. A little note at the bottom of Neil Gaiman’s Friday (April 21, 2006) web post:
Mr. Gaiman:
I thought you might find this interesting.
http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2006/04/no_hope_for_thi.html
Basically: A fanfiction author decides to publish her work.
[Gaiman's response] Sigh. That's asking to be squished like a small and particularly squishy bug under the mighty bug-squishing thumb of George Lucas, really, isn't it?
So apparently, somebody has found a way to sell their Star Wars fanfiction on the major websites of Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powell's Books. And suddenly, I’m floored. Somebody is selling their not-very-good, self-published fanfiction on Amazon.com. This has got to be the best copyright issue violation I’ve heard in weeks.
Stick the portmanteau “fanfiction” into a Google search and it will turn up the most trafficked fanfiction websites online, covering everything from Godawful Fan Fiction (“Read them and weep!”), Adult Fan Fiction, a very modest site where you can find everything from Paris Hilton to Disney, to Harrypotterfanfiction.com, boasting over 24,000 J.K. Rowling-derived stories alone. Wikipedia.com defines fanfiction as: fiction written by people who enjoy a film, novel, television show or other media work, using the characters and situations developed in it and developing new plots in which to use these characters. And what is there not to love? The entire point of fanfiction is that it has something for everyone. Just can’t get enough Johnny Depp’s character in Pirates of the Caribbean? Someone’s written a story about it. Or maybe you’re more of an old school Kirk/Spock admirer, or a Logan/Rogue fan? That’s standard too. You can even take reinterpretations of Shakespeare (take that, Mr. Stoppard!), or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and somewhere online, you will find someone who has written about that.
But better yet: maybe you’re the one with an original angle on a story that no one else has used. And now, you want to share your story with everyone.
Enter Lori Jareo, the self-styled novelist and editor-by-trade who not only successfully published and solicited her Star Wars fanfiction novel, Another Hope, but successfully published and solicited her book for sale on the websites of heavyweight distributors Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and Powell’s Books. The report from reviews on these sites (based on the .pdf version of the book Ms. Jareo distributed) is that Ms. Jareo is not actually a very good writer, and that the novel itself is lackluster and not worth the read. But the real controversy is the argument sparked by her commercial solicitation: a wave of criticism and outrage across the blogosphere into fan forums of all genres, equally split between scorn and the fear of what the repercussions for Ms. Jareo’s publication might mean for other fan writers in their respective genres. Jareo has spawned angry blog entries, articles of outrage, and spam on the Amazon.com website adding up to over 20+ scathing reviews and “flames” ( blatant insults without constructive intent), attacking the intelligence, integrity, as well as writing abilities of the author. (The worst of these posts have been deleted.)
Writers Lee Goldberg and John Scalzi have both commented incisively on the topic—Golberg on his site, A Writer's Life, and Scalzi in his blog, Whatever—expressing their incredulity over Jareo’s actions. Key points include the observation that Ms. Jareo herself is a publisher and an editor, so how could she have, in good conscience, published and tried to commercially sell this book? As evidence both cite a web interview with Ms. Jareo that has since been removed from the internet, but a Google cache of the original may be found here.
Just what was Lori Jareo hoping to accomplish with her listing? As a journalism major, and an editor with years of experience working in the publishing field, how could she not know the consequences of “self-publishing” and selling fan-work commercially? I, too, find it hard to believe anyone could be that naive. Copyright right or wrong aside — it’s a convoluted subject — part of me wonders: could this be some sort of misguided political statement? I started some research on the web as soon as I heard about it (last night) and came up with some details that some of the other ranters/bloggers I’ve seen may have overlooked:
1) Jareo’s husband, Kevin Walzer, holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Cincinnati. Now, while as hard-core detractors may not think this establishes anything, I think it sets up some level of intelligence and awareness about what's going on in publishing and the copyrighting world.
2) Both husband and wife work in the publishing industry. Their company is called WordTech. This has been mentioned before in other discussions in the context of “Look at how stupid she’s being, she should know better, she works in the industry!” but I don't think these detractors took a good look at what the company actually does: barely for-profit, indie poetry publications emphasizing the use of technology in production. Now, you may have heard me gripe about indie publishers before, but that's beside the point. This then sets us up for the next tidbit…
3) Both husband and wife have been linked to open-source projects, which I think suggests leftist leanings (try looking up “ copyleft” and you’ll see what I mean) and probably not only an awareness of the state of copyright and intellectual property in U.S. law, but a resistance to the direction in which large corporations have taken these laws. Possible motive? Maybe so.
But if there is a statement, it wouldn’t be about satire or fair use—it’d have to be about the problems with current copyright law and intellectual
property, which given Jareo’s background, could be possible. That’s a
big if, however, and I’m still operating on the same information as
everyone else—which is, no official statement from either Lucas or
Jareo or their legal representatives.
Whether my hypothesis is plausible or flat-out wrong is debatable, and I’m not trying to convince anyone that Jareo is right or wrong. But as a writer and a fan and a “consumer” of the fiction market, I’m curious to see how this turns out. I assume that once Amazon.com and the Lucas Corps get through with
Jareo, there will be no record left of this incident but a whisper on the
cyber-breeze. (Read: the original listings will be deleted and the books probably banned.) Which is another interesting byproduct of the internet phenomenon.
The mighty bug-squishing thumb of George Lucas indeed, Mr. Gaiman.
Relevant Links
Original Amazon.com Listing — No longer available.
Writing an Apocryphal Book — Google cache of the original interview causing all the excitement.
“No Hope for This Fanficcer” — A Writer’s Life article by Lee Goldberg.
Whatever — John Scalzi’s blog
“Annals of short-lived phenomena: Star Wars fanfic on Amazon” — Making Light post on the ‘precedings’.
WordTech Publishing — Lori Jareo and husband’s small press poetry publication company.