50 Shades of Grey trilogy goes from fan fiction to Random House

latourdumoine said:

Someone should do a fanfic of FSoG.

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Does a parody count?

As the website describes it:

Why "fifty-one" shades? Because it's one shade better than Fifty Shades of Grey.

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*snrk*

Jess Haines said:

Does a parody count?

As the website describes it:



*snrk*

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That was totally and utterly hilarious! Thanks for sharing

Phaeal said:

Wow. That's some powerful and agile erection. It must have opposable thumbs.

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KathleenD said:

Your imagination is better than mine. Me, I just heard a BOING! sound.

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Is this vampire old like Edward? Because if he is that thing ain't springing.

Oh lordy, that popsicle reference in the quote made me think of what Edward's thing must feel like. >.<

Bubastes said:

Oh lordy, that popsicle reference in the quote made me think of what Edward's thing must feel like. >.<

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I don't even understand how vampire sex is supposed to work. There's no blood flow and the body is cold. I dunno, but I can't think of much less sexy than cuddling up to a cold, dead dude.

Jess Haines said:

Does a parody count?

As the website describes it:



*snrk*

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Okay, so the parody is amazing.

Also I'm reading the first chapter for free on that-place-I-don't-know-if-people-are-still-mad-at-them and I really want my money back. With interest.

I can't remember who, but I know someone said that she was capitalizing on Twilight's success because she said she didn't like the Twilight. I just wanted to say that there's a chance--a small chance but a chance nonetheless--that she was just writing in that fandom just to write something different or new. She might have gotten tired of her previous fandoms, provided she had any.

I mean I don't know the full story so, I could be really wrong. However, some writers do write characters(as protagonists, heroes/heroines if romance, etc.) that they don't relate to or possibly couldn't even like. I haven't done it yet, but hey, it can happen, right?

I'm a bit bemused about this whole debate. Is it really so wrong for an author to write a book loosely based on a story they love, and then achieve great success from it? I'm not a fan of this style of writing (the parody is great!), but I also think it's no worse than many other books on the bestseller list and it bears no resemblance to Twilight, so what's the big deal?

From my understanding she did not set out to manipulate people or gain fame and fortune, but simply posted her chapters for free on a website. An Australian publisher noticed how popular the chapters were and approached her to publish an ebook. And the rest is history. Nothing sinsiter or manipulative there, just a fledgling author who got very, very lucky.

Here's an article about the epublisher:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment...k-became-a-1m-blockbuster-20120311-1uso5.html

I think it's the whole George Lucas/Star Wars thing. The hue and cry that went up when he re-released the movies with new footage was surprising: "...BUT THESE ARE OUR MOVIES! THEY BELONG TO THE FANS!" That might be what's going on here and her fans are upset that she's taken "their" book.

I mean I don't have anything against. I'm just shocked that this actually happened more so than anything else. I wish her a bunch of success.

Jess Haines said:

Does a parody count?

As the website describes it:



*snrk*

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“Miss Steal,” he says, gazing at me gazingly with his gazing gray eyes.

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What's really sad is Andrew's not far off the mark here. If I had to read, "Grey's gray gaze" or "Grey's gray eyes" one more time...

I could handle some of the tacky stuff, like Anna "putting the peddle to the metal" on her way to the interview. I could handle the Britishisms when the characters are all meant to be American. I could even handle all the juvenile "Inner-Goddess" craziness going on in Anna's head.

The Grey Gaze did me in.

I get it. His eyes are gray. His name is Grey. Very clever.

I think we could go round and round on this one until the cows come home. What she did is legal. Is it shady? I think so, but that's just my opinion. Nothing I say will change it. The author still gets her fat check no matter what, and there's now one more horribly written novel floating around out there that never should have made it out of the slush pile.

But, like others have said, I feel for her a bit. What the heck is she going to do now?

OhTheHorror said:

I do feel for her a bit, like others have said. What the heck is she going to do now?

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Maybe she'll write another top-seller. Whatever its origins, this book is being read and enjoyed by people far removed from the Twilight fan community. Despite the complaints about her writing style, she's obviously created something that people want to read, and that's the name of the game. Or at least it's the name of one of the games.

It sounds like a strong editor would help her out, and it's too bad she didn't get that for this story. In the future, assuming she'll accept it, she should be able to get that help and take care of the issues everyone's finding so amusing. And she'll still have the understanding of what readers are looking for that's made her successful in this case.

I really don't think she needs our pity.

heza said:

We interrupt this hilarity to bring you "Heza's Stupid Copyright Question of the Day."

Okay, so if you post something online, for free, it's no longer copyrightable? And everyone can repost it to their heart's content?

If it's not copyrightable. Can someone take your prose and sell it? For example, if I started posting serial stories on my blog, could someone else come along, bundle them and sell it as an ebook?

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Sorry, heza. I meant it as irony, not a literal statement. AFAIK, you can't file for copyright on a piece of fanfiction because the whole thing is in violation of copyright for someone else, but the story itself belongs to the author. (So while FSoG's author couldn't publish it wit Bella and Edward, neither could Twilight's author claim ownership of FSoG.)

Bad writing aside, this doesn't particularly bother me. How will we ever know for sure if she was writing to manipulate the fans, or just because she fancied writing in that fandom?

If she was writing in an AU, then changed some of the character info, I don't think there will be any Twilight left to be sued over.

Ethically, so long as she didn't do it (the original fic) principally to make money, it doesn't bother me either. Well, so long as she's changed the characters a bit, which I'm not sure if she has or not.

I suspect I'm biased because I dabbled myself in fanfic once (I was going through a bad year - fanfic was my comfort food!), in a very small community round a TV show (don't think I would personally do it for a book fandom), and I'd always thought of expanding on a couple of the AU premises I'd used. Mind you my fics were quite short comparatively so they'd be massively overhauled for anything book length. After reading this thread, I suspect it would be best not to reuse any of the actual text though.

I also got my start in fan fiction but mine was for anime. Fan fiction served as practice for me, and although my writing is still improving, it's a lot better from when I first started off I think. However, that's just my opinion I think. Haha.

All of this just makes me very glad that I write my fanfiction in a computer game fandom. Nobody can say that my stuff can be confused or conflated with the original.

And one of the game's designers loves my work.

Captcha said:

Maybe she'll write another top-seller. Whatever its origins, this book is being read and enjoyed by people far removed from the Twilight fan community. Despite the complaints about her writing style, she's obviously created something that people want to read, and that's the name of the game. Or at least it's the name of one of the games.

It sounds like a strong editor would help her out, and it's too bad she didn't get that for this story. In the future, assuming she'll accept it, she should be able to get that help and take care of the issues everyone's finding so amusing. And she'll still have the understanding of what readers are looking for that's made her successful in this case.

I really don't think she needs our pity.

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An editor can only do so much.

Jess Haines said:

Does a parody count?

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Oh hell yeah!

I think this move is one of the most unsettling and disappointing things I've seen, as an author. Not because of content; not because of quality. But because now it appears to be okay to basically rip off* someone else's work, and Random House are saying that's fine and dandy because it's making money.

*Fan fiction posted online for free=fan fiction
*Fan fiction changed a bit (50 Shades might be AU but it still sticks with many character traits/plot strands/structural themes--far more so than your average "original" work) and then published under the guise of original fiction=ripping someone off.

But would we have known it started out as Twilight fanfic without being told it was?

BenPanced said:

But would we have known it started out as Twilight fanfic without being told it was?

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People keep saying "I wouldn't have known," but I'm not sure that's really the point. Someone has said (apologies, I can't remember where) that you may well not make the link if you're not too familiar with Twilight, but if you know the books very well, you'll most certainly spot the similarities (even down to lines of dialogue). It IS a highly derivative work, and it's a bit different to stuff like Pride, Prejudice and Zombies because it isn't packaged to make its source material clear (and of course, its source is not in the public domain).

It's a difficult situation in general. I suspect they couldn't even credit Twilight/Meyer without her permission because I doubt a young adult author would want to be associated with an erotic work (for the same reasons that you'd probably use a pen name if you wrote in both genres).

BenPanced said:

But would we have known it started out as Twilight fanfic without being told it was?

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Would this author have the chops to invent her own characters and general scenario (controlling man/meek woman) without Twilight? I think that's the real question. And if she wouldn't have the ability to write something like this without using Meyer's work as a crutch, then what right does she have to make money from it?

Before the internet it was easier for people to use other authors' hard work as a crutch to build not-very-original characters and scenarios. As long as they never told, nobody would ever find out, and maybe then they could just get a nice cozy book deal and sell their not-terribly-original books.

Now, fanfiction has become such a huge online thing that people clamor to get it out there and are eager to lay claim to what they've written. There's so much ego-stroking in the fanfiction communities that people just can't wait to show off the stuff they've written using somebody else's original creation as a crutch. So now the whole writing world (and much of the reading world) knows that these characters were originally intended to be Edward and Bella, no matter how the writer has tweaked them to make them appear different. So thanks to fanfiction's intense desire for public exposure, there's no way for this person to ever claim any originality for this trilogy -- not with any seriousness, anyway.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being inspired by others' works and even trying to copy others' works, as long as that's not intended for publication -- as long as it's intended as a learning exercise. Copying better artists in order to learn how they do what they do has been an accepted means of learning an art for hundreds of years. But selling your copies is unethical. And I am shocked that Random House would support this kind of thing with a contract. That is ridiculous.

If I were Stephenie Meyer, I'd be firing up my team of attorneys and going after their asses like they were made of bacon.

Fanfiction is all well and good if you just want to play around with it as a hobby. But making money from others' work crosses a serious line. Much better to put in the time to learn how to make your OWN characters. Then you're justified in making money off of what you do. Get your own goddamn ideas.

Libbie said:

Fanfiction is all well and good if you just want to play around with it as a hobby. But making money from others' work crosses a serious line. Much better to put in the time to learn how to make your OWN characters. Then you're justified in making money off of what you do. Get your own goddamn ideas.

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First, she's not making money from someone else's work. She took the premise and wrote fanfic - a draft, you might as well call it. Then she made that story her own. And made it enough of her own to get it commercially published.

As to getting 'your own goddamn ideas' - are you saying there's now a claim on ideas? Someone thinks up something and no one else can ever use that idea again, no matter how much they change it? Wow. What a concept.