Where is the line?

Totally depends on the situation. If you were to have your character be a member of the Battle Star Galatica and sell that book for a profit, yes that is copyright infringement. You are taking someone's registered and probably copyrighted idea and claiming it as your own, in my own humble opinion.

jennontheisland said:

That's what I thought.

Still trying to figure out a nice way to ask "Dude, you realize you're selling fanfic, right?"

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Is the person you are asking writing tie-in books or something? *is confused, lol*

Like, are we talking about writers who are hired (I'm assuming they are hired) to write Expanded Universe/tie-ins to copyrighted stuff like Star Wars/Star Trek/Transformers/etc?

If you are talking about people with original stories who are stealing bits and pieces from copyrighted stuff (without permission, too), then yes, I would think that is plagiarism. Is that that you are talking about?

Or are you talking about people trying to sell their fanfiction works (without permission)?

jennontheisland said:

No, it's not tie in work for hire.

It's a novella that has the male MC a member of a group. That group is from a movie. The group has the same name as in the movie and does the same thing as in the movie. When I first read the description I thought it was fanfic; the title of the book even references the title of the movie. But then I found out it's for sale as a self-published novella.

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Then, yes. I would consider that as copyright infringement. You are taking someone's concept of the group and putting into your book. One should have their own world with its own original groups.