I've decided to self publish a fanfiction Star Wars novel

I loved this (lone) five-star review:

Luke and Obi Wan die off-page! (p. 114) That makes this the best STAR WARS novel ever! I can only hope Han and Chewey get dusted in the sequel!

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That being said, I have to wonder how fast Lucas' lawyers will pick apart her assets.

And the question of the day is: If she had offered it up on Lulu as a free e-book only (no print copies...I'm not even sure if that's an option, since it's been a while since I checked), would the fallout have been so bad?

ETA: If only it had been published by a certain outfit out of Maryland...sigh.

Where are the customer tags?

It's not "commercial" but it's on sale on Amazon and BN.com. Love it.

The sad thing is, it's selling better on Amazon than my book.

Question: After it's all blown apart, will she be more or less likely to be picked by an agent/publisher for anon-SW scifi novel, based on this incident and the sales she wrongly got? Just curious.

Rob

Wow, some people are just born idiots, aren't they?

Doesn't this woman know that the Golden Rule of fanfiction is "Thou shalt not profit," with "Thou shalt not flaunt thy fic in the face of TPTB" running a close second????

*falls off chair laughing*

doesn't get better than this... talk about putting your neck on the chopping block!

chaostitan said:

Wow, some people are just born idiots, aren't they?

Doesn't this woman know that the Golden Rule of fanfiction is "Thou shalt not profit," with "Thou shalt not flaunt thy fic in the face of TPTB" running a close second????

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How about 'Thou shalt not piss off George Lucas, for he shall make thy life a living litigation hell.'

Ok, not a fan-fiction rule, but none-the-less...

Someone in the comments said "How could she forget the Tribbles? Gene Roddenberry is dead, he can't enforce his copyright!"

Tribble Slash.

Need I say more??

chaostitan said:

Doesn't this woman know that the Golden Rule of fanfiction is "Thou shalt not profit," with "Thou shalt not flaunt thy fic in the face of TPTB" running a close second????

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*shakes head* All my regular fanboards are in an uproar over this. In addition to calling her a long list of names that would be filtered out of my post if I repeated them, there is outrage over the bad attention this is bringing to fanficcers. "Thou shalt not profit" has always been the rule that has kept the lawyers away.

And her frightening illogic about what constitutes 'commercial'... if this had been a teenager being indulged by her clueless parents, I could understand, but this woman is an adult, and an editor to boot! She should know better.

Career-Torpedo Away!

robeiae said:

Question: After it's all blown apart, will she be more or less likely to be picked by an agent/publisher for anon-SW scifi novel, based on this incident and the sales she wrongly got? Just curious.

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She has very effectively killed her career...such as it was. (I read some excerpts on Amazon. *groan*)

Copyright infringement is taken very seriously in the publishing world, ditto for plagiarism. (Her scenes lifted directly from the 1977 SW movie come under that umbrella.)

No legit publisher/agent in his/her right mind is ever going to go near this twit.

Publishing is one of the smallest towns in the world--meaning everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Gossip is the guilty pleasure indulged in over lunch and via e-mail. You can bet that those who matter know about this and after recovering from spritzing the keyboard at the news they've asked the same question that's been posed elsewhere, "What was she thinking?"

No one, absolutely NO ONE is ever going to consider having her as a client.

Nice knowing you, Lori. Yours is a cautionary tale for us all.

robeiae said:

Question: After it's all blown apart, will she be more or less likely to be picked by an agent/publisher for anon-SW scifi novel, based on this incident and the sales she wrongly got?

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Setting her criminal idiocy aside, I've read a few pages of the Amazon preview, and the only publisher likely to take writing of that level is our beloved Publish America ... which would have all kinds of karmic beauty to it, really.

Ohmigawd. What an idiot.

Not being too web-savvy, could someone here explain how a product such as this even came to the attention of people like Navigator?

Would he/you have done a search on Amazon? Or had some contact with the
" author's " blog?. If she is a no-body in the publishing realm, and her blog is one of millions, I don't understand how the word got out? Perhaps a Google search?

I am just interested to know the process.


Thanks,

ATP

XThe NavigatorX said:

As of an hour ago, her sales ranking was 6,000. It's now 8,000 something.

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That's just... wrong.

That's it, I am abandoning my WIP. I'm going to self-pub a Star Wars fanfic.

ATP said:

Not being too web-savvy, could someone here explain how a product such as this even came to the attention of people like Navigator?

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All it would take is for a single person to post a comment or mention it in one of the larger, well-read blogs or websites ... at that point, it would spread like a virus.

At last, she finally hears back from George Lucas.

Do you have a link, maestrowork? I've been waiting for Lucas's lawyers to move into "aggressive negotiations."

First, this is just beyond... all words. <G>


Second, here's an interesting thng - when I first pulled up the Amazon page (which still lists the book at 11:30 Eastern time on Sunday) there were 28 reviews for the book. I wanted to see if new reviews had come in, so I refreshed the page - uhhhh, no NEW reviews, but now, instead of 28 reviews, there are only 2.

Huh??? Amazon is pulling some of the reviews for the dam* thing, but not pulling the listing for the "book" (and I use the term loosely) itself?

<scratching head> This makes almost as little sense as the "author's" firm grasp on the meaning of commercial.

Susan G.

don't forget that it's a weekend, and the Amazon staff are probably the part-timers who pulled the short stick - they're probably pulling the reviews when it's obvious that the poster couldn't have actually "read" the book, as they do for all the PA books that we've dealt with in the past.

I'm still boggling with the fact that this was put out in August of 2005 and it took this long to come to light - she's going to be driven to bankruptcy over this, or at least a serious audit by the Lucas lawyers to see what, if any, profit she's gotten out of the entire endeavor.

and I don't see the company surviving. It's only her and her husband, by all accounts, so they'll be filing pretty darned soon.

I'm just... so dazed that ANYONE figured they could pull this off and get away with it. If I were her lawyer, I'd consider an insanity defence.

Oh, joy! I can see the backlash in the fanfic community now. Authors of the original works will be shutting down websites all over the place, and NO ONE will be able to write fanfic.

Yanno, I want to eventually finish my original work, but fanfic has given me a "safe" place in which to practice. There is a TON of garbage out there, but there's also some good stuff. There are those of us who -enjoy- writing fanfic, and no, we are not planning to make any profit.

This bint is going to ruin an enjoyable passtime for the rest of us.