By Erica Misoshnik
Disclaimer: The following post is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of the Women’s National Book Association – they were simply kind enough to let me post it.
By now I’m sure you have all heard ofFifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel by E.L. James that has taken the country by storm. It’s the sort of book that makes people happy to have e-readers and despite its popularity, is in no way something you would give as a present on Mother’s Day – though the writers ofthisSNL skit may disagree. It has beenfeaturedon ABC news anddiscussedon The View – evenEllenis up on the trend. There is also aparodybeing released this summer. So yes, everyone is talking about the salacious novel, but there is something people outside of the publishing worldseem to be forgetting…and it has nothing to do withFifty Shades’ steamy content.
This book started as a work of Twilight fan-fiction.
Fifty Shades of Greywas initially calledMaster of the Universeand the original Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele were none other than Edward Cullen and Isabella Swan.Master of the Universewas published onfanfiction.netand garnered approximately37,000 reader reviewsbefore James moved the book to her own site. Those are just reviews, not page hits. Only the authors can see how many total hits they have gotten per story on fanfiction.net, so it is currently impossible to know exactly how many people read the story before it was moved. It has been estimated that E.L. James had tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of fans on fanfiction.net alone.
None of this would be a big deal because there are somewildlypopular works of fan-fiction, which have accumulated their own fan bases. (Fun fact:Cassandra Clare, author of the best-sellingMortal Instrumentsseries, was a writer of fan-fiction, too.) But it is a big deal; because none of those writers went on to get 7 figure book deals for their fan-fics.
To be fair,Fifty Shades of Greyistechnicallyan original work. EvenMaster of the Universebore little resemblance to Stephenie Meyer’s paranormal young adult romance. In fact, there were no vampires or werewolves, and no paranormal activity of any kind in the fan fiction. Other than the names of the characters, there was virtually nothing else the two stories had in common – with the exception of theTwilightfan base.
Therein lays the issue I personally have withFifty Shades. It is not that I think there’s an issue of copyright infringement, since the fan-fic had little to do with Stephenie Meyer’s work apart from the names. Under copyright law, Stephenie Meyer (as the copyright holder) would have to take legal action against E.L James if she felt thatFifty Shadeswas in violation of said copyright, which she has not done. And, E.L. James is open about her Twilight “inspiration.” Whatever the case, what I think is pertinent is that a huge proponent of E.L. James’ initial success was due to Stephenie Meyer’s fan base.
While the laws are clear that fan-fiction cannot be published for money (though it has been published for charity, with the original author’s express permission) what of cases likeFifty Shades? What happens when a fan-fiction writer changes some names around, adjusts a few details, and goes on to publish with a major house? Anne Jamison, an English Professor at the University of Utah, who recently taught a course involving fan-fiction, brought up a good question about “whether [or not] the explicit, conscious use of another writer’s fan base, via creation of characters known and experienced as ‘versions’ of the writer’s characters, for commercial purposes, constitutes any kind of damage or infringement.”
Personally, I think this falls into an ethical grey area (no pun intended!), but I’m open to hearing debate on the topic. What do you think? Will the huge success ofFifty Shades of Greypave the road for other popular fan fiction authors to change a few names or places and then publish the work? Is there even an issue at all – or did I just get too invested in my ethics class this semester?
Let me know what you think in the comments!
This seems like a book popular with people that don’t like books. Or picking any out on their own. The way Nickleback is a rock band for people that don’t like music. Truly good erotic novels–ones you read alone, that help to do the job, so to speak–are not titles you share with others.