: Re: Is fan fiction publishable? This is a question that has been touched on here and there, and yet I can't find a good answer. Suppose I am writing a story set in the Star Wars universe. I

@Kristi637

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In some ways you're in luck if you want to write fan fiction in the Star Wars or Star Trek universes --because the copyright holders actually solicit authors to write in those universes. Some well-known authors have made good livings writing officially licensed books in those universes. Of course, the bar is probably pretty high to actually write a licensed book, but that's true for any publishing. (As Jason Baker pointed out, you need to have already built your reputation as an author before being invited to write a licensed Star Wars book.)

Unpublished fan fiction is a bit of a legal gray area, but generally most people don't care (or even notice) unless you're actually making money. In the case that your unlicensed, unpublished fan-fiction does becomes popular on its own, and you decide you want to publish it, you'll probably need to do what Twilight fan fiction writer E. L. James did with her work 50 Shades of Grey, and rewrite it to remove all copyrighted references before publication. I don't know if there were any legal maneuvers behind the scenes to disentangle it from Twilight, but neither its origins as fan-fiction, nor its defanficification seem to have hurt its popularity at all. It probably helps that the plot, themes and setting had already diverged so widely from the source.

If you are actually hoping to turn a profit from using someone else's characters and settings by name, without permission or compensation, you are stealing intellectual property and are in the moral and legal wrong. Furthermore, you'll be creating something that no legitimate publisher would ever touch, even with a ten-foot pole. At least do the minimum, and rename the characters and settings --that's what thousands of successful authors did with all their Lord of the Rings rip-offs. If your story can't stand on its own without people thinking of the original, then it really is parasitic on someone else's hard work and creativity.

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