Article in SLJ: When Harry Met Bella

The August issue of School Library Journal is now available online, so I get to announce that Liz B. and I wrote this month's cover story: When Harry Met Bella, which is about one of our favorite topics: Fanfiction. We wrote answers to some common questions about fanfiction, including "How legal is all of this, anyway?" and listed some of our favorite fanfiction sites. Let me tell you, it was NOT easy to get it all into 2,000 words. I think the first draft of the article was twice that long, and that was without the sidebars.

Once you've read the article, if you've got questions about fanfiction, I'm happy to answer them.

The copyright in the Rye

Today's publishing lesson: If it isn't yours and it's still under copyright, don't sell it.

Seems obvious to you and me, but the latest debacle in the industry goes something like this: An author calling himself J.D. California wants to publish a book called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, about Holden Caulfield as a man in his mid-70s. J.D. Salinger is suing.

-CNN: Lawsuit targets "rip-off" of "Catcher in the Rye"
-BBC news: Salinger sues over Rye "sequel"
-New York Times: Planned ‘Rye’ Sequel Draws Salinger Suit
-Huffington Post: Right Or Wrong: J.D. Salinger Wants Holden To Stay "Forever Young" (Warning: If you've ever written fanfiction of any kind at any point in your life, this one will make you roll your eyes.)

Parody is protected by fair use laws, but this looks like a continuation (or where I come from, fanfiction), rather than a parody. Sigh. Some people never learn.

Recap: YA Lit Symposium

I've just returned from YALSA's first YA lit symposium, "How We Read Now." There were some minor glitches, of course, but overall I have to say it was enjoyable, educational, and well-organized.

I got into Nashville late Friday afternoon, just in time to get my registration materials, unpack, and get to the happy hour sponsored by Little, Brown. Many thanks to Victoria Stapleton and all at LBYR for a fabulous time. There were books and good conversation. Then, I confess, I had to go be boring and head back to my room to do a run-through of the presentation I was giving with Liz B. I think our hour-and-a-half presentation probably involved 10 hours of work, total, between putting the presentation together and practicing the timing.

Saturday I attended "Thrilling Young Adults: How to Keep the Attention of Today’s Teens," a panel with authors Margaret Peterson Haddix and Patrick Jones, editor and author Deborah Noyes, and librarian moderator Amy Alessio. The first part of the program, the panelists talked about what makes a book thrilling regardless of genre, followed by questions about publishing and marketing YA. I was most interested by the answers to the question of whether or not awards are important in the YA lit world. Noyes noted that for her house, Candlewick, awards were important because as a house they tend to focus on more standalone, literary fiction, the type that tends to win awards. Jones said that the fastest way to make reluctant readers run away from the book is to put an award sticker on the front. To this, I say, "maybe." I think it depends much more on the book. Repossessed is a great reluctant reader read, imho. To every book its reader and all. Also, reluctant readers aren't the only readers out there. The readers who want more esoteric and literary books must be reached as well.

After this program, it was back to work on our presentation. Starbucks, a few run-throughs, and timing. Then it was time to set up and present.

If you're interested in seeing our PowerPoint presentation, you can view it at the YALSA wiki here: Fandom, Fan Life, and Participatory Culture.

Saturday evening I had the pleasure of dining with Susan Kuklin, author of No Choirboy: Murder, Violence and Teenagers on Death Row. No Choirboy is an outstanding look at how these teens got to death row and how their lives are affected and restricted. I am addicted to watching shows like Lockup so perhaps I am a little biased, having a special interest in this topic. I think, though, that whether or not you're into watching law procedurals of any kind, this is a book worth reading. More than simple interviews with death row inmates, Kuklin writes about our criminal justice system and those who help young offenders. It's also nominated for Best Books for Young Adults 2009 and I hope it makes the final list. Many thanks to Tim Jones at Henry Holt BYR for organizing this event.

On Sunday I attended "Hit List or Hot List," presented by Drs Teri Lesesne and Rosemary Chance. By far, the thing I found most interesting about this session was their showing the audience the extreme dissonance between the Accelerated Reader level of a given teen book and what audience the book actually appeals to. For example, Barry Lyga's Boy Toy has a reading level of 4.5, or about mid-fourth grade. Tyrell by Coe Booth has a 4.4 reading level, and The Hunger Games has a 5.3 RL, or early fifth grade. I find all of that completely insane! Of course, those AR reading levels are determined solely by vocabulary and sentence structure. They ignore content and characterization, the things that make a book more than just the words on its pages. I would have absolutely loved for the entire session to cover AR, reading levels, lexile levels, and what it REALLY means when a fourth grader "can read on a ninth-grade level," but that's for another session entirely. Instead, Lesesne and Chance talked about censorship and content versus reading level, then invited authors Barry Lyga, Coe Booth, and Julie Anne Peters to talk about their books and readers' reactions.

I confess I skipped the rest of the sessions that day in favor of eating lunch and trying to make an earlier flight home (which didn't happen, sigh), but there's plenty of information on the YALSA conference wiki and Melissa at Librarian by Day liveblogged all the sessions she attended. If you Twitter, there's also an index of many Twitters from the symposium here (including my own that says I was too tired to Twitter, but that I would blog later, ha!).

The next YALSA YA Lit Symposium will be in Albequerque in 2010, if you'd like to plan ahead. And personally, I'm lobbying the planning committee to look at Pittsburgh for 2012. YA lit plus the Smashed Potato pizza from Fuel N' Fuddle might make for the best conference ever.

Interview with Heidi Tandy: Fair use, copyright, and what it means

I've mentioned my friend Heidi Tandy before, she who makes very adorable Supernatural fanvids and owns more pink clothing than anyone I know. What I haven't mentioned is that Heidi works as an intellectual property lawyer and has been involved in the administrative side of one of the largest Harry Potter fan sites on the web, FictionAlley.org, for many years. Recently, Heidi posted in her blog her happiness in the ruling of Lenz vs. Universal Music, which states that the Fair Use doctrine "permits limited use of copyright materials without the owner's permission."

Why does this matter to librarians? Because in this field, we get asked a lot of questions about what constitutes copyright and fair use, especially in school libraries. With the fandom presentation that Liz Burns and I are giving at the upcoming YALSA YA Lit Symposium in Nashville, we're talking about an entire set of activities that revolves around fair use and transformative works (works derived from the creations of another person). Because I don't even pretend to speak Lawyerese, I interviewed Heidi, who is very good at translating Lawyerese into English, via email about what this ruling means for fandomers and transformative works everywhere.

Carlie Webber: Tell us what constitutes "fair use" and why it matters to librarians?

Heidi Tandy: Fair use is a lawful use of copyright, as the Northern District of California said in Lenz v. Universal Music. Basically, fair use allows someone who is not the copyright owner, and who is not licensed by the copyright owner, to reproduce a copyrighted work. Generally, fair use exists when a portion of the first work is incorporated into a second work, perhaps in a review, or in educational materials, or in fanfic, or in a parody, or in a transformative work.

CW: How has this ruling changed what we can and cannot do with original works?

HT:That's the nifty thing - it didn't change anything. It clarified things. There was no case that said that it was copyright infringement to upload a video to YouTube that featured a video of a toddler dancing to a Prince song - and the new case affirmatively stated that it may be fair use.

CW: What do teachers, librarians, fan writers, etc. still have to be careful of in terms of how we use another's work for teaching or transformation?

HT:You need to look to the four factors that the US Copyright Office has stated need to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

For example, f you're teaching writing or literature or history and have students write a story based on another work, and the student is instructed not to copy extensively from the first story, it's likely that the student's story will be fair use.


CW: Give us some examples of things that are thought to be fair use, but really aren't.

HT: Oh, that's a difficult one. Anything transformative may be fair use, so something isn't fair use if there's nothing transformative about it. Splitting an episode of a TV show into five parts so you can upload it onto YouTube isn't transformative, but using five minutes of clips from a tv show to create a fanvid about that episode may be fair use, because you have taken a small portion of the work, there's no
commercial purpose, and the effect on the potential market is minimal. Photocopying a textbook and sharing it with a class isn't transformative and under the Kinko's case it isn't fair use, either. But putting a quotation from that book on a mural on the wall is probably fair use.

CW: Twitter just suspended account of people who were Twittering as characters from Mad Men. If the author or creator of an original work states that he or she does not want derivative works created from his books/films/TV shows but a fan creates it anyway, does the creator of the original work have any recourse? In the past, writers like Anne Rice and Nora Roberts have requested that people not write fanfic about their characters.

HT: It depends on what's created, but generally, the wishes of the original creator won't impact a court's analysis under copyright or trademark law, although it might make it more likely that the creator
will send his or her fans a cease and desist letter, or even take them to court. The original creator can always take fanwork creators to court - the real question is whether the original creator can win. The court would use the fair use analysis to determine if the fanwork is fair use, because if it is, it is a lawful use of copyright.

It's going to be more difficult for copyright owners to claim that a fan creation should be taken down via a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice now, at least in California, because of the recent ruling. A copyright holder now has to at least examine whether something is fair use before sending the DMCA notice, and a claim of fair use can be used to fight back against the copyright holder's assertion that something is fair use.

CW: I know there are always questions in the library world about what copyright covers and how long it lasts. Can you give us a crash course in copyright?

HT:The copyright office has an excellent collection of information at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf - but it primarily talks about works that are created now. For works that were created before the 1970s, the situation can be a little different. If you need to find out whether a work is still protected by copyright, check out the Public Domain Sherpa.

Basically, copyright gives the creator of a work a bundle of rights - including the rights of duplication and distribution. The creator can give those rights away temporarily - that's a license - or permanently
- that's an assignment.

Thanks, Heidi!

Wizards > Vampires

I do believe this settles the Harry Potter vs. Twilight debate once and for all.

Tinhattery, happy endings, and Breaking Dawn

Tinhattery, happy endings, and Breaking Dawn

First thing to know before you read the rest of this entry: I have not read Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, nor do I plan to despite her excellent taste in naming characters. (Carlisle AND Carlie? Awesome.) My opinions on the subject of this entry are entirely speculation, based on a little fandom experience. That said...

Author Maggie Stiefvater noted in her blog today that fans of the Twilight Saga are not enjoying Breaking Dawn, with almost an equal number of 5-star and 1-star reviews. Currently there are 860 reader reviews and an average rating of three stars. Stiefvater suggests that this is due in part to the fact that Meyer ties everything up neatly at the end of the series. She compares the very neat ending of BD to the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which, despite the epilogue that I like to pretend doesn't exist, was not entirely happy. It left the readers with a mix of emotions. Not everyone got everything they always wanted and lived happily ever after. Stiefvater's conclusion is that readers like to be treated badly by an author, which made me smile in a good way. In general, Stiefvater's blog entry is made of win. The comments mostly agree and offer their own speculations as to why fans didn't like the ending, but none of them touch on one of my opinions: That Edward was taken away from female readers, and because he's living happily ever after with Bella, he can't live happily ever after with them.

Many readers of the Twilight Saga have said that Edward is the perfect boyfriend: He's hot (or cold, as the case may be), he's smart, he's rich, he's got amazing physical prowess, and he loves Bella no matter what. He does everything that he believes is in her best interest, including leaving without a trace for three months. But it's all okay, because it's all to make Bella a better person. Personally, Edward creeps me out, but there are legions of teenage girls who would disagree vehemently with me. Legions of teenage girls want a boyfriend exactly like Edward. They want to marry Edward and live happily ever after on a sunny island. They also know that the boys in their high school can't compare to Edward. How could they? So finding perfection in a boyfriend, at least at their high school is out of the question. They can, however, read about Edward and imagine being with him as described by Bella, and I think due to the book's being in first person they may even be able to imagine themselves as Bella, especially because Bella is devoid of most characteristics that would make her a normal high schooler (she has no extracurricular activities, for example). I haven't gone looking for Twilight fanfic, but I have a feeling there's quite a large number of fics in which Edward meets a new girl named Serena and he ditches Bella for her.

Are readers doing this consciously? I don't think so. They're of the same mindframe that leads fanfic writers to create Mary Sues: Often, readers want to be a part of a character's life and there's no way to do that other than fantasy. With Edward and Bella most definitely together forever and living a conflict-free life, the fact that the reader can never be with Edward is cemented. Romances work best when there's conflict, or when characters are flawed, or both. It's why Ron and Hermione's romance worked for me but Harry and Ginny's didn't. We all develop literary crushes and we all like to see romances succeed, but I think there's a degree of jealousy, small or large, on the part of the reader that spawns from not being able to have Edward.

Fanfiction: The future of literacy

In today's NYTimes there's an article, the first in a series, called Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? The awesome Linda Braun will talk about just this topic (and more) at the YALSA YA Lit Symposium, so if you haven't registered yet, do so! There are many, many good questions raised by this article: What is reading? Is it better, worse, or the same to read online as it is to read a book? Are today's teens doomed because many of them would rather spend time online than reading books? The point in the article I want to talk about, though, is fanfiction.

Liz B. and I will present on this topic at the YA Lit Symposium. We have an hour and a half to present and let me tell you, it is not enough. I bring up fanfiction because one of the teen subjects of this NYTimes article, 15-year-old Nadia Konyk, is a mostly reluctant reader who loves fanfiction.net. Now, FF.net has many, many flaws, but I will say this about it: It's relatively easy, easier than many fandom-specific archives, to use. Anyone can create an account for free. Anyone can upload stories in a huge variety of fandoms. Anyone can comment, or leave a review on a story. Of course, it's easy to see the flaws in this system. Anyone can upload badly written stories full of grammar errors, and they often do. Anyone can flame another person's story, and they often do. But what the NYTimes article doesn't address is that Nadia is expanding her literacy by reading fanfiction.

Fanfiction forces you to look at characters in new ways and think differently about their actions and motivations. When you write fanfiction, you think of characters beyond the way they appear on the page. You think of all the things a character might be capable of but isn't seen doing in the series. For example, would Ron Weasley ever use an Unforgivable Curse? What if Tally Youngblood hadn't thrown her necklace into the fire and chose instead to rat on David? With fanfic, the possibilities are endless. You can write fanfic in prose or poetry or word art. You can write about any character in just about any book or TV series or movie out there. Fanfic does not have to stick to the point of view of the series of the book, and it doesn't have to be about the main character. One of my favorite Harry Potter fanfics of all time is mostly made up of original characters and the only recognizable name from the series is Albus Dumbledore. The writing and the author's attention to detail and characterization are truly spectacular. One of the things I personally like about fanfic is that it gives writers the chance to develop one particular writing skill, such as first-person point of view or past perfect tense, without worrying about building an entire world and its characters.

The one big caveat with fanfic is that good fic is hard to find. I would say that 85% of what's on Fanfiction.net is utter dreck. Another ten percent is readable but mediocre. Four of the remaining five percent are good stories with solid writing, but nothing special, and one percent is outstanding. I don't have one set formula for finding good fic, but try these tips:

1. Do an interest search on LiveJournal. LiveJournal is a place where fanfic and fanfic communities thrive.
2. Find an author you like, and see who this author has favorited on ff.net and/or on LiveJournal.
3. Many fandoms have their own fan boards and discussion sites. Harry Potter, for example, has FictionAlley, which houses fanfics and recommendations forums.
4. If you're a romance fan, you're in luck. Fanfiction is FILLED with romance. On ff.net, you can limit the characters in the story and read about your favorite characters to your heart's content.
5. Pay attention to the story's summary. If the summary is enticing, chances are you'll like the author's work.

A lot of finding good fic is trial and error. Mostly error. I've read a lot of bad fanfic in my time and chances are, you will too. The time spent reading the bad stuff, though, is worth it when you find the good stuff.

The best con ever: Cruise to Mars

As part of the research I'm doing for the fandom presentation Liz B. and I are giving at the YALSA YA Lit Symposium, I'm collecting a list of cool fandom activities librarians can use with their patrons. I have to say, however, that all speeches, fanfic writing and costuming contests pale in comparison to the Cruise to Mars. Somehow, I don't think BCCLS would be willing to pay the $800 I'd need to go on the cruise. But how cool does it sound? Speed friending! A scavenger hunt! Celebrity stories!

Now, a VM-themed murder mystery evening, that's something libraries could do.

Any demon you can know and any weapon you can show

The concept of a fanvid is simple: Take clips from the TV show or movie of your choice and synchronize them to a song, any song. With the right song and the right clips, you can tell your own story about just about anything. Some vids are serious, some silly. Lately, my friend Heidi has been doing a series of fanvids using Schoolhouse Rock songs and the main characters of Supernatural, with hilarious results. For your viewing pleasure, A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing:



See, TV is good for you!