This blogger remembers when we had to put disclaimers at the head of our fics and pray that someone didn’t take it into their heads to sue us for what we created.
This blogger remembers brilliant artists and writers getting decades of work obliterated on LJ because someone who wanted to tell people what they were allowed to create went running to someone who wanted a profit, and told them the artists and writers had been naughty.
This blogger remembers just how hard the creators of AO3 worked to build the thing we all seem to take for granted now.
This blogger watched friends dive into the creation process so heartily and determinedly that they all but disappeared from the writing/gaming/artistic side of their fandom for YEARS while they worked to make the archive happen.
This blogger remembers the sense of giddy wonder that there would possibly be LAWYERS involved, willing to defend our right to create these works, and not leave us hanging at the mercy of corporate legal teams.
This blogger is aware that she reads between twenty to fifty books’ worth of material every year on AO3, and is never REQUIRED to pay a penny for the privilege of getting access.
This blogger is aware that she will not ever see advertisements on AO3, and that her personal data and reading preferences won’t be sold to advertisers in order to raise the money that AO3 needs to pay for the services they provide.
This blogger is aware that AO3 is, and has always been, a labor of love; by fans, for fans, and not for profiting off fans – and this is what makes it unique in the whole of the media universe.
This blogger has NEVER taken AO3 for granted, and has ALWAYS been damned glad to have access to it. Even in years when this blogger didn’t have the means to support it financially.
Same.
AO3 is an archive of the content fandom has produced, not a curated collection. The point wasn’t to be a home for GOOD fanworks it was to be a home for ALL fanworks, to provide free access to them and preserve our history as a subculture.
This blog will never apologize for supporting that.
Rather than reblog that long AO3 thing I saw and have seen before… I don’t really care if AO3 fundraises, although I’m curious what they’ll do with the extra tens of thousands of dollars, though I’m sure it’ll go into upgrades or into a lockbox for future use when funds are low.
For someone who claims to be a fandom elder, you seem to be really, really poorly informed on a) what a nonprofit is, b) how AO3 functions, c) the legal status of fanfiction, and d) the history of fanfiction platforms.
This would be like if OTW took whatever extra they had and gave it to their board members. They can’t do that, and they don’t do that. The board members who run it are entirely volunteers.
Now, nonprofits obviously can hire people and pay them for their work. CEOs of nonprofits can make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sometimes nonprofits get bad publicity for that. If it’s too extreme, they can get their nonprofit status taken away.
The OTW occasionally has to pay a few contractors for things – if you look at their financial docs, which are easily accessible on the site, you’ll see that that only amounts to like $20K a year or something. That’s probably to hire someone with some specialty to fix a thing here or there, that kind of thing. I think last year they might have hired someone temporarily to help with some of the search overhauls? (Not sure, 2017 financials aren’t up yet)
They don’t have one single paid staff member. None. No, they don’t pay the writers, but they don’t pay the programmers, the lawyers, the tag wranglers, the people doing PR, the people handling the god damn money. None of those people personally sees a penny of what you donate.
So not only does nobody profit in that the extra money isn’t just distributed among stockholders or whoever, nobody involved in OTW/AO3 profits directly from their involvement.
That covers a and b. Now, for c and d…
I don’t believe for one second that you don’t know that the legality of fanfiction hinges on not making a profit from it. Elsewhere in replies, you point out places like RedBubble where people sell fanart – do you sell on RB? Because I do, and it is honestly a total crapshoot whether your designs get to stay up or not. If someone involved with a media property stumbles upon it and reports it, RB takes it down immediately, no questions asked.
Now, when a design based on Hamilton lyrics or something gets taken down, I get it. I know I’m rolling the dice when I post that.
But I had a design that said “Emotionally compromised by fictional characters” – no characters were mentioned in the design at all, it was just that text with a few flourishes around it. It got taken down because I tagged it Harry Potter (and some other fandoms). It was not violating any copyright at all, but RB took it down without question when Warner Brothers asked them to, because it was tagged Harry Potter. I could’ve just removed the tag!!
Is that how you want AO3 to function? Because if writers were getting paid, that’s exactly how they would have to function legally. As soon as a copyright holder complains, they’d take your fic down. YouTube has had all kinds of problems with this, because some studios get slap-happy with the DMCA claims on things that should be fair use, like commentary, and YT tends to take videos down and ask questions later.
The OTW, in addition to running AO3, also fights for the legal rights of fan creators, btw. For example, when the DMCA was passed, it basically made it illegal to rip your own DVDs and blu-rays. There go fanvids! The OTW was part of the legal team that got that exemption passed.
So if you want to know how writers benefit from AO3/OTW, they’re actively fighting for your right to write and post fanfiction at all. Thank them for that.
And as for being able to just go off to other platforms… Okay, so do that. Go. Is ff.net going to give you a cut of their profits? They make a profit-profit, btw. They are a for-profit company who makes actual money off of ads, and they do not give a penny of that back to writers. The people who run it keep it for themselves. They certainly don’t put it into improving their site, let alone fighting for the legal rights of their writers. Hell, they happily ban fanfiction based on any creator who complains about it!
Historically, every for-profit host of fan content has bowed to advertisers and/or dmca-happy content creators to one extent or another. AO3 is the only one that was created expressly for the purpose of protecting fanfiction and the rights of fic writers. You’re welcome to go back to those other platforms, but they won’t pay you and you better hope nobody complains about your fic.
If you can get people to pay you for your fic via Patreon or kofi whatever, more power to you. I support that. You won’t have a legal leg to stand on if the creators find you and shut you down, much like on RedBubble, but you can probably fly under the radar well enough.
But don’t ask a nonprofit organization to put its entire existence at risk just so you can make a couple dollars off your fic.
Did you know you can subscribe to fics you like on AO3? All you have to do is log into your AO3 account, go to the top of that fic, and click the Subscribe button, and you’ll get an email whenever that fic gets a new chapter added!
In fact, did you know you can even subscribe to your favorite AO3 authors? Just go to the top of their main AO3 dashboard, and click the Subscribe button there. You’ll get emailed whenever your fave posts anything new!
This is one of my favorite features on AO3. It’s fantastic. 😀
As a fanfiction reader, you may have noticed AO3 is running a banner at the top of the site this week for its fundraiser. The fundraiser isn’t just an opportunity to support the archive. For a single, $10 donation, “you may choose to become an OTW member. Members have the right to vote in organizational elections. Membership lasts for one year from the date of the most recent qualifying donation. If you are already a member, donating US$10 or more today will extend your membership to one year from today. By choosing to become a member you are agreeing to receive emails about OTW elections and a ballot.“
It’s really fucking hard to run even a small fansite for a few hundred members. I’ve done it. It’s thankless, miserable work and you often end up shelling out hundreds of dollars of your own money to keep those small sites running, then lose all your hard work when the site is inevitably forced to closed because four admins can’t afford to keep it running for those few hundred members. The Archive is MASSIVE comparatively. I can only imagine what a beast it is to run. If you can spare the $10, you’ll be getting your money’s worth for the year, I assure you.
Did you know the Archive of Transformative Works does more than just host your favorite fanworks? The Archive is involved in lots of projects! Projects include Fanlore, Legal Advocacy, and a peer-reviewed academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures, as well as Open Doors, which imports at-risk fanwork archives to AO3 so you can keep accessing fanworks that might otherwise be lost.
Go through your old coats and dig up some quarters, then consider using it to become a member of the Archive because Tumblr could be bought out any time, but the fans run the Archive.
*hops off soapbox*
Thank you so much for this wonderful post! It’s so nice to see people loving on the OTW and AO3.
But, seriously, folks like you who run fansites with a few friends and limited resources are heroes, and the Archive of Our Own wouldn’t exist without you. Dedicated fans prove that we can build a home for what we love, and the founding of the Organization for Transformative Works was possible because of that spirit of passion and hard work.
Which is just one of the reasons why we’re committed to preserving at-risk archives. Our Open Doors team partners with site administrators to import fanworks to AO3 so that they won’t be lost if the original site shuts down. We believe that fannish history and culture is important, and it’s our mission to protect and promote it.
So thank you again for your kind words and for encouraging people to donate. We appreciate every bit of support we get. ♥
AO3 gives so much and asks so little. Those of us who can need to support it whenever they ask.
Still cheaper than any of the “regular” addictions…
god keep ur fucking kink meme shit out of ao3 tag y’all make this fandom even more insufferable than it already is and thats saying something!!! The kind of shit y’all post require a fucking trigger warning it doesnt belong in a safe space
Hello! I see there’s been some confusion! Allow me to clear something up: AO3 is not a safe space.
Let me repeat that. Archive Of Our Own is not a safe space, not in the way you mean it.
Why does the Archive have a goal of maximum inclusiveness?
There are a number of wonderful specialized archives. Our aim with this Archive is to provide a place to preserve as many fanworks as possible. At the same time, the Archive software can be used by anyone to create their own archives, including archives limited to particular topics, fandoms, or ratings.
What kind of content do you allow?
We will not remove content from the Archive because it contains explicit material, as long as it doesn’t violate any other part of the content policy (e.g., the harassment policy).
One basic consequence is that users are responsible for reading and heeding the warnings provided by the creator. Risk-averse users should keep in mind that not all content will carry full warnings. If you want to know more, you may also wish to consult the bookmarks that people other than the creator have used to categorize the fanwork.
Some creators do not want to put specific ratings or warnings on their works. Our policy aims to enable creators to choose appropriate labels or to opt not to use ratings and warnings, with the understanding that some users will avoid unrated or unwarned content.
The ratings/warnings policy is really minimal. Why is this?
We believe that appropriate ratings and warnings are often in the eye of the beholder. Users who feel that a fanwork lacks an appropriate rating/warning are encouraged to try to resolve the issue with the creator. Users may also add tags of their own to on-site bookmarks of a fanwork, which other users can consult for more information. When those tags are present, you can click on the “Bookmarks” link at the top of the work to see them.
The stated desires/goals when AO3 was conceived and initially developed can be found here, on a livejournal post from @astolat (founder of VidCon, Yuletide, and AO3, and all around fannish legend). In short, the goal was “allowing ANYTHING – het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult.”
And that, in fact, is precisely what AO3 hosts. You see, AO3 is a safe space for fanfiction. It’s a safe space for people to explore all kinds of fannish content without fear of banning, deletion, or legal reprisal. It was founded, designed, and developed to be a safe space for fandom and fannish works.
There also seems to be some confusion about the nature of safe spaces vs. trigger warnings. A fannish work that merits a trigger warning isn’t something that doesn’t belong in a safe space. The trigger warning is what MAKES something a safe space despite the presence of fannish works that merit warnings.
So holding individual women (because that’s what fandom primarily is, women exploring their sexuality in a safe forum filled with other women doing the same) accountable for their fictional exploration of things that a) exist in real life in genuinely damaging forms, b) have significant impact on women themselves, thus leading in some part to the urge to explore those things safely, and c) have existing in movies, television, popular culture, the Bible, and in all of literature since literature began? Well, that’s just an extension of the same culture that polices women’s sexuality in the first place and drives them to find safe ways to explore it.
Ding ding ding we have a winner 🙌🏼
AO3 was pretty much meant to be a safe space … FOR WRITERS.
FOR WRITERS TO POST PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING AS LONG AS IT IS ADEQUATELY WARNED FOR AND MEETS THEIR CLEARLY POSTED CRITERIA.
IT LITERALLY EXISTS TO PROTECT FANWORKS FROM BEING CENSORED, THREATENED BY LAWYERS, OR TAKEN DOWN OR ALTERED AGAINST THE WRITER’S WILL. THIS APPLIES TO ALL WORKS THAT MEET ITS TOS. ALL OF THEM. YES, INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY THAT REALLY ICKY ONE.
THAT IS LITERALLY ITS PURPOSE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. IT WILL NOT CHANGE ITS PURPOSE AND SUDDENLY DECIDE SOME KINDS OF CENSORSHIP ARE OKAY NOW BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE YELL.
If this makes anyone personally uncomfortable, there’s a very easy way to avoid that. Just don’t use AO3. Problem solved.
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