Entry tags:
I have a theory
(It isn't bunnies.)
I've been reading some of the posts about money and fandom that are making the rounds, and in the comments to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fairestcat's post, people touch on the source of much of the weirdness in fandom re fanworks and money: old-school SFF fandom.
It's always been bizarre to me that fanartists could make money off their fanart, when fanfic writers were expected not to. (I should add here: I love the fannish gift economy, and thought it should encompass all fanworks, not just fic.) I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and eventually came up with what I think might be the answer. Or an answer, anyway.
So here's what I think happened: back in the day (mid-20th century), if you were an SFF fan going to conventions, there were three "paths" to participating. (Someone's going to come and argue that. I'm generalizing wildly here for simplicity. I know there were many ways to participate.) If you wrote fiction, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and go pro, and create content for people to talk about. If you drew art, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and also sell it directly to buyers at art shows at conventions, which were basically fandom's galleries.
If you didn't want to be a "pro" creating more content, but wanted to talk about fandom in general or the content that already existed, you contributed ("tribbed") to zines (APAzines, letterzines). Tribbers got copies, and other people could buy copies (of the letterzines) for the price of copying and mailing, basically. (Again, generalizing wildly, just to provide a sense of a common approach. Don't @ me *g*.)
Star Trek fandom branched off from SF fandom, and took a lot of SF fandom's terminology and culture with it, including zines. They were created along the old familiar lines: people who wanted to tribbed to zines, and got "paid" with a copy of the zine, and people who hadn't tribbed could buy it for cost and shipping. But in ST fandom and its descendants, zines were as likely to be full of fanfic and fan poetry as meta or analysis.
Artists could get their work out by tribbing to zines, or making zine covers, but art reproduction was harder than mimeographing or photocopying text, so artists also tended to show their work at conventions, which also got set up along the old familiar lines: an art show that allowed for sale or auction of the art.
And then that got embedded in the culture. Fanfic was part of the conversation, like meta, and you didn't pay for it beyond the cost of physically receiving a copy. Fanart that was in zines was also part of the conversation, and ditto.
Fanfic writers who wanted to be paid filed off the serial numbers and went pro if they could, just like in SF fandom. Fan artists didn't have as clear a path to a pro life, but could sell their art at cons. Even as fandom moved online, it was hard to show art, so art stayed outside the general conversation.
These days, art is a huge part of the conversation, and for the most part is free the way fanfic and meta are; you can browse around DA or tumblr (or you could, anyway, sigh) and see all sorts of visual takes on things. But because it was outside the conversation for so long, and treated as a sort of pro content, it's still much more acceptable in fannish culture to take art commissions, or sell art.
It's a bizarre difference in approach when you only see the existing conversation among all the creative forms of output. But I really think it goes back to those early days of creating something slightly different out of SF fandom's culture, and the translation just not being perfect.
I've been reading some of the posts about money and fandom that are making the rounds, and in the comments to
fairestcat's post, people touch on the source of much of the weirdness in fandom re fanworks and money: old-school SFF fandom.It's always been bizarre to me that fanartists could make money off their fanart, when fanfic writers were expected not to. (I should add here: I love the fannish gift economy, and thought it should encompass all fanworks, not just fic.) I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and eventually came up with what I think might be the answer. Or an answer, anyway.
So here's what I think happened: back in the day (mid-20th century), if you were an SFF fan going to conventions, there were three "paths" to participating. (Someone's going to come and argue that. I'm generalizing wildly here for simplicity. I know there were many ways to participate.) If you wrote fiction, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and go pro, and create content for people to talk about. If you drew art, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and also sell it directly to buyers at art shows at conventions, which were basically fandom's galleries.
If you didn't want to be a "pro" creating more content, but wanted to talk about fandom in general or the content that already existed, you contributed ("tribbed") to zines (APAzines, letterzines). Tribbers got copies, and other people could buy copies (of the letterzines) for the price of copying and mailing, basically. (Again, generalizing wildly, just to provide a sense of a common approach. Don't @ me *g*.)
Star Trek fandom branched off from SF fandom, and took a lot of SF fandom's terminology and culture with it, including zines. They were created along the old familiar lines: people who wanted to tribbed to zines, and got "paid" with a copy of the zine, and people who hadn't tribbed could buy it for cost and shipping. But in ST fandom and its descendants, zines were as likely to be full of fanfic and fan poetry as meta or analysis.
Artists could get their work out by tribbing to zines, or making zine covers, but art reproduction was harder than mimeographing or photocopying text, so artists also tended to show their work at conventions, which also got set up along the old familiar lines: an art show that allowed for sale or auction of the art.
And then that got embedded in the culture. Fanfic was part of the conversation, like meta, and you didn't pay for it beyond the cost of physically receiving a copy. Fanart that was in zines was also part of the conversation, and ditto.
Fanfic writers who wanted to be paid filed off the serial numbers and went pro if they could, just like in SF fandom. Fan artists didn't have as clear a path to a pro life, but could sell their art at cons. Even as fandom moved online, it was hard to show art, so art stayed outside the general conversation.
These days, art is a huge part of the conversation, and for the most part is free the way fanfic and meta are; you can browse around DA or tumblr (or you could, anyway, sigh) and see all sorts of visual takes on things. But because it was outside the conversation for so long, and treated as a sort of pro content, it's still much more acceptable in fannish culture to take art commissions, or sell art.
It's a bizarre difference in approach when you only see the existing conversation among all the creative forms of output. But I really think it goes back to those early days of creating something slightly different out of SF fandom's culture, and the translation just not being perfect.
no subject
I always got the feeling that the reason why fanart sold, and fan writing didn't, was because art has always required a financial outlay of some kind in fancy pens or nice ink or good paper, and later in software and printing costs. Most fanartists couldn't expect to sell something scribbled in pencil on a piece of torn-off notebook paper at a convention or for a commission; it had to be of at least halfway-decent quality for the transaction to make financial sense. Even people who had the equipment already (professional artists, graphic designers) generally had to be compensated for the costs of the consumable products (paper, pigments, ink) or the fact that high-end software is damned expensive. Fan writing, by contrast, comes as typed pages or electronic files -- neither of which usually can command a "price" in the same regard.
Or something along those lines. Perhaps I'm mistaken. But this was how I always viewed the line between charging for fanart and writing fic/meta for free.
no subject
You assemble the relevant bit in your head, whether the text is a crisp professionally typeset black or a slightly fuzzy just typed blue. However looking at a mimeographed or standard xeroxed version of a drawing is decidedly not the same as looking at even an ink drawing made with b/w reproduction in mind.
Even b/w good image reproduction is non-trivial (otherwise there wouldn't have developed whole art styles and techniques around the limitations) and it only gets exponentially worse and expensive as soon as color gets involved. And that was far more true before color computer printers got both cheaper and better.
So (pre-digital) fanart is more like cottage fancrafts that way, like people selling a handmade Star Trek tricorder replica or such. Without serious reproduction know-how and financial outlay it is not going to be a mass produced competition to the official stuff.
no subject
no subject
Since old-school SFF fandom was heavily based on SFF literature, and a lot of art I've seen at SFF conventions was more generic (dragons, elves, space ships, aliens, starscapes...) and not specific enough to be infringing, that may be why there's a "presumption of innocence" of fanart.