"Very careful must we be. Down a dark path this line of thinking may take us."

Well said, misquoted Yoda. Applying the adjective "licensed" to one subset of fanfiction automatically categorizes the remainder as "not licensed." I worry that this might lead to a situation where the owners of intellectual properties wield more power over when and where fan works can be created/posted anywhere. I prefer the ambiguously legal, homogeneous mass of fanfiction as it currently stands.

A. How canon? Exactly as canon as the original creator says. Note I said "creator" and not "publisher." The author/whatever is the one whose head found the story, and they (to me) are the only one(s) who should be able to declare canon or uncanon anything written by another author.

B. Are we allowed to spork? Quite frankly, I'm going to be optimistic and assume that, even if it is merely publishers and not the original author who makes the decision of what gets published, that they will still weed out anything bad enough to be sporked in a PPC mission. Don't forget, folks: we spork the terrible of the bad, not just so-so stuff. Just because a mediocre-fic gets published this way, just because it doesn't perfectly jive with canon, doesn't suddenly make it mission-worthy.

Let's maybe watch and see what gets published before we have big, divisive arguments over what we can do with that material, maybe, please, hm? >.>

In my mind, fanfic is fanfic and canon is canon. Altering one variable (in this case, formal publication vs. online display) should not change that.

As far as badfic, that's at the chooser's discretion, and the amount of badfic published relies solely on who that judge is and how they filter the stories. If each fanfiction is actually weighed for their merit, edited, proofread, and commented upon before publication, I don't imagine the PPC will have much to worry about. If every fic passes muster, then we'll have a lot on our plates.

Well, it looks like stories will be moderated, so I guess that only decent enough stories will be published. Most of the worst charges are already forbidden, so I am hoping that we'll have decent stuff.

Of course, considering that the Inheritance Cycle, Twilight, and Fifty Shades of Gray got published, there might still be stuff deserving sporking.

About canonicity, I'd say that we need Word of God here - we need to know what the authors of the original works actually think about the Worlds.
As a rule of thumb, though, every story is probably going to be a subcanon of its own.

In fact, this initiative kinda reminds me of Japanese doujin works - in Japan the copyright and royalties riles are more lax, and fanmade novels and mangas are actually allowed to be sold in limited amounts at fairs like Comiket as it is viewed as free publicity for the main franchise.



This doesn't mean that I think that the PPC is out of jurisdiction here, just like it isn't about doujin works. Unless the author of the original canon themselves say that the story is canon or a official subcanon, it will stay as fanfiction for me, published or not. And so I will feel entitled to mission it if is bad enough.

It isn't probably going to happen, though - not only I would have to buy the story from Amazon, and I never bought anything from there at all, but I kinda doubt that anime or video game canons (the ones I'm active in PPC-wise) are going to be included in this initiative.


All in all, though, I think that Kindle Worlds is a good idea.

Is it bad that I want the BBC to allow Sherlock onto that list? Or any of the other fandoms I've written novel-length fics for?

are confusing me. Are you trying to say that you believe that they will NOT publish Suefics, or are you saying that you believe that they WILL publish Suefics?

Canon is, I think, defined by the original creator(s) of a 'verse.
Anything commenting on this 'verse not created by those who made the canon is considered fanon unless approved as canon by the creators (or those holding the rights - sadly, sometimes) and therefore sporkable.