Kindle Worlds permits fan fiction writers to sell, through Amazon, stories inspired by Alloy Entertainment series such as Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries. Amazon and Alloy will acquire the rights to the work without further compensation to the writers. Racheline Maltese has questions:
The contractual terms of Kindle Worlds are the sort traditional professional writers would be strongly advised against signing on to. Is fannish work worth less? Should it be?
John Scalzi suspects that the plan is not, ultimately, to the benefit of the writer:
The argument here could be, well, you know, people who were writing fan fiction weren’t getting paid or [did not have] rights to these characters and worlds anyway, so only getting paid for their work once is still better than what they would have gotten before. And that’s not an entirely bad argument on one level. But … there’s a difference between writing fan fiction because you love the world and the characters on a personal level, and Amazon and Alloy actively exploiting that love for their corporate gain and throwing you a few coins for your trouble.
Gavia Baker-Whitelaw quotes “author and fanfic enthusiast” Morgan Davies:
“Fandom has always been a fundamentally anti-capitalistic endeavor… it’s the only place I know of where writing is a uniquely playful act. It’s about fans taking mainstream culture and redefining it and owning it in a creative but not monetary way. It’s inherently subversive. The idea that a huge corporation will be selling fanfiction and that the original creators would benefit monetarily from that is extremely disturbing to me.”
The Dish 