What it takes to be a librarian is basically expressing an interest in doing so. There are some hoops, but they're pretty simple. I remember setting up an account and adding books without any special TOC or agreements going on. I have no idea if that made me a "librarian" or if individual users' book lists are somehow different.
I'm not sure they could easily forbid entries from "fanfic archives." Does that include Wattpadd, which is used for fanfic and original fic? (AO3 allows original work.) Does it include private author webpages, where an author might post chapters or a whole work as a free sample?
Deciding what a "fanfic archive" is, is likely more work than the Amazonian managers of GR want to bother with. Unless they're likely to get sued over something, I suspect they're going to go with "a book is whatever the librarians decide to list as a book."
Fanfic archives are easy for fanfic readers/writers to identify, and to separate from "general fic archives that may allow some fanfic." But for non-fanfic readers, I'm not sure it's anywhere near as obvious. E.g. while Smashwords has a "no fanfic" rule, it's buried in their TOS (and relates to copyright; new Sherlock Holmes works should be fine)--and the whole Jekkara Press line is genderflipped versions of public domain works.
There's another issue, in that GR doesn't require links--you can review books that have no presence on Amazon or anywhere else online. And GR's limited staff is certainly not going to go poring through every "favorite book from childhood" to try to find out if the book is a "real book" or a fanfic thing.
I agree with you on several points--GR profits from other people's work, and their standards are lax to allow that. And that sucks.
I just don't agree that it'd be easy enough for them to prevent fanworks--first, they'd have to *care* that some of the "books" listed are fanfic or otherwise "not real books," and then someone would have to convince them it was a problem, and then they'd have to deal with the complexity of defining fanfic or "fanfic archive;" I'm pretty sure that GR is going to invest approximately zero hours on this.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:19 am (UTC)I'm not sure they could easily forbid entries from "fanfic archives." Does that include Wattpadd, which is used for fanfic and original fic? (AO3 allows original work.) Does it include private author webpages, where an author might post chapters or a whole work as a free sample?
Deciding what a "fanfic archive" is, is likely more work than the Amazonian managers of GR want to bother with. Unless they're likely to get sued over something, I suspect they're going to go with "a book is whatever the librarians decide to list as a book."
Fanfic archives are easy for fanfic readers/writers to identify, and to separate from "general fic archives that may allow some fanfic." But for non-fanfic readers, I'm not sure it's anywhere near as obvious. E.g. while Smashwords has a "no fanfic" rule, it's buried in their TOS (and relates to copyright; new Sherlock Holmes works should be fine)--and the whole Jekkara Press line is genderflipped versions of public domain works.
There's another issue, in that GR doesn't require links--you can review books that have no presence on Amazon or anywhere else online. And GR's limited staff is certainly not going to go poring through every "favorite book from childhood" to try to find out if the book is a "real book" or a fanfic thing.
I agree with you on several points--GR profits from other people's work, and their standards are lax to allow that. And that sucks.
I just don't agree that it'd be easy enough for them to prevent fanworks--first, they'd have to *care* that some of the "books" listed are fanfic or otherwise "not real books," and then someone would have to convince them it was a problem, and then they'd have to deal with the complexity of defining fanfic or "fanfic archive;" I'm pretty sure that GR is going to invest approximately zero hours on this.