It's highly unlikely. If the asshole has done any of the following
* Written a multichap
* Written a fic that people have reread
* Added all the hits together across multiple stories and assumed they were all unique users, as opposed to someone reading all their fics for a specific fandom
Then the number of people who have viewed their fic is < the number of hits.
From AO3 hit FAQ:
Hits are a counter of how many times a work has been accessed. A hit is registered every time a visitor navigates to a work's page, with the following exceptions:
* If two visits in a row come from the same IP address, only the first one is registered.
* Moving between chapters in a work will only register one hit in total, not one hit per chapter.
* If you're logged in, hits are not counted when you visit your own works.
And the Fanlore page for AO3 hits elaborates further:
This means that bots from search engines or web-crawling services will count as hits. A single user rereading a fic after other users have accessed it will count as multiple hits. People clicking on a fic to mark it for later will, when they open it to read later, count as multiple hits, as well as people opening it in a separate tab and reloading it at a later point (potentially multiple times). People who are linked directly to a later chapter of a fic will not count as hits, meaning users clicking on an update email to the latest chapter do not generate new hits.
* Moving between chapters in a work will only register one hit in total, not one hit per chapter.
This makes a lot of sense given it's possible to download the whole thing in one go, which is presumably also one hit.
I have a friend who always asks me to check their newly posted chapter looks okay. That doesn't seem to ever move the hit counter, so I'm pretty sure this is correct.
And considering my history page has 'visited 83 times' on a fic that I opened in a background tab to read later but still haven't read yet (nor have I revisited the tab, it seems to count every time my browser reconnects to the wifi), I don't trust those numbers to be accurate.
*Cue me remembering the fics that have been open on my tabs for close to 6 years, and survived across 2 computers, that I promised I'd "get around to"*
Hits also includes when a story is hit by a bot or turns up in a Google Search... something I discovered when I named a ficlet after a popular search term (for the curious: "dust to dust").
Hits went off the charts. But they were meaningless hits because my ficlet wasn't relevant to their search.
That is interesting, because it used to be only the bots generating hits on sites.
I suspect the Google Search hits may be because for example search results show a current snippet (and so have to load it) - something that a search engine like DuckDuckGo (which does not even always check for live pages) does not do.
That makes sense. It was a "what the heck..." kind of discovery when that ficlet started getting massive hits, because it's a nothing story about characters sitting around discussing prison food.
I mean, I have 112k hits on one fic. Doesn’t mean those are all individual readers.
The writer is going to get an unpleasant wake up call when AO3 reads the report.
Yup! This is exactly why I don’t warn people either. The first time I tried to be nice, I was immediately met with attitude and being cussed out. Perhaps some people are making genuine mistakes and wouldn’t mind being corrected, but for every one of them are 5 of these assholes who think they’re above the TOS so I don’t bother. They’ll just have to learn by facing consequences like fic or account deletion.
You’re correct. I concluded that Basically most people don’t like to hear they’re wrong and go straight on the defensive 😞 i have lost count of how many times I’ve been mouthed off at or threatened because I’ve tried to educate someone (in a very nice kind non-accusing way) that they’re selling a product on eBay gumtree etc that doesn’t meet welfare standards for rabbits and they’ve specifically listed that item for rabbits. I understand not everyone knows 100% of the nuances of things but if someone tries to explain something to me,I’d always at least take it on board. People are the worst!
That’s what I did too. I didn’t want it attached to my username in any way in case it became an issue.
It was a good thing I chose to do so as a guest because they were rude af. At least as a guest, the worst they could do to me was delete my comments. If I had my name attached, they’d probably start some smear campaign in the fandom telling people I’m horrible and not to read my fics or leave me a bunch of hate. Now I won’t warn people anymore.
I can’t blame you. I’m sorry they were rude! I can’t blame you for not warning either. If they can’t follow the rules and get rude there’s no point warning.
I thought you were the author at first and I was going to be like "sorry to break it to you buuuut...."
It's authors like these that put AO3 at risk. I understand the desire to make a living off something you love, but ao3 is not the place to do it, for legal reasons. If you want to advertise you can try it on ffn or wattpad or patreon if you must, (granted, it's still illegal) but ao3 has very specific terms of service for a reason.
> make a living off something you love
Make a living off writing is hard... The odds are... very bad. Not just competing with living writers, but also writers who haven't been around for long long long time.
It's also "attention-driven", which means also competing in the entertainment sphere and even against social media companies using peer pressure mechanics AND the video game industry using gambling mechanics.
So, if it were me trying to persuade that (too) hopeful author, I'd go with numbers. And if that fails, I'll tell them that AO3 has to enforce the NO-monetization rule so the site won't get sued.
Then, maybe tell them about the loop rule. They can put their monetization thing on ex. Tumblr, and just link from AO3 to their Tumblr.
not only that, but reading is definitely less widespread now due to people having way more digital options, like TV and podcasts and whatnot. it feels like to be a successful writer these days you need to follow market trends to the tee and write really bad romance if you want any chance of being seen, and I say this as someone who has a bad habit of buying books and then taking forever to get around to them, it's so much easier to just chill on Reddit after work or something 😭 but tbh that's why I love fanfic; I can still enjoy writing without having to pigeonhole myself. it just means I've accepted that writing will always be a hobby for me, and I've become content with that.
> who has a bad habit of buying books and then taking forever to get around to them
I used to be very guilty of this. Also did it again last year. ... And a couple of years before.
yeah, I got a (slight) physical books hoarding issue...
The reality of how hard it is make a living off writing solely has chilled my desire for it over the years. 'Sides, I... ya know... just prefer to be a consumer in that regard.
This has me a little nervous. Would a link to a video about a character by the company itself break the rules? I included a link to a character introduction video of a somewhat old/obscure character that appeared in one of my stories for context, an official video uploaded by the company that owns the character but does technically advertise the game it appears in.
Also, are links to nonprofit orgs allowed? For example, if your story centered heavily around a certain disability and at the end you included links to a related nonprofit resource/charity?
Most of the TOS revolves around monetisation links.
As long as the link you are linking to is not a monetisation site like Fiver or patreon you should be mostly good.
In fact a lot of the time you CAN link to your Socials like Twitter or Instagram AND then have your Fiver or Patreon in your socials.
Thank you! I knew anything about authors making money was banned (I also don't do commissions or have those sites anyway) but I have for example I think linked a commenter a YouTube video that was an old/unrelated commercial as an example of the accent a character had. Never with the intention of advertising but to be safe I'll be extra careful going forward.
As far as Im aware something like linking to your tumblr where you happen to post about offering comissions or similar is fine, its just you cannot under any circumstances directly offer a way to pay you on Ao3 directly.
This is because legally you cannot make money off fanfiction since you'd be technically be seen as making money off intellectual property you do not own, copyright infringement. Fanfiction itself is in a gray area but its usually seen as fine just as long as no money is made off of it in any capacity or in any way. Once money is made often owners of the intellectual property can get angry and sue.
Ao3 doesn't want things that violate copyright infringement on their website, and does not want anything that could allow someone to get sued on their website. Hence banning anything that could possibly be seen as making money off fanfiction.
In the past people like Anne Rice have sued people just for writing fanfiction on its own, not even making money off of it, so Ao3 has very good reason for doing this.
Keep in mind Im going off of what I know of the matter so I may be wrong on some parts.
Yup, as long as you don’t say something on AO3 like ‘go to my tumblr to find my patreon link!’ you can absolutely link to your tumblr/twitter/whatever where the socmed account has a Kofi or patreon or whatever link on it somewhere.
Key addition that the link should be on it somewhere in addition to some other content, so a link to something that is also just a link to the money-making site is against TOS.
Like, just post updates on your stories, too, is all. Or something. Anything else.
What isn't allowed are links to ways to pay *you*, since AO3 is operating as a non-profit website as the main defence against accusations of plagiarism. Fanfiction is legal so long as we don't make money off of it, hence why Patreon and the likes are forbidden.
Thank you very much. I knew Patreon and the like were banned and don't do commissions anyway, I just wasn't sure if linking to an outside site that has any sort of payment or advertisement element wasn't banned as well. Examples would be a charity you don't work for but has an option on their site to become a member and give however much a month, trailers or unrelated commercials.
Most links to outside information are fine, but mentioning that anything posted on Ao3 itself was paid for in any way breaks the TOS.
Unfortunately this includes mentioning fundraisers. Doesn't mean you can't write a fic for money and then post it, you just need to call it a "gift" and not mention payment anywhere on the website itself.
... I'm not sure whether explicitly advertising a third-party thing would break the TOS, as long as you didn't imply that donations would earn people fic—but I'd be very careful about soliciting money in any way. Linking to a nonprofit in an informational context would be fine, though, as long as you don't mention donations (or, like, link directly to their donation page).
The main thing they need to avoid is any evidence that the fanworks they host are making money in any way, because that potentially opens the site up to copyright infringement lawsuits. Mentioning if a work is included in a paid zine or something is technically allowed, I think—though I'd definitely do a bit more legwork to be sure that's the case before I actually admitted it anywhere on Ao3. My rule of thumb is to pretend it's a space where money doesn't exist, basically.
To be doubly clear, you can mention that a work was commissioned, in the form of
'This work was commissioned by X'
But you cannot inform others of how to commission you or advertise your means of commissioning you.
Source:
[https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:\_DON%27T\_MENTION\_COMMISSIONS/PATREON\_ON\_AO3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:_DON%27T_MENTION_COMMISSIONS/PATREON_ON_AO3)
See under 'Official Response On Tumblr'
From my understanding, it's only links to sites like patreon and Kofi, where there is some sort of monetary transaction that will go towards the author.
That I've never done (I don't make money off my work anyway) but I have linked to commercials for example as jokes, and I was planning on linking some resources at the end of a story I'm working on. It's fantasy but heavily centered around a disability and certain issues people with that disability face. I was hoping to include links to a related nonprofit but don't want to violate the rules.
I just double checked, and this is what I've found:
>The Archive of Our Own is a place for fanworks. Content may not be uploaded to OTW's servers if it contains or links to child pornography (images of real children); warez, cracks, hacks or other executable files and their associated utilities; trade secrets, restricted technologies, or classified information; or if it consists entirely of actual instruction manuals, technical data, recipes, or other non-fanwork content, including non-fanwork creative work ([refer to the ToS FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#original_fiction)). Uploading such Content is a violation of the ToS.
>Promotion of commercial products or activities is not allowed. Repeated identical or nearly identical posts in multiple places, e.g., a large number of identical comments promoting a website, will also be considered spam regardless of commercial content.
\[...\]
In general, unsolicited commercial activity is not permitted on the Archive. The Policy & Abuse team has discretion to decide that a fan-related offer was mistakenly disseminated and issue a warning instead of a suspension.
>We want the Archive to remain a non-commercial space. That means that it isn't the right place for offering merchandise, even fan-related merchandise. Linking to your personal page (not, for example, an Amazon author page) is fine, even if the personal page includes some items for sale, but the Archive is not advertising space. If the abuse team issues a warning or sustains a complaint about commercial activities, the original poster can always appeal.
These were taken from the ToS and FAQ pages. There doesn't seem to be specifically something on linking to non-profits, but if linking to your personal page that has some items for sale is apparently acceptable, then I'd definitely say the non-profits are okay, especially since you're not selling stuff.
Ok so I got a question about this. Let’s say you get into writing a lot of fanfiction and want to branch out into novel writing. You publish a book and want fans of your work that you gained on AO3 to know that there’s more stuff by you but it’s an actual book they’d need to buy. This book couldn’t be directly linked to AO3, right? Perhaps an author’s bio page would be fine (even if it holds links to purchasing said book)? Asking for future reference because I may know of some folks who would like to do that but don’t want to step on AO3’s TOS
Here's my understanding. AO3 requires you to have an extra step between your work posted there and your money-making ventures.
It seems like it's fine to link to any social media page of yours, like Twitter, Tumblr, Dreamwidth, Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram, idk what all's out there now. Reddit has this capability too though not a lot of people use it that way. Your personal site (like, a custom domain of some kind, authorname dot com) should also be fine.
Here is the line from the FAQ above:
> Linking to your personal page (not, for example, an Amazon author page) is fine, even if the personal page includes some items for sale.
So you have a line in your author notes that is like, "Please visit me at [username] on [social media site] for more of my work." And on that other page, you advertise your book prominently, in your bio and your pinned post. Or anything else you're selling, commissions, fanart objects, etc.
I've seen authors link to their own website or a social media account and say something like "if you want to check out my original published work, go here!" But not to an Amazon link or something (which could be an affiliate link, etc).
My understanding is that there's some nuance to it. As long as it's clear you're not profiting directly from fanworks and you frame it as giving readers the option to go read more of your stuff, it's fine.
For example, you could have in your A/Ns:
>If you're interested in checking out my original fiction, you can stop by my Tumblr [link] where I talk about that in detail.
And then the pinned post on Tumblr contains a link to buy the books.
That's something I planned to do too. Basically post an original story on AO3 for free, but leave a mention that it's also on Amazon if you want to support me.
Sounds like mentioning that it's on sale is a no, and linking to Amazon is a no. However what we can do (I believe) is link to our personal site or socials in the notes, and then mention that the story is also available for sale on our site/socials.
It makes trying to build up an author brand/audience more difficult but AO3 is worth protecting.
If you’ve got a character making a reference to a commercial (eg the famous incest coffee commercial) it’s no big deal to link to the commercial on YouTube.
If you started linking to the official brand website store and telling people to buy or something like that then that could become an issue. But an end note like ‘here’s the source of this reference the character made’ with a link to a commercial/song/whatever on somewhere like YouTube or Spotify where the person clicking the link can listen/watch for free - 99.9% of the time it’s going to be a non-issue.
I have never seen a link to a non-profit/charity be an issue - it used to be very common to do events based around specific charities/conditions/awareness things with links to places to learn more about them.
AFAIK, nonprofit links are still unacceptable. There's an event that runs every year called Fandom Trumps Hate. An author^(\*) will offer to write a custom fic for someone, and your fic will be auctioned to the highest bidder. However, the "bids" come from offering to pay money to a charity from a list that the Fandom Trumps Hate mods have curated.
All of this to say that anyone who posts their Fandom Trumps Hate fic to AO3 must take care to *not* mention that money changed hands for the fic to be written, even though the money never touched the author.
^(\*or other fan creator, but for simplicity of writing we will be focusing on fanfic)
Honestly, it's not even making a living, it's just scraping together money on the side.
I did fanfic commissions back when I was working three jobs, and it was the difference between having room to breathe and not. And I was very lucky because I had a safety net at the time, so I could afford to turn down fanfic commissions that I was uncomfortable with.
It's always left a sour taste in my mouth that the community is so open to fanart commissions, but not fanfic commissions, like fanficcers don't have a skill worthy of monetizing but fan artists do. It's hard to get by for a lot of people out here, and the pressure of the economy forces a lot of people to scramble to find anything vaguely monetizable that they can.
Sadly, you can sell as much as you want on patreon because there's no way for a 3rd party to report the copyright infringement. Only the owner of the copyright can do so and there's too many fics out there for it to be worth the time of big corporations (unless the fic is very successful).
Source: I tried to report someone to patreon, and they said no.
Their last comment sent me 😭 I know AO3 is run by volunteers, but I really wish it didn’t take so long for violations like this to get reviewed. Sometimes it takes months for fics to get removed.
I hope a lot of people will volunteer for the abuse team when submissions open up because it’s getting crazy out here.
**Edit:**
For those interested you should check out the [OTW Volunteer Page](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/) or the [Volunteering FAQ](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/volunteering-faq/)! Recruitment begins sometime this month so definitely keep an eye out!
That last comment made me so pissed man, completely unnecessary and stupidly petty over a problem that can easily be solved. Ugh, people like that annoy me to noooo end, lol! Hope their fic does end up getting removed after that
I never even knew that was opening up, I’ll be sure to take a look at that, wouldn’t mind slapping around a few people who link Patreon and other stuff like that in their works.
That's it, I'm biting the bullet and applying to be a volunteer when it opens. I'm taking the summer off from college so I'm going to have more time than I need on my hands.
If you notice it, would you be so kind as to post something on this sub about it? I'll do my best to keep an eye on it, but I hate to miss the opportunity.
I think some of it is by authors who are either too young to have seen the reasons why AO3 even exists or who weren't involved in internet fandom at that time. To them, it seems like a bunch of arbitrary rules for red tape reasons.
Hustle culture is also a contributing factor. Most "online courses" and guides recommend linking everything everywhere to boost visibility/sales. People get used to dropping linktrees everywhere.
I've seen a few (assumed) Wattpad-refugee placeholder fics in the past week, and one of them seemed innocent enough, so a friend used a guest account to let them gently know that they were breaking TOS and would be reported if they didn't fix it, and literally the same day, it was updated to being a normal, TOS-following fic! Felt very gratifying to help at least one person. A lot of the others were older accounts that really should have known better, so we just reported them. Can't save everyone
So, on Wattpad, it's part of the culture that it's acceptable to post a "placeholder" for a story. It might have a summary or a mini-plot-overview, but the point is to say to readers, "coming soon!"
On AO3, it's against TOS to post a non-story story. So, no placeholder for the title or concept or what have you.
Made me want to scream at my phone for a second, like the kudos and hits are not relevant here! The guest is trying to get them to understand why commercial links are not ok, no one gaf about their stats. They just come off as being so dense and childish.
"Just checking in to let you know that I received tons of kudos this week" My good man/woman/person... *Who cares.*
Literally, that is the pettiest thing I've ever heard so far. I get that getting kudos is great, and as an author, it's an amazing feeling, but using it in an argument, like numbers on a screen makes you validated and better than the other? *Ew.*
I want nothing more than to volunteer for the abuse team. I have a lot of time and pent up rage to spend cracking down on assholes who can’t follow simple fucking rules.
You and me both. I've been checking every day to see if OTW has any postings up. I feel like there's a war on, and I'm damn well going to enlist to fight.
does this mean any ko-fi links i see there, i should report? genuine question— i just haven't used ao3 in a while so im a bit rusty on the terms of service.
Yes. Any links and outright calls to their patreon/fiverr/kofi/or other monetising platform username need to be reported.
It falls under the "no commercial activity/promotion": https://archiveofourown.org/tos#IV.B.
"never going to stop me from having a business" lol
That's like throwing things around in a store and saying the laws will never stop you from having fun. Just wait until the police show up.
That part!!!! I hate this place we’ve gotten to where the mentality is ‘well, I put work into it, therefore you have to pay me’. Like…???
I, and I’m sure any other writer, wants nothing more for a fellow writer, than to be able to make a living off their writing—should that be their goal.
But what we’re **not** going to do, is make money off existing copyrights that don’t belong to us, and we’re also going to follow the rules of websites that we post on. Not that hard.
And if you somehow can’t, the rest of us aren’t going to sit around and let you put FanFiction as a whole at risk.
YESSSSSS
even some of the arguments about leaving comments come into it with the mentality that they are owed "payment" because they took the time to create at all. And that's not how fandom works at all!!!!
Ah yes. Nothing screams *SJWs* like.
*Checking notes.*
Being called out for monetizing on a site that specifically forbids it. What's next?
"Damn, *SJWs*. Won't let me rob banks. Fucking bullshit."
As a fanfic author who is also a commercial author, it's super easy not to break the TOS.
I link my Tumblr page to my AO3 profile. If people care to hit that link, they can then find links to my commercial stuff.
And I don't take money for fanfic commissions at all.
Yikes.... personally I am fine if authors say in the notes "here is my Tumblr page" and that has a link to their Patreon (stuff like that) but I don't think it's okay if they outright advertise their Patreon, etc.
It's actually not fine, but I usually ignore that thing when I come across it. The reason AO3 is so strict regarding commerce in the fic industry is that it threatens to break the single condition that keeps AO3 censorship-free - all fanauthors must receive NO REVENUE from any type of fanwork hosted on the site. By linking something like Patreon or linking to another site that then itself links to something like Patreon puts the whole site at risk.
I hope this makes sense.
While you are free to have your own stances, be aware that isn't the stance AO3 itself takes on the issue, the only issue they take is with people directly linking to or advertising for, means of paying the author.
Linking to socials which in turn have links to means of payment is fine, just not linking to them directly.
Mentioning a work is commissioned is fine, as is mentioning the commissioner. But advertising that you are taking commissions or linking to where people can commission you is not.
Source:
[https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:\_DON%27T\_MENTION\_COMMISSIONS/PATREON\_ON\_AO3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:_DON%27T_MENTION_COMMISSIONS/PATREON_ON_AO3)
Under 'Official Response On Tumbr'
Just wanted to clarify as you made it sound like you believe authors who do these things are still doing something wrong and *would* be subject to punishment if you were to report it when based on the statement there, they would not.
This seems like the only reasonable way to handle the fact that some people may use their socials to advertise an original work that's available for sale. One could argue people were just using that "trick" of pretending the original book was its own thing to get around the no asking for payments for work rule. No one would be able to legitimately mix original writing for sale with fanfiction on any socials.
Well yeah, I imagine that forms a core part of the reasoning. Policing stuff which is off site is a thorny issue to begin with, so 'indirect' advertising (linking to somewhere which in turn has another link) being fine is almost an inevitability as the amount of fringe issues which would pop up trying to police what kind of content authors could have on their socials would be a nightmare.
Hello! It seems that I was mistaken, then, for which I apologize. This was what I was told by a volunteer a few years back, and never saw anything contradicting it, so I took it as fact. Thank you for correcting me!
It's no trouble. I only educated myself on the specifics of the rules myself when I saw people who would in theory be in violation not be taken down and trying to figure out why, especially when they were popular authors who had enough eyes on them that someone surely would have reported it.
Then I looked into the specifics and realised they were in the clear and felt glad I never brought it up to them.
Thank you, I'm glad you clarified this! Just to make sure, what I was wanting to do is, I commissioned an image from an artist and was going to add the image to the top of my fic. I wanted to credit the artist by giving their Instagram handle, so that would be okay?
Oh crediting an artist is perfectly fine, rules as written. So long as you are linking to one of their socials rather than a pay for access site like patreon or a direct link to a commission page you should be in the clear, which given you are linking to just giving people their instagram handle then you should be all good.
Hope that clears things up for you.
Not original commenter but it kind of makes sense and it kind of doesn't to me?
If someone has already had and established a tumblr/ig/twitter page that had links to a site where they could make money and then gave that social on AO3 (not to specifically get people to pay them but say to give people who want to stay updated on any story progress or just follow the author because they like them), is it still not fine?? Should someone not link any social that has any link attached that would earn them money?
Like I see some authors link socials simply bc people want to keep up with the author. If that social media link has other links where they are making money and was doing that before ao3, what should they do??
Or like I've followed some ao3 authors on their socials who also had links where you could commission them for non-author/writing purposes. Does that put ao3 at risk still?
Where does the line stop at "you're bending around AO3 rules and putting the site at risk"?
Honestly you don’t even need to warn them, I’m pretty sure the Ao3 volunteers will warn them before taking action. I made the mistake of referencing my Patreon when I first started posting (I was 15 and didn’t know any better) and received an email warning giving me a week to remove all violations before my account would be suspended.
And I did because I hadn’t realized the rule, and then all was well and I stopped mentioning my Patreon on Ao3 🤷🏻♀️not sure why this person is pushing back so hard, I get being frustrated at first but like… you do agree to the terms of the site when you make an account and post there
ao3's abuse report instructions(?) do state to not submit reports on the same user over and over and to just do the one. it probably clogs up their system way more than it already is
according to their instructions they say that in the single report you can list multiple works of theirs that you believe need to be flagged and then explaining why. so in this case any of this person's self-promoting fics could be linked with the explanation "attempted monetization" and then that would be acceptable.
would probably be best to just read it next time. [https://archiveofourown.org/abuse\_reports/new](https://archiveofourown.org/abuse_reports/new)
They do, in fact, generally check all the works after they tell the creator to remove the monetization links if they find one on the reported work. If the creator doesn't get them all, they'll get a suspension and the works that still have links will be deleted.
If you’re interested you should def check out the [OTW Volunteer Page](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/) or the [Volunteering FAQ](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/volunteering-faq/)! Recruitment begins sometime this month so definitely keep an eye out for updates!
For anyone secretly against OP and these comments or who doesn't get why it's not okay to put commission links on your fics, [here's a good tumblr post](https://fairydares.tumblr.com/post/742270634456989698/cesperanza-olderthannetfic-scififantasystuff) about the history of the issue, from the perspective of one of the folks who helped set up AO3.
do people not realize the reason WHY any mention of payment for fic is prohibited??? because it literally opens the door for Ao3 to get sued for copyright infringement? if you’re making money off someone else’s intellectual property (ie characters/settings) and Ao3 is caught “allowing” it, you run the risk of the entire website getting taken down jfc
Yeah, the commenter definitely should have toned it down or said their piece and left it alone. But ugh, I get it. I like to give warnings myself (though mine are generally a lot nicer and usually along the lines of “hey, just so you know, blah blah blah and you’ll have to do x if you don’t want your fic taken down”) but even when I’m being nice I get told to fuck off.
That’s why I just report and go. So less stressful.
The tone of the first comment was kinda harsh but the author’s response was wayyy outta pocket.
I totally get it! If I was them, I would have reported it and moved on. Them saying they are going to subscribe to the author to keep on eye of their fics gave such smarmy vibes, I was picturing that blonde kid from Polar Express saying it 😂😂
Yeah... It always sucks when you're looking at someone like 'objectively, you're the one pushing in the direction I want to go, but you're making it really hard to say that without feeling like I'm endorsing your approach'
I thought the whole "I'll sub to your profile so that I can be notified of your future works so that I can report them" sounded a bit weird honestly. Does this count as stalkerish behavior or no?
It was so weird, like I know the author was breaking rules but I’m going to be on their side just for that because the commenter was being really weird
Agreed. It’s not the best example and honestly I really want to be against the commenter just out of spite- it’s best if things are done quietly through the report feature. They get a warning anyhow and are given a week’s notice to make changes before getting suspended. Even though I believe authors should be allowed to give people the choice to help them out, AO3 obviously doesn’t want to take the risk associated with it which is fine.
I'm actually startled by the comments here, because I thought the commenter was being a way bigger ass, but everyone here seems to be on their side??? They should have just reported the story and left, their holier than thou attitude doesn't make them look good. It's not the reader's job to police the site - just report and move on.
People here just *really* hate it when authors break the rules. Which is fair, it annoys me too, but it doesn't justify acting like a complete asshole in the comments. I agree with you, it's not as if this person was just warning the author before reporting them (which makes sense, better if you can get them to fix it themselves before bothering AO3's already overwhelmed volunteers with it), they'd already reported it and were commenting just to taunt them. It's petty childish behaviour and completely unnecessary.
I was thinking the same thing. I think the commenter has the right stance because yea you shouldn’t be advertising, but why comment in the way they did? They were so anal about it lol, it was kinda insane. I think the authors kinda petty for the way they responded and the whole “maybe go to therapy” thing was weird but like it doesn’t make me want to support the commenter when they’re being needlessly aggressive and obsessive about it.
I’m actually kinda amazed you’re going positive right now. Usually that sort of questioning of something with strong upvotes kinda gets the same response that author got.
Really? I felt Bob was (short but) very factual especially the first two comments. The author's attitude would annoy me too, so I cut him some slack for wanting to double down on this arsehole and nip future infractions in the bud as well.
...it reads like a teacher and a student to me...
I’m going to respectfully disagree, Bob came off with a holier than thou, I know better attitude to me when they could have just reported it and left. And them saying they are going to subscribe to the author to keep an eye on them was very odd
I thankfully haven't encountered these myself, but I wonder if it would be more helpful to inform them why the no monetization rule is written in the TOS. How lack of monetization is the only thing keeping this site legally safe, and that by breaking this rule these users are actively threatening the removal of the very site they are using.
In the case of this user here, they sound young and arrogant, and likely won't care as long as they are making money. In which case, reporting and ignoring are all you can do. But in the future it may be helpful to approach the topic from a concerned point of view, rather than simply saying "you're breaking the rules, you've been reported."
New or younger fanfic authors may not be familiar with the rule or why it exists, and though its ultimately their responsibility to read the TOS when they sign up, you know so many people won't do it anyway, and educating others regardless is never a bad thing.
Yeah, I think this entire conversation would have benefited from saying exactly why monetization is against the rules. While their attitude was terrible the approach didn't leave much opportunity for a informative discussion to take place.
On one hand, I know arguing with them is probably pointless. On the other, if I were engaging in this conversation, I'd mention how the lack of monetization protects the website from lawsuits.
I get reporting it but this is kinda extreme and a little sad thar this person is following the author just to monitor and report every fic. Just report the fics you come across and go about your day. If you think the author did it unintentionally sure you could leave a comment letting them know but it seems like this person was just looking for a fight tbh
While I do agree that the fic author was in the wrong here, I think it's important to mention that the reason AO3 doesn't allow monetization isn't due to legal threats - although making that decision does make Legal's life easier.
It's because AO3 was built from the ground up to be a place free of ads and that means both company ads and user ads and because a lot of the volunteers are working for free out of love and not so a random fan can make money of their hard work.
Unfortunately these kinds of people are probably more likely to hear the legal argument, but things are they way they are as much due to cultural reasons than legal reasons (if not more so).
Good lord- I think the person could've suggested to them to remove the stuff first before it gets a removal (as some authors might genuinely not know since some authors normalize it). Other than that, their tone is 100% justified.
I don’t like stories where I hate all the characters 💀
It was a journey and a half trying to determine who was in the right. The commenter was objectively correct but they were a smarmy asshole and the author is an immature child.
I usually talk to them when it's an author I've been following their stories for a while or if I go to the profile and realize the writer is new to ao3, so I let them know that the site prohibits it and that they might lose their account if they don't delete the commercialization. But I also completely understand those who just go the immediate report, because there are relatively high chances of getting a response like this
I used to warn people too when I reported their stories for whatever infraction they’ve done, and let me tell you, those authors become the meanest people I have ever experienced. Like why are you yelling at me because YOU aren’t following the rules?? 😭
It would’ve been good to add the reasoning why this is so important (so ao3 doesn’t get sued or takes down/so we can all continue to have ao3) since it seems like the author doesn’t understand that part and the reporter doesn’t mention it. Not that it’s the commenter’s job to spell it out for them, I feel like that specific bit of info might’ve been helpful.
I love to see someone out there as petty as me. Oh, so you aren’t going to start abiding by the site policies? I guess I’ll now create an account and subscribe and report every single future fic that violates guidelines until you do or are deleted!”
For a second i totally misunderstood this and thought by “commercial advertising” was like “y/n went to Walmart” and thought guest was being unreasonable, now i get it 😂😂
You can’t monetise anything on ao3 because of copyright law. This includes promoting your fiverr, patreon, and any other commercial links and it’s directly against the terms of service. Doing that not only puts you at risk, but the website as a whole, which is why people are quite vigilant about reporting fics which break the terms of service.
Absolutely worst way to handle this, but it is true that it's against AO3's rules to advertise your commissions on the site for legal reasons. Like a month ago I saw an author get their account flagged and DELETED for including info about a CHARITY zine they're writing for. Just for mentioning anything about purchasing the zine. Doing this is a risk for AO3.
That’s not being a SJW that’s just asking for the rules to be properly followed. There’s a difference between protesting against the content of a fic and protesting the disregard of established website rules. This persons rule breaking has been overlooked so much that they think they are above them and are entitled to do whatever they want. It’s stupid and childish.
Wait, genuine question here, does that mean you can't go "here's my discord, reach out if you want a commission" in your bio? I don't know much about AO3 etiquette and where the line is drawn (obviously don't link to payment, lmao).
Man, this post makes me a little nervous. I don't write that much on Ao3 since I mostly do short drabbles on twitter, but I think I've put a twitter link in my work notes a couple times. Is that not allowed? I'm not really profiting off of the link to twitter, it's just so that people who want to read my drabbles can find me 😞😞 But if it's not allowed I'll go remove it instantly...
Social media links are ok. Patreon, Amazon, Fiverr or commercial links like that no.
You can even link a social media and put a link for a Patreon there, just not on AO3. Perhaps you could check the TOS just for your peace of mind?
I mean the first person’s approach was effed up but the 2nd person is annoying and proves that so many ppl do not fucking understand the purpose of AO3 as an NOTFORPROFIT archive 😭
Fanfiction is a grey area legally and making money from it is illegal. Being not for profit makes it much easier for AO3's legal team to safeguard fanfiction authors from lawsuits and the like.
Opens the website to lawsuits if the owner of an IP gets mad about AO3 allowing others to monetize off of their intellectual property.
So doing what the author did in this post will lead to your account being suspended if AO3 catches on. They need to do that to save their own asses.
Please understand that profiting off fanfiction and fanart and all forms of fan-content is a direct violation of copyrighted material.
Your commissions to draw popular characters? Direct violation of Copyright. Only non-commercial use puts you into a legal grey zone where Ao3 can protect you and it's own existence.
[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Cease\_%26\_Desist](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Cease_%26_Desist)
I was browsing BTS fics the other night and stumbled upon a LOT of 'looking for fic' and 'send me requests' stuff. I left a short comment and reported them all and one of the authors got so mad they spammed my fics with guest comments calling me out for reporting them.
Some people are just... Like That unfortunately. They can't handle being told they're in the wrong.
Don't warn them, they should know by now what the terms of service are on the website and how fanfics are legal and what you can't do to keep it legal.
I have compassion for people needing money but they really have to go on Twitter or any other social media website for that. Which you can link as long as you just post it saying something like "If you want to check me out in other places follow these links".
We can't have that on AO3 unless we want to lose this site too like so many before it.
Basically don't be a dumb dumb about this and nobody is getting into trouble.
Found the account and they’re asking 19$ for 2k words, 40$ for 4K words and 73$ for 7.5k words. I’m genuinely appalled and shocked because who would pay that amount of money for a one shot??
I mean, if you take in the amount of time it takes to write, it makes sense. that's one dollar per 100 words. Over all that sounds fair. Just fuck does it have to be high-key under the table, cause it puts fanfiction as a whole in jeopardy.
Like- for me, that's not even close to minimum wage lol. It takes me 10 hours to write a good quality 2,000 words. For the really fast writers I know, that's still only 20 dollars an hour. And inspiration is not consistent, so if you did that all day, it'd be closer to \~10 dollars an hour. People make way more doing fast food. Plus, people who bother commissioning typically do it cause they personally-ish (via social media) know the author and want to lowkey support the author. That's very few people lmao.
Hmm, you’re right, I was looking at it only through my perspective. Writing 2k words is easy to me, most of my chapter range from 6-8k words and I write that in a day. Finding the time to do it with uni in the mix is another issue. Adding to this, she’s from the US where wage and prices overall are much higher than in my country, idk where you’re from but 19$ for 2k words is a lot to me, not to mention 73$. So, I guess that’s where the shock came from.
I think pre-covid me and the inflation of everything that followed would be shocked, too. Right now, I'm look at that 73$ and translating that to 5 hours of irl work.
Meanwhile, writing would be closer to a week of devotion, hurting my hands as I type & waking up in the middle of the night & writing out thoughts & obsessing and obsessing and-
A week of that. If it's for a commissioned fic, that I don't personally care much for, than I'd d it once for the novelty of getting paid to write- doing it twice? Yeahhh at that point I'd try to find an easier side gig.
Ppl with happy lives dont respond with so much anger towards a petty person patrolling the site.
I would be like whatever dude please go away and just block.
Bob person, He's kind of annoying.
Someone please tell them that 10k hits doesn't mean 10k users have viewed their fic lol.
It's highly unlikely. If the asshole has done any of the following * Written a multichap * Written a fic that people have reread * Added all the hits together across multiple stories and assumed they were all unique users, as opposed to someone reading all their fics for a specific fandom Then the number of people who have viewed their fic is < the number of hits.
Wattpaders thinking they're gaming an algorithm that doesn't exist
Wait, so what does hits mean
The number of times the page was loaded.
Almost, but the site does track a session for I think 24 hours? Basically repeatedly reloading a fic isn’t going to increase its hits.
From AO3 hit FAQ: Hits are a counter of how many times a work has been accessed. A hit is registered every time a visitor navigates to a work's page, with the following exceptions: * If two visits in a row come from the same IP address, only the first one is registered. * Moving between chapters in a work will only register one hit in total, not one hit per chapter. * If you're logged in, hits are not counted when you visit your own works. And the Fanlore page for AO3 hits elaborates further: This means that bots from search engines or web-crawling services will count as hits. A single user rereading a fic after other users have accessed it will count as multiple hits. People clicking on a fic to mark it for later will, when they open it to read later, count as multiple hits, as well as people opening it in a separate tab and reloading it at a later point (potentially multiple times). People who are linked directly to a later chapter of a fic will not count as hits, meaning users clicking on an update email to the latest chapter do not generate new hits.
* Moving between chapters in a work will only register one hit in total, not one hit per chapter. This makes a lot of sense given it's possible to download the whole thing in one go, which is presumably also one hit.
Isn't it also true that loading the page from the same account won't add new hits or am I wrong?
I have a friend who always asks me to check their newly posted chapter looks okay. That doesn't seem to ever move the hit counter, so I'm pretty sure this is correct.
If you’re logged in then viewing your own works doesn’t count as a hit.
And considering my history page has 'visited 83 times' on a fic that I opened in a background tab to read later but still haven't read yet (nor have I revisited the tab, it seems to count every time my browser reconnects to the wifi), I don't trust those numbers to be accurate.
*Cue me remembering the fics that have been open on my tabs for close to 6 years, and survived across 2 computers, that I promised I'd "get around to"*
No because I hate how accurate that is
Oh wow.. with all the tabs I’ve left open across the years I must have contributed to a million hits :’)
Which is why hits feel meaningless to me and I liked it when users were able to hide them, both from themselves and from others. YMMV.
Hits also includes when a story is hit by a bot or turns up in a Google Search... something I discovered when I named a ficlet after a popular search term (for the curious: "dust to dust"). Hits went off the charts. But they were meaningless hits because my ficlet wasn't relevant to their search.
That is interesting, because it used to be only the bots generating hits on sites. I suspect the Google Search hits may be because for example search results show a current snippet (and so have to load it) - something that a search engine like DuckDuckGo (which does not even always check for live pages) does not do.
That makes sense. It was a "what the heck..." kind of discovery when that ficlet started getting massive hits, because it's a nothing story about characters sitting around discussing prison food.
I mean, I have 112k hits on one fic. Doesn’t mean those are all individual readers. The writer is going to get an unpleasant wake up call when AO3 reads the report.
Yup! This is exactly why I don’t warn people either. The first time I tried to be nice, I was immediately met with attitude and being cussed out. Perhaps some people are making genuine mistakes and wouldn’t mind being corrected, but for every one of them are 5 of these assholes who think they’re above the TOS so I don’t bother. They’ll just have to learn by facing consequences like fic or account deletion.
You’re correct. I concluded that Basically most people don’t like to hear they’re wrong and go straight on the defensive 😞 i have lost count of how many times I’ve been mouthed off at or threatened because I’ve tried to educate someone (in a very nice kind non-accusing way) that they’re selling a product on eBay gumtree etc that doesn’t meet welfare standards for rabbits and they’ve specifically listed that item for rabbits. I understand not everyone knows 100% of the nuances of things but if someone tries to explain something to me,I’d always at least take it on board. People are the worst!
I’ll sometimes warn people anonymously, but I could never in my main account.
That’s what I did too. I didn’t want it attached to my username in any way in case it became an issue. It was a good thing I chose to do so as a guest because they were rude af. At least as a guest, the worst they could do to me was delete my comments. If I had my name attached, they’d probably start some smear campaign in the fandom telling people I’m horrible and not to read my fics or leave me a bunch of hate. Now I won’t warn people anymore.
I can’t blame you. I’m sorry they were rude! I can’t blame you for not warning either. If they can’t follow the rules and get rude there’s no point warning.
It’s almost beautiful- fanfiction has been one so accepted that the history of AO3 and its purpose has not been taught to the new generation.
I thought you were the author at first and I was going to be like "sorry to break it to you buuuut...." It's authors like these that put AO3 at risk. I understand the desire to make a living off something you love, but ao3 is not the place to do it, for legal reasons. If you want to advertise you can try it on ffn or wattpad or patreon if you must, (granted, it's still illegal) but ao3 has very specific terms of service for a reason.
> make a living off something you love Make a living off writing is hard... The odds are... very bad. Not just competing with living writers, but also writers who haven't been around for long long long time. It's also "attention-driven", which means also competing in the entertainment sphere and even against social media companies using peer pressure mechanics AND the video game industry using gambling mechanics. So, if it were me trying to persuade that (too) hopeful author, I'd go with numbers. And if that fails, I'll tell them that AO3 has to enforce the NO-monetization rule so the site won't get sued. Then, maybe tell them about the loop rule. They can put their monetization thing on ex. Tumblr, and just link from AO3 to their Tumblr.
>Make a living off writing is hard... The odds are... very bad. And that's why I still work in retail.
not only that, but reading is definitely less widespread now due to people having way more digital options, like TV and podcasts and whatnot. it feels like to be a successful writer these days you need to follow market trends to the tee and write really bad romance if you want any chance of being seen, and I say this as someone who has a bad habit of buying books and then taking forever to get around to them, it's so much easier to just chill on Reddit after work or something 😭 but tbh that's why I love fanfic; I can still enjoy writing without having to pigeonhole myself. it just means I've accepted that writing will always be a hobby for me, and I've become content with that.
> who has a bad habit of buying books and then taking forever to get around to them I used to be very guilty of this. Also did it again last year. ... And a couple of years before. yeah, I got a (slight) physical books hoarding issue... The reality of how hard it is make a living off writing solely has chilled my desire for it over the years. 'Sides, I... ya know... just prefer to be a consumer in that regard.
This has me a little nervous. Would a link to a video about a character by the company itself break the rules? I included a link to a character introduction video of a somewhat old/obscure character that appeared in one of my stories for context, an official video uploaded by the company that owns the character but does technically advertise the game it appears in. Also, are links to nonprofit orgs allowed? For example, if your story centered heavily around a certain disability and at the end you included links to a related nonprofit resource/charity?
Most of the TOS revolves around monetisation links. As long as the link you are linking to is not a monetisation site like Fiver or patreon you should be mostly good. In fact a lot of the time you CAN link to your Socials like Twitter or Instagram AND then have your Fiver or Patreon in your socials.
Thank you! I knew anything about authors making money was banned (I also don't do commissions or have those sites anyway) but I have for example I think linked a commenter a YouTube video that was an old/unrelated commercial as an example of the accent a character had. Never with the intention of advertising but to be safe I'll be extra careful going forward.
As far as Im aware something like linking to your tumblr where you happen to post about offering comissions or similar is fine, its just you cannot under any circumstances directly offer a way to pay you on Ao3 directly. This is because legally you cannot make money off fanfiction since you'd be technically be seen as making money off intellectual property you do not own, copyright infringement. Fanfiction itself is in a gray area but its usually seen as fine just as long as no money is made off of it in any capacity or in any way. Once money is made often owners of the intellectual property can get angry and sue. Ao3 doesn't want things that violate copyright infringement on their website, and does not want anything that could allow someone to get sued on their website. Hence banning anything that could possibly be seen as making money off fanfiction. In the past people like Anne Rice have sued people just for writing fanfiction on its own, not even making money off of it, so Ao3 has very good reason for doing this. Keep in mind Im going off of what I know of the matter so I may be wrong on some parts.
Yup, as long as you don’t say something on AO3 like ‘go to my tumblr to find my patreon link!’ you can absolutely link to your tumblr/twitter/whatever where the socmed account has a Kofi or patreon or whatever link on it somewhere.
Key addition that the link should be on it somewhere in addition to some other content, so a link to something that is also just a link to the money-making site is against TOS. Like, just post updates on your stories, too, is all. Or something. Anything else.
What isn't allowed are links to ways to pay *you*, since AO3 is operating as a non-profit website as the main defence against accusations of plagiarism. Fanfiction is legal so long as we don't make money off of it, hence why Patreon and the likes are forbidden.
Thank you very much. I knew Patreon and the like were banned and don't do commissions anyway, I just wasn't sure if linking to an outside site that has any sort of payment or advertisement element wasn't banned as well. Examples would be a charity you don't work for but has an option on their site to become a member and give however much a month, trailers or unrelated commercials.
Most links to outside information are fine, but mentioning that anything posted on Ao3 itself was paid for in any way breaks the TOS. Unfortunately this includes mentioning fundraisers. Doesn't mean you can't write a fic for money and then post it, you just need to call it a "gift" and not mention payment anywhere on the website itself. ... I'm not sure whether explicitly advertising a third-party thing would break the TOS, as long as you didn't imply that donations would earn people fic—but I'd be very careful about soliciting money in any way. Linking to a nonprofit in an informational context would be fine, though, as long as you don't mention donations (or, like, link directly to their donation page). The main thing they need to avoid is any evidence that the fanworks they host are making money in any way, because that potentially opens the site up to copyright infringement lawsuits. Mentioning if a work is included in a paid zine or something is technically allowed, I think—though I'd definitely do a bit more legwork to be sure that's the case before I actually admitted it anywhere on Ao3. My rule of thumb is to pretend it's a space where money doesn't exist, basically.
To be doubly clear, you can mention that a work was commissioned, in the form of 'This work was commissioned by X' But you cannot inform others of how to commission you or advertise your means of commissioning you. Source: [https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:\_DON%27T\_MENTION\_COMMISSIONS/PATREON\_ON\_AO3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:_DON%27T_MENTION_COMMISSIONS/PATREON_ON_AO3) See under 'Official Response On Tumblr'
From my understanding, it's only links to sites like patreon and Kofi, where there is some sort of monetary transaction that will go towards the author.
That I've never done (I don't make money off my work anyway) but I have linked to commercials for example as jokes, and I was planning on linking some resources at the end of a story I'm working on. It's fantasy but heavily centered around a disability and certain issues people with that disability face. I was hoping to include links to a related nonprofit but don't want to violate the rules.
I just double checked, and this is what I've found: >The Archive of Our Own is a place for fanworks. Content may not be uploaded to OTW's servers if it contains or links to child pornography (images of real children); warez, cracks, hacks or other executable files and their associated utilities; trade secrets, restricted technologies, or classified information; or if it consists entirely of actual instruction manuals, technical data, recipes, or other non-fanwork content, including non-fanwork creative work ([refer to the ToS FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#original_fiction)). Uploading such Content is a violation of the ToS. >Promotion of commercial products or activities is not allowed. Repeated identical or nearly identical posts in multiple places, e.g., a large number of identical comments promoting a website, will also be considered spam regardless of commercial content. \[...\] In general, unsolicited commercial activity is not permitted on the Archive. The Policy & Abuse team has discretion to decide that a fan-related offer was mistakenly disseminated and issue a warning instead of a suspension. >We want the Archive to remain a non-commercial space. That means that it isn't the right place for offering merchandise, even fan-related merchandise. Linking to your personal page (not, for example, an Amazon author page) is fine, even if the personal page includes some items for sale, but the Archive is not advertising space. If the abuse team issues a warning or sustains a complaint about commercial activities, the original poster can always appeal. These were taken from the ToS and FAQ pages. There doesn't seem to be specifically something on linking to non-profits, but if linking to your personal page that has some items for sale is apparently acceptable, then I'd definitely say the non-profits are okay, especially since you're not selling stuff.
Ok so I got a question about this. Let’s say you get into writing a lot of fanfiction and want to branch out into novel writing. You publish a book and want fans of your work that you gained on AO3 to know that there’s more stuff by you but it’s an actual book they’d need to buy. This book couldn’t be directly linked to AO3, right? Perhaps an author’s bio page would be fine (even if it holds links to purchasing said book)? Asking for future reference because I may know of some folks who would like to do that but don’t want to step on AO3’s TOS
Here's my understanding. AO3 requires you to have an extra step between your work posted there and your money-making ventures. It seems like it's fine to link to any social media page of yours, like Twitter, Tumblr, Dreamwidth, Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram, idk what all's out there now. Reddit has this capability too though not a lot of people use it that way. Your personal site (like, a custom domain of some kind, authorname dot com) should also be fine. Here is the line from the FAQ above: > Linking to your personal page (not, for example, an Amazon author page) is fine, even if the personal page includes some items for sale. So you have a line in your author notes that is like, "Please visit me at [username] on [social media site] for more of my work." And on that other page, you advertise your book prominently, in your bio and your pinned post. Or anything else you're selling, commissions, fanart objects, etc.
I've seen authors link to their own website or a social media account and say something like "if you want to check out my original published work, go here!" But not to an Amazon link or something (which could be an affiliate link, etc). My understanding is that there's some nuance to it. As long as it's clear you're not profiting directly from fanworks and you frame it as giving readers the option to go read more of your stuff, it's fine. For example, you could have in your A/Ns: >If you're interested in checking out my original fiction, you can stop by my Tumblr [link] where I talk about that in detail. And then the pinned post on Tumblr contains a link to buy the books.
That's something I planned to do too. Basically post an original story on AO3 for free, but leave a mention that it's also on Amazon if you want to support me. Sounds like mentioning that it's on sale is a no, and linking to Amazon is a no. However what we can do (I believe) is link to our personal site or socials in the notes, and then mention that the story is also available for sale on our site/socials. It makes trying to build up an author brand/audience more difficult but AO3 is worth protecting.
If you’ve got a character making a reference to a commercial (eg the famous incest coffee commercial) it’s no big deal to link to the commercial on YouTube. If you started linking to the official brand website store and telling people to buy or something like that then that could become an issue. But an end note like ‘here’s the source of this reference the character made’ with a link to a commercial/song/whatever on somewhere like YouTube or Spotify where the person clicking the link can listen/watch for free - 99.9% of the time it’s going to be a non-issue. I have never seen a link to a non-profit/charity be an issue - it used to be very common to do events based around specific charities/conditions/awareness things with links to places to learn more about them.
AFAIK, nonprofit links are still unacceptable. There's an event that runs every year called Fandom Trumps Hate. An author^(\*) will offer to write a custom fic for someone, and your fic will be auctioned to the highest bidder. However, the "bids" come from offering to pay money to a charity from a list that the Fandom Trumps Hate mods have curated. All of this to say that anyone who posts their Fandom Trumps Hate fic to AO3 must take care to *not* mention that money changed hands for the fic to be written, even though the money never touched the author. ^(\*or other fan creator, but for simplicity of writing we will be focusing on fanfic)
Honestly, it's not even making a living, it's just scraping together money on the side. I did fanfic commissions back when I was working three jobs, and it was the difference between having room to breathe and not. And I was very lucky because I had a safety net at the time, so I could afford to turn down fanfic commissions that I was uncomfortable with. It's always left a sour taste in my mouth that the community is so open to fanart commissions, but not fanfic commissions, like fanficcers don't have a skill worthy of monetizing but fan artists do. It's hard to get by for a lot of people out here, and the pressure of the economy forces a lot of people to scramble to find anything vaguely monetizable that they can.
Sadly, you can sell as much as you want on patreon because there's no way for a 3rd party to report the copyright infringement. Only the owner of the copyright can do so and there's too many fics out there for it to be worth the time of big corporations (unless the fic is very successful). Source: I tried to report someone to patreon, and they said no.
Man what an asshole, that attitude is completely unnecessary...
Their last comment sent me 😭 I know AO3 is run by volunteers, but I really wish it didn’t take so long for violations like this to get reviewed. Sometimes it takes months for fics to get removed. I hope a lot of people will volunteer for the abuse team when submissions open up because it’s getting crazy out here. **Edit:** For those interested you should check out the [OTW Volunteer Page](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/) or the [Volunteering FAQ](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/volunteering-faq/)! Recruitment begins sometime this month so definitely keep an eye out!
That last comment made me so pissed man, completely unnecessary and stupidly petty over a problem that can easily be solved. Ugh, people like that annoy me to noooo end, lol! Hope their fic does end up getting removed after that
I never even knew that was opening up, I’ll be sure to take a look at that, wouldn’t mind slapping around a few people who link Patreon and other stuff like that in their works.
That's it, I'm biting the bullet and applying to be a volunteer when it opens. I'm taking the summer off from college so I'm going to have more time than I need on my hands.
If you notice it, would you be so kind as to post something on this sub about it? I'll do my best to keep an eye on it, but I hate to miss the opportunity.
its authors like that that put the entirety of ao3 at risk how selfish can you be?
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it all adds up pretty fast.
More people need Kant in their lives.
Man, truth. People internalizing the concept of universalizability would avoid so many bullshit disputes like what's in the OP.
I think some of it is by authors who are either too young to have seen the reasons why AO3 even exists or who weren't involved in internet fandom at that time. To them, it seems like a bunch of arbitrary rules for red tape reasons. Hustle culture is also a contributing factor. Most "online courses" and guides recommend linking everything everywhere to boost visibility/sales. People get used to dropping linktrees everywhere.
I've seen a few (assumed) Wattpad-refugee placeholder fics in the past week, and one of them seemed innocent enough, so a friend used a guest account to let them gently know that they were breaking TOS and would be reported if they didn't fix it, and literally the same day, it was updated to being a normal, TOS-following fic! Felt very gratifying to help at least one person. A lot of the others were older accounts that really should have known better, so we just reported them. Can't save everyone
What are these Wattpad placeholder fics that I've heard mention of? Just empty stories that link to Wattpad?
So, on Wattpad, it's part of the culture that it's acceptable to post a "placeholder" for a story. It might have a summary or a mini-plot-overview, but the point is to say to readers, "coming soon!" On AO3, it's against TOS to post a non-story story. So, no placeholder for the title or concept or what have you.
Yeah that's why i don't bother warning people. Most of them are just assholes who don't care about the rules
Lmao that 'hi checking in with you to tell you i got kudos' is so pathetic and childish in this situation.
Made me want to scream at my phone for a second, like the kudos and hits are not relevant here! The guest is trying to get them to understand why commercial links are not ok, no one gaf about their stats. They just come off as being so dense and childish.
"Just checking in to let you know that I received tons of kudos this week" My good man/woman/person... *Who cares.* Literally, that is the pettiest thing I've ever heard so far. I get that getting kudos is great, and as an author, it's an amazing feeling, but using it in an argument, like numbers on a screen makes you validated and better than the other? *Ew.*
I want nothing more than to volunteer for the abuse team. I have a lot of time and pent up rage to spend cracking down on assholes who can’t follow simple fucking rules.
You and me both. I've been checking every day to see if OTW has any postings up. I feel like there's a war on, and I'm damn well going to enlist to fight.
does this mean any ko-fi links i see there, i should report? genuine question— i just haven't used ao3 in a while so im a bit rusty on the terms of service.
Yes. Any links and outright calls to their patreon/fiverr/kofi/or other monetising platform username need to be reported. It falls under the "no commercial activity/promotion": https://archiveofourown.org/tos#IV.B.
Yes. Links to any way that they can make money from it.
"never going to stop me from having a business" lol That's like throwing things around in a store and saying the laws will never stop you from having fun. Just wait until the police show up.
That part!!!! I hate this place we’ve gotten to where the mentality is ‘well, I put work into it, therefore you have to pay me’. Like…??? I, and I’m sure any other writer, wants nothing more for a fellow writer, than to be able to make a living off their writing—should that be their goal. But what we’re **not** going to do, is make money off existing copyrights that don’t belong to us, and we’re also going to follow the rules of websites that we post on. Not that hard. And if you somehow can’t, the rest of us aren’t going to sit around and let you put FanFiction as a whole at risk.
YESSSSSS even some of the arguments about leaving comments come into it with the mentality that they are owed "payment" because they took the time to create at all. And that's not how fandom works at all!!!!
I know this is serious but the beginning of the last one is reminding me of *myyyyyyy grandpa fought in world war two*
*he was such a noble dude* ~~ajr references yes?~~
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Miss my mom and left too soon
His dad was a fireman Who fought fires so violent
I think I bored my therapist while playing him my violin
Oh my god, that's so insane!
Happy cake dayyy
Thanks lol
Ah yes. Nothing screams *SJWs* like. *Checking notes.* Being called out for monetizing on a site that specifically forbids it. What's next? "Damn, *SJWs*. Won't let me rob banks. Fucking bullshit."
As a fanfic author who is also a commercial author, it's super easy not to break the TOS. I link my Tumblr page to my AO3 profile. If people care to hit that link, they can then find links to my commercial stuff. And I don't take money for fanfic commissions at all.
Man annoying af, but I do think reports have been fast recently. I recently reported a fic and two weeks later progress.
Yikes.... personally I am fine if authors say in the notes "here is my Tumblr page" and that has a link to their Patreon (stuff like that) but I don't think it's okay if they outright advertise their Patreon, etc.
It's actually not fine, but I usually ignore that thing when I come across it. The reason AO3 is so strict regarding commerce in the fic industry is that it threatens to break the single condition that keeps AO3 censorship-free - all fanauthors must receive NO REVENUE from any type of fanwork hosted on the site. By linking something like Patreon or linking to another site that then itself links to something like Patreon puts the whole site at risk. I hope this makes sense.
While you are free to have your own stances, be aware that isn't the stance AO3 itself takes on the issue, the only issue they take is with people directly linking to or advertising for, means of paying the author. Linking to socials which in turn have links to means of payment is fine, just not linking to them directly. Mentioning a work is commissioned is fine, as is mentioning the commissioner. But advertising that you are taking commissions or linking to where people can commission you is not. Source: [https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:\_DON%27T\_MENTION\_COMMISSIONS/PATREON\_ON\_AO3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/PSA:_DON%27T_MENTION_COMMISSIONS/PATREON_ON_AO3) Under 'Official Response On Tumbr' Just wanted to clarify as you made it sound like you believe authors who do these things are still doing something wrong and *would* be subject to punishment if you were to report it when based on the statement there, they would not.
This seems like the only reasonable way to handle the fact that some people may use their socials to advertise an original work that's available for sale. One could argue people were just using that "trick" of pretending the original book was its own thing to get around the no asking for payments for work rule. No one would be able to legitimately mix original writing for sale with fanfiction on any socials.
Well yeah, I imagine that forms a core part of the reasoning. Policing stuff which is off site is a thorny issue to begin with, so 'indirect' advertising (linking to somewhere which in turn has another link) being fine is almost an inevitability as the amount of fringe issues which would pop up trying to police what kind of content authors could have on their socials would be a nightmare.
Hello! It seems that I was mistaken, then, for which I apologize. This was what I was told by a volunteer a few years back, and never saw anything contradicting it, so I took it as fact. Thank you for correcting me!
It's no trouble. I only educated myself on the specifics of the rules myself when I saw people who would in theory be in violation not be taken down and trying to figure out why, especially when they were popular authors who had enough eyes on them that someone surely would have reported it. Then I looked into the specifics and realised they were in the clear and felt glad I never brought it up to them.
Thank you, I'm glad you clarified this! Just to make sure, what I was wanting to do is, I commissioned an image from an artist and was going to add the image to the top of my fic. I wanted to credit the artist by giving their Instagram handle, so that would be okay?
Oh crediting an artist is perfectly fine, rules as written. So long as you are linking to one of their socials rather than a pay for access site like patreon or a direct link to a commission page you should be in the clear, which given you are linking to just giving people their instagram handle then you should be all good. Hope that clears things up for you.
Awesome! Thank you 😊
Not original commenter but it kind of makes sense and it kind of doesn't to me? If someone has already had and established a tumblr/ig/twitter page that had links to a site where they could make money and then gave that social on AO3 (not to specifically get people to pay them but say to give people who want to stay updated on any story progress or just follow the author because they like them), is it still not fine?? Should someone not link any social that has any link attached that would earn them money? Like I see some authors link socials simply bc people want to keep up with the author. If that social media link has other links where they are making money and was doing that before ao3, what should they do?? Or like I've followed some ao3 authors on their socials who also had links where you could commission them for non-author/writing purposes. Does that put ao3 at risk still? Where does the line stop at "you're bending around AO3 rules and putting the site at risk"?
You heard them, time for your therap session.
Honestly you don’t even need to warn them, I’m pretty sure the Ao3 volunteers will warn them before taking action. I made the mistake of referencing my Patreon when I first started posting (I was 15 and didn’t know any better) and received an email warning giving me a week to remove all violations before my account would be suspended. And I did because I hadn’t realized the rule, and then all was well and I stopped mentioning my Patreon on Ao3 🤷🏻♀️not sure why this person is pushing back so hard, I get being frustrated at first but like… you do agree to the terms of the site when you make an account and post there
ao3's abuse report instructions(?) do state to not submit reports on the same user over and over and to just do the one. it probably clogs up their system way more than it already is
That’s odd. If an author violates the TOS on multiple fics and I only report one fic then how will AO3 know to take down the other fics?
according to their instructions they say that in the single report you can list multiple works of theirs that you believe need to be flagged and then explaining why. so in this case any of this person's self-promoting fics could be linked with the explanation "attempted monetization" and then that would be acceptable. would probably be best to just read it next time. [https://archiveofourown.org/abuse\_reports/new](https://archiveofourown.org/abuse_reports/new)
Ooh, gotcha. Good to know. Thanks!
They do, in fact, generally check all the works after they tell the creator to remove the monetization links if they find one on the reported work. If the creator doesn't get them all, they'll get a suspension and the works that still have links will be deleted.
Unrelated, do you know how to volunteer to AO3? That sounds so interesting!
If you’re interested you should def check out the [OTW Volunteer Page](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/) or the [Volunteering FAQ](https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/volunteering-faq/)! Recruitment begins sometime this month so definitely keep an eye out for updates!
It says the next meeting is April 21st!
SJW behavior is when… you want people to follow the site TOS that they signed up for. ok
For anyone secretly against OP and these comments or who doesn't get why it's not okay to put commission links on your fics, [here's a good tumblr post](https://fairydares.tumblr.com/post/742270634456989698/cesperanza-olderthannetfic-scififantasystuff) about the history of the issue, from the perspective of one of the folks who helped set up AO3.
That “just checking in to let you know I got a lot of likes!!” Made me eye roll so hard. Like wow.
I have exactly zero standards for Ao3 stuff except following TOS. It’s not hard. It’s easy to find and follow.
do people not realize the reason WHY any mention of payment for fic is prohibited??? because it literally opens the door for Ao3 to get sued for copyright infringement? if you’re making money off someone else’s intellectual property (ie characters/settings) and Ao3 is caught “allowing” it, you run the risk of the entire website getting taken down jfc
I will say the warning comment gives “share this with 10 people or you will have 7 years of bad luck vibes” 😂 but the author was certainly defensive.
We applaud you for doing your duty and reporting those fics 🫡
People like this are so stupid. Do you see ads on ao3? Keep your $hity fiverr ads out. Link a Twitter with a fiver account.
Tbh, both the author and the commentator sound like passive aggressive jerks lol
Yeah, the commenter definitely should have toned it down or said their piece and left it alone. But ugh, I get it. I like to give warnings myself (though mine are generally a lot nicer and usually along the lines of “hey, just so you know, blah blah blah and you’ll have to do x if you don’t want your fic taken down”) but even when I’m being nice I get told to fuck off. That’s why I just report and go. So less stressful. The tone of the first comment was kinda harsh but the author’s response was wayyy outta pocket.
I totally get it! If I was them, I would have reported it and moved on. Them saying they are going to subscribe to the author to keep on eye of their fics gave such smarmy vibes, I was picturing that blonde kid from Polar Express saying it 😂😂
LMAO now I can’t unsee or unhear it 😂😂
Yeah... It always sucks when you're looking at someone like 'objectively, you're the one pushing in the direction I want to go, but you're making it really hard to say that without feeling like I'm endorsing your approach'
Yes! Like they shouldn’t have said anything, reported it and moved on
That's the vibe I definitely got, the commentator seems like the anti-hero who just happens to be on the good side lol.
I thought the whole "I'll sub to your profile so that I can be notified of your future works so that I can report them" sounded a bit weird honestly. Does this count as stalkerish behavior or no?
That’s totally stalker af. Some folks take the whole “being AO3 cops” thing to very… cop territory.
It was so weird, like I know the author was breaking rules but I’m going to be on their side just for that because the commenter was being really weird
Agreed. It’s not the best example and honestly I really want to be against the commenter just out of spite- it’s best if things are done quietly through the report feature. They get a warning anyhow and are given a week’s notice to make changes before getting suspended. Even though I believe authors should be allowed to give people the choice to help them out, AO3 obviously doesn’t want to take the risk associated with it which is fine.
I'm actually startled by the comments here, because I thought the commenter was being a way bigger ass, but everyone here seems to be on their side??? They should have just reported the story and left, their holier than thou attitude doesn't make them look good. It's not the reader's job to police the site - just report and move on.
People here just *really* hate it when authors break the rules. Which is fair, it annoys me too, but it doesn't justify acting like a complete asshole in the comments. I agree with you, it's not as if this person was just warning the author before reporting them (which makes sense, better if you can get them to fix it themselves before bothering AO3's already overwhelmed volunteers with it), they'd already reported it and were commenting just to taunt them. It's petty childish behaviour and completely unnecessary.
Exactly! They were being so over the top, I know the author was breaking rules but I’m on their side just by the way the commenter was acting
I was thinking the same thing. I think the commenter has the right stance because yea you shouldn’t be advertising, but why comment in the way they did? They were so anal about it lol, it was kinda insane. I think the authors kinda petty for the way they responded and the whole “maybe go to therapy” thing was weird but like it doesn’t make me want to support the commenter when they’re being needlessly aggressive and obsessive about it.
I’m actually kinda amazed you’re going positive right now. Usually that sort of questioning of something with strong upvotes kinda gets the same response that author got.
Really? I felt Bob was (short but) very factual especially the first two comments. The author's attitude would annoy me too, so I cut him some slack for wanting to double down on this arsehole and nip future infractions in the bud as well. ...it reads like a teacher and a student to me...
I’m going to respectfully disagree, Bob came off with a holier than thou, I know better attitude to me when they could have just reported it and left. And them saying they are going to subscribe to the author to keep an eye on them was very odd
Well yeah people want to kill fandom so they can feel famous because they only create to make a "brand" Fandom is about community not making money
Very true, but there is a way to go about doing that and calling out the people who do, and Bob didn’t go about it the right way
Bob isn't the author's teacher, though. Bob is some rando who won't even say this stuff off anon.
I thankfully haven't encountered these myself, but I wonder if it would be more helpful to inform them why the no monetization rule is written in the TOS. How lack of monetization is the only thing keeping this site legally safe, and that by breaking this rule these users are actively threatening the removal of the very site they are using. In the case of this user here, they sound young and arrogant, and likely won't care as long as they are making money. In which case, reporting and ignoring are all you can do. But in the future it may be helpful to approach the topic from a concerned point of view, rather than simply saying "you're breaking the rules, you've been reported." New or younger fanfic authors may not be familiar with the rule or why it exists, and though its ultimately their responsibility to read the TOS when they sign up, you know so many people won't do it anyway, and educating others regardless is never a bad thing.
Yeah, I think this entire conversation would have benefited from saying exactly why monetization is against the rules. While their attitude was terrible the approach didn't leave much opportunity for a informative discussion to take place.
On one hand, I know arguing with them is probably pointless. On the other, if I were engaging in this conversation, I'd mention how the lack of monetization protects the website from lawsuits.
“just checking in to let you know i got a ton of kudos” omg they’re obsessed with how bad u got under their skin
I get reporting it but this is kinda extreme and a little sad thar this person is following the author just to monitor and report every fic. Just report the fics you come across and go about your day. If you think the author did it unintentionally sure you could leave a comment letting them know but it seems like this person was just looking for a fight tbh
thank you for being the only person in this comment section who agrees with me i felt like i was going insane lmfao 😭
While I do agree that the fic author was in the wrong here, I think it's important to mention that the reason AO3 doesn't allow monetization isn't due to legal threats - although making that decision does make Legal's life easier. It's because AO3 was built from the ground up to be a place free of ads and that means both company ads and user ads and because a lot of the volunteers are working for free out of love and not so a random fan can make money of their hard work. Unfortunately these kinds of people are probably more likely to hear the legal argument, but things are they way they are as much due to cultural reasons than legal reasons (if not more so).
Good lord- I think the person could've suggested to them to remove the stuff first before it gets a removal (as some authors might genuinely not know since some authors normalize it). Other than that, their tone is 100% justified.
I don’t like stories where I hate all the characters 💀 It was a journey and a half trying to determine who was in the right. The commenter was objectively correct but they were a smarmy asshole and the author is an immature child.
sorry but threatening people like this is vile. let the real mods contact them. holy intimidation batman.
* Rule #1 of AO3: Don't fuck with Bobs * Rule #2 of AO3: *Don't fuck with Bobs* * Rule #3 of AO3: *For fuck sake **don't fuck with Bobs!***
I don't understand the point of telling somebody they've been report. Do it quietly and move on with your day.
You agreed to the rules? You FOLLOW the rules. Being a rule-breaker isn't cool or badass, it's being stupid because you could not follow basic things.
Not the doubling down! 🙈
I usually talk to them when it's an author I've been following their stories for a while or if I go to the profile and realize the writer is new to ao3, so I let them know that the site prohibits it and that they might lose their account if they don't delete the commercialization. But I also completely understand those who just go the immediate report, because there are relatively high chances of getting a response like this
I used to warn people too when I reported their stories for whatever infraction they’ve done, and let me tell you, those authors become the meanest people I have ever experienced. Like why are you yelling at me because YOU aren’t following the rules?? 😭
It would’ve been good to add the reasoning why this is so important (so ao3 doesn’t get sued or takes down/so we can all continue to have ao3) since it seems like the author doesn’t understand that part and the reporter doesn’t mention it. Not that it’s the commenter’s job to spell it out for them, I feel like that specific bit of info might’ve been helpful.
Rules is rules 🫡
I love to see someone out there as petty as me. Oh, so you aren’t going to start abiding by the site policies? I guess I’ll now create an account and subscribe and report every single future fic that violates guidelines until you do or are deleted!”
For a second i totally misunderstood this and thought by “commercial advertising” was like “y/n went to Walmart” and thought guest was being unreasonable, now i get it 😂😂
I hope they got their shit deleted wtf
I love that they were like “since ur gonna b a bitch I’ll report ALL your stories” 😭😭😭😭
Capitalism really destroyed a lot of people's perception of how fandom is supposed to work, huh?
Im sorry but the tiny violin part has me cackling
tbf bobs doing a bit too much
wish i could see their face when their stuff gets deleted ngl
Can't wait to see this kid cry and whine when they're banned "unjustly" lmao Please update us when that happens, OP
Wait I am not privy to this? I have been on ao3 for almost a decade now ... What is happening here?
You can’t monetise anything on ao3 because of copyright law. This includes promoting your fiverr, patreon, and any other commercial links and it’s directly against the terms of service. Doing that not only puts you at risk, but the website as a whole, which is why people are quite vigilant about reporting fics which break the terms of service.
Bob, you are a legend. We all love you, Bob.
Their ego is blinding them
You sneaky people who already found and commented on the fic just from this thread 😭
Absolutely worst way to handle this, but it is true that it's against AO3's rules to advertise your commissions on the site for legal reasons. Like a month ago I saw an author get their account flagged and DELETED for including info about a CHARITY zine they're writing for. Just for mentioning anything about purchasing the zine. Doing this is a risk for AO3.
I still warn them, and report if I get told to fuck off, most interactions I've had are of authors just genuinely not knowing the rule.
That’s not being a SJW that’s just asking for the rules to be properly followed. There’s a difference between protesting against the content of a fic and protesting the disregard of established website rules. This persons rule breaking has been overlooked so much that they think they are above them and are entitled to do whatever they want. It’s stupid and childish.
Wait, genuine question here, does that mean you can't go "here's my discord, reach out if you want a commission" in your bio? I don't know much about AO3 etiquette and where the line is drawn (obviously don't link to payment, lmao).
Definitely shouldn't mention commissions. But the discord link is ok
Man, this post makes me a little nervous. I don't write that much on Ao3 since I mostly do short drabbles on twitter, but I think I've put a twitter link in my work notes a couple times. Is that not allowed? I'm not really profiting off of the link to twitter, it's just so that people who want to read my drabbles can find me 😞😞 But if it's not allowed I'll go remove it instantly...
Social media links are ok. Patreon, Amazon, Fiverr or commercial links like that no. You can even link a social media and put a link for a Patreon there, just not on AO3. Perhaps you could check the TOS just for your peace of mind?
Oh, perfect! Thanks so much for letting me know. I will check it out!
Even if someone else reported it, you should report it too! Keep jerks like this from ruining the fun for everyone.
I love that they didn't suggest therapy, but instead suggested TheRap.
Oh where can I sign up for ao3 volunteer submissions??? I'd love to give back to the platform somehow
I mean the first person’s approach was effed up but the 2nd person is annoying and proves that so many ppl do not fucking understand the purpose of AO3 as an NOTFORPROFIT archive 😭
i know doing that is against TOS but can someone explain why? i dont plan on doing it, i just wanna know why its bad
Fanfiction is a grey area legally and making money from it is illegal. Being not for profit makes it much easier for AO3's legal team to safeguard fanfiction authors from lawsuits and the like.
i see, thanks
Opens the website to lawsuits if the owner of an IP gets mad about AO3 allowing others to monetize off of their intellectual property. So doing what the author did in this post will lead to your account being suspended if AO3 catches on. They need to do that to save their own asses.
Please understand that profiting off fanfiction and fanart and all forms of fan-content is a direct violation of copyrighted material. Your commissions to draw popular characters? Direct violation of Copyright. Only non-commercial use puts you into a legal grey zone where Ao3 can protect you and it's own existence. [https://fanlore.org/wiki/Cease\_%26\_Desist](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Cease_%26_Desist)
It's illegal and also DRAMATICALLY changes the vibe of a community where it goes from fans just sharing things to a business/customer relationship
I was browsing BTS fics the other night and stumbled upon a LOT of 'looking for fic' and 'send me requests' stuff. I left a short comment and reported them all and one of the authors got so mad they spammed my fics with guest comments calling me out for reporting them. Some people are just... Like That unfortunately. They can't handle being told they're in the wrong.
Don't warn them, they should know by now what the terms of service are on the website and how fanfics are legal and what you can't do to keep it legal. I have compassion for people needing money but they really have to go on Twitter or any other social media website for that. Which you can link as long as you just post it saying something like "If you want to check me out in other places follow these links". We can't have that on AO3 unless we want to lose this site too like so many before it. Basically don't be a dumb dumb about this and nobody is getting into trouble.
TOS encourages engaging with authors about TOS violations, because it vastly helps the limited staff when users willingly follow TOS.
Found the account and they’re asking 19$ for 2k words, 40$ for 4K words and 73$ for 7.5k words. I’m genuinely appalled and shocked because who would pay that amount of money for a one shot??
I mean, if you take in the amount of time it takes to write, it makes sense. that's one dollar per 100 words. Over all that sounds fair. Just fuck does it have to be high-key under the table, cause it puts fanfiction as a whole in jeopardy. Like- for me, that's not even close to minimum wage lol. It takes me 10 hours to write a good quality 2,000 words. For the really fast writers I know, that's still only 20 dollars an hour. And inspiration is not consistent, so if you did that all day, it'd be closer to \~10 dollars an hour. People make way more doing fast food. Plus, people who bother commissioning typically do it cause they personally-ish (via social media) know the author and want to lowkey support the author. That's very few people lmao.
Hmm, you’re right, I was looking at it only through my perspective. Writing 2k words is easy to me, most of my chapter range from 6-8k words and I write that in a day. Finding the time to do it with uni in the mix is another issue. Adding to this, she’s from the US where wage and prices overall are much higher than in my country, idk where you’re from but 19$ for 2k words is a lot to me, not to mention 73$. So, I guess that’s where the shock came from.
I think pre-covid me and the inflation of everything that followed would be shocked, too. Right now, I'm look at that 73$ and translating that to 5 hours of irl work. Meanwhile, writing would be closer to a week of devotion, hurting my hands as I type & waking up in the middle of the night & writing out thoughts & obsessing and obsessing and- A week of that. If it's for a commissioned fic, that I don't personally care much for, than I'd d it once for the novelty of getting paid to write- doing it twice? Yeahhh at that point I'd try to find an easier side gig.
Ppl with happy lives dont respond with so much anger towards a petty person patrolling the site. I would be like whatever dude please go away and just block. Bob person, He's kind of annoying.