I hate to make two Twilight posts in a week, but now it seems the fandom has their own Lori Jareo wannabe in the form of LadySybill, who’s written Russet Noon, a post-Breaking Dawn story about Bella’s other love interest, Jacob Black. Nothing surprising about that as a fanfic: But she’s calling it a “tribute novel” and was directing readers to… eBay? And it seems she thinks she can get away with it because… Stephenie Meyer didn’t draw pictures of her characters:
The characters in SM’s novels were not copyrighted because she never drew them or hired an artist to draw them. Today she shares her character copyrights with Summit. And, no, Russet Noon does not have direct permission from SM to publish this sequel, which is why the article says that it is a “Tribute” or “Unauthorized” Sequel.
And here’s what her ‘publisher’ has to say:
When fictional characters become such an intricate part of the popular psyche, as is the case with the Twilight Saga, legal boundaries become blurred, and copyright laws become increasingly difficult to define.
Yeah, that would totally hold up in court. Get the rest of the story and boggle at length at Sparklefield and Fandom Wank.
UPDATE: Has LadySybill seen the light?
I’m still wondering when “Twilight” manga is gonna hit the streets.
I’m not sure “publisher” is the right word, there. I just googled “AV Paranormal Publishing.” They don’t seem to have a website. They put out their press releases through a free third-party service, and their only press releases are for Russet Noon (the other press releases on PRlog’s front page are mostly about as professional as a geocities page, and most are either straightup ads or applicants for the Wacko Files). In addition, the email address they list goes through russet-noon.com, and their submission request is two lines long and fails to include any contact information.
I know that there are plenty of small presses out there that don’t have the resources for a fully-staffed publicity shop, but every legitimate one I’ve come across manages to do a better job than this. (I’ve also never run across a legitimate press with this poor an understanding of the basic laws of copyright, but that’s kind of obvious).
I’m guessing this “publisher” is the writer themselves. Even fraudulent vanity presses like PublishAmerica would know better to open themselves up to this kind of liability.
She can put together a website and send people to eBay, but she can’t google “u.s. copyright law”? Probably this level of… specialness shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but it does.
I imagine she’s hoping that the copyright holder will consider it too much trouble to go after her, with not enough to gain. But eBay could put a stop to it right away — what’s their excuse?
The new revelations on fandom wank about the “publishing company” have me in stitches.
Saw a great line about this from Peter David:
“It staggers the imagination that Lady Sybilla might actually be a worse writer than Stephenie Meyer.”
Actually, with this degree of publicity, the copyright holder really has no choice other than to go after her.
If nothing else, lwtting her get away with this very well might lead to other, rather worse, pirates Getting Ideas.