You may not know LJ Smith’s name, but you definitely know her work: for twenty years she’s been writing The Vampire Diaries, a successful teen book series that spawned the hit CW show. In 2011, though things changed and LJ Smith was fired from writing the series.
How can someone be fired from the series she’s been writing for 20 years? It has to do with a contract and the entity with whom she signed it. She was hired to write the book by Alloy Entertainment. Alloy Entertainment is a book-packaging and television production unit of Warner Bros, and part of Time Warner, and its cornered the romance-heavy style of teen and YA market. Think of titles like Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars, and so much more – it’s startling how many shows come from Alloy, in fact. Alloy Entertainment, in essence, hires authors, packages their work to what, in this case, Harper Collins wants and sells it to them.
In an email from LJ Smith after her firing, she revealed to fans that she learned too late of the reality of the contract she had agreed to way back in 1990, and that it gave her no control over the characters and the books she was writing – she had to write what Alloy wanted, and Alloy wanted a romance featuring Stefan and Elena, two of the main characters. Smith wanted the series to focus on Damon (Stefan’s brother) and Elena’s relationship instead. So, after two decades of writing these books, LJ Smith was fired. She suspects Alloy wanted the books to follow the show more closely and the President of Alloy will only say that they parted ways with her because of creative differences.
But, then fanfiction hit the mainstream with EL James Fifty Shades of Grey hit trilogy and Smith 
now has a way to continue writing the story she wants in the Vampire Diaries world, thanks to Amazon and Kindle Worlds. With Fifty Shades’ success and the success of The Submissive and Beautiful Bastard, both of which started as Twilight fanfiction as well, getting in on the fanfiction being written by devoted fans is big business. So how does it work?
First up, you can only write and earn money from your fanfic of your favourite show if the owners of your work have signed up to Kindle Worlds and entered into partnership with Amazon. After that, you’ll have to adhere to the very long list of writing guidelines that those publishing owners have listed. And, this isn’t just teen shows we’re talking about here – Amazon has the rights to Kurt Vonnegut’s novels as well.
So that’s what Smith did. In January this year, she released the first of her Vampire Diaries fanfiction, happily ignoring the books in the official series she didn’t write after being fired. But like every other fanfiction writer on Kindle Worlds, she doesn’t have copyright for those stories, and Alloy still gets money off every sale she makes. Alloy is promoting her stories on their site, despite their difficult relationship. LJ Smith is planning eight more books to finish her Vampire Diaries story, while Alloy’s official series is coming to an end.
Fanfiction is becoming more and more mainstream, I wonder if Kindle Worlds is worth it? Has anyone heard success stories from it?
