InsaneJournal

Current mood:

cheerful

In need of some opinions...
Hello, wonderful people!  I hope you are all doing well...

I'm a bit chipper right now.  Had a fantastic weekend :-)  I need to catch up on my friends list, but if you think there's anything important I missed, please feel free to point it out. 

To the point of the post:

I need some OPINIONS.  

So I wrote this Remus/Sirius fic called "Hope is the thing with feathers" (with the title slowly but inevitably changing to simply "Hope").  A few months ago, I gave the go ahead for someone to translate it into Chinese and post it to her site.  The readers there have been lovely, and I've even gotten some fanart out of it.

Aclytie has just contacted me that they are now interested in creating a 'fanzine' of sorts... where they print out my story into a little booklet for distribution among their tiny circle.  They, of course, won't do it without my permission.  I believe it'll include other works as well... not too sure about that.  Since I'm (relatively) new to fandom and not all up on such things, I was wondering if anyone had an opinion about this.

Should I say yes go ahead, or politely decline?  I'm thinking I should make sure of some things first.  That they're not making money off this, that it's only for a very select distribution...  Copywrite issues frankly scare the crap out of me.  I get butterflies in my stomach just from thinking about my pitiful little fanfics posted on the web, so of course my 'I don't want to get in trouble in any way AT ALL' senses are tingling when I think about my fanfic in tangible print.  

Then there's the other issue of my 'fan-self' vs. my 'real-self'.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I have separated my real life from fandom as much as possible.  Separate journals, separate e-mails... even the name I give you all is not my given name.  I'll talk about my real life in a very general sense, or without specifics.  Enough info that you get to know me and we can relate on non-fandom terms.  You know?

Anyways, so the point is that I want to get published some day.  I know there's an increasingly blurred line in fandom that makes it possible for some fanfic writers to cross into professional writing without there being much fuss (though I'm really not up-to-date on if this is true for writers of slash as well... gay themes are still something that seems to me to be a big NO in mainstream publishing... ::sigh::).  Still, though I don't think I'd ever deny any participation in fandom, I'd rather not have that issue among the many other obstacles in getting my original work published.  The drama-queen in me is making Aclytie's small request into something pontentially very bad.  

One of these days my worry-wart side and my confident side will duke it out and settle everything once and for all.  I hate being suddenly anxious even over the most trivial of things (this applies to several everyday things as well... including talking on the phone.  I hate calling up for appointments and whatnot.  'Do I ask for this, or should I state it this way? OMG! ::panic::').

I really don't know if all this rambling is simply asking for reassurance, or just my attempts to think it though myself.  Maybe I'm really just pondering the state of literature and publishing in a post-internet world.  

Opinions on the matter?  It would even be interesting to hear what other people think concerning fandom writers trying to publish original works.  Should I say yes to this fanzine thing?  Or clutch my fic to my chest and run to the hills screaming?

I have some fics to beta, and then I'm going to catch up on reading from the weekend.  (plus lots and lots of writing)  Maybe I'll start archiving my fics here tomorrow...