FAQ Masterpost:

Just a small bit of my up coming BSD soukoku one shot, "Restocking & Recharging," that makes me giggle🖤🖤

Mistaken again! I thought, for just a moment, I saw my lover’s face- but mischievous, capricious, all the little gods of love.

Yosano Akiko, River of Stars: Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko

There are two types of writers:

1. 'It's fiction, it doesn't need to make sense!'

2. 'I didn't account for the rotation of the planet and how that affects the constalations while my characters stargazed at different times of year, I have failed as a writer, and this entire thing is trash'

There’s not a single person back home who reads my works. Or, if they do read them, no doubt they merely focus with a pitying smile on the vile nature of the main character, recounting his flaws to others with exasperated shakes of the head, scornfully deriding me for bringing shame upon our homeland. Once, four years ago, when I briefly met my eldest brother in Tokyo, he told me to stop sending my books to the relatives. ‘Not even I want to read them,’ he said. 'When the relatives read what you write, how do you think they…’ He didn’t finish, but bowed his head, as if the words had caught in his throat, but he’d said enough to make things perfectly clear to me. I didn’t intend to send another one of my books back home as long as I live.

Dazai Osamu, “Thinking of Zenzo” from Self Portraits

that feeling when youve written down 2k+ words and havent even got CLOSE to the main part of the fic yet </3

There's 15 books on there now, with 5 of them being random cook books.

I really hope the rightful authors of those books discover this problem ASAP.

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

"Have I met you anywhere?" Dazai smiles a smile of no personality. "No. This is the first time we met."

- The Day I Picked Up Dazai (Side B), Kafka Asagiri

Happy 38th Birthday to Dazai Osamu's Seiyuu (Voice Actor) Mamoru Miyano 🎉🎉🎉