When Doctor Merlin was a wee little fanthing with even fewer social skills than she has today, lunch was hell.  The high school cafeteria was claustrophobia-inducing, and without even those basic graces which the good doctor, um, well, still lacks, mustering up the courage to ask for a seat at someone's table was simply out of the question.  Lunch didn't happen.  This left Doctor Merlin with unexpected free time, which she filled by writing her very first Epic Novel.  It was badly written, in longhand, and shortly lost after completion (someday to be found, probably at the moment of greatest possible embarrassment), and was a barely-veiled fanfic.  This was of course in the days before the word "fanfiction" ever entered my vocabulary and changed my life.  In my childish glee of creation, I thought that if I just changed the names, I could finish my story and get published before senior year, junior year if I could find a good agent.

Yeah.

Now, let it not be said that this has not happened.  Fanfiction has been known to sell professionally, and not just in the officially licensed tie-in materials that have, ironically, given amateur fanfic such a bad name among certain professionals.  A notorious Xena: Warrior Princess alternate universe fanfiction was professionally published in the late '90s, to the delight of the fanfic author's fans.  Surely, you say, surely anyone else can do this as well!

No.  The novel in question was alternate universe, enough so that only the people familiar with the author would know for certain that the dark-haired warrior queen and her red-haired sidekick/lover were meant to be analogous to Xena and Gabrielle.  Enough effort had been taken to remove the characters from their home setting and recreate them in a new time and place with new identities (all common traits of AUs in Xena fandom and everywhere else) that the story was original.

You can possibly maybe sell your fanfiction using the character names and settings of your fannish squee.  If you ask permission, there is a non-zero chance that you will be allowed to license the property, but that non-zero chance is significantly smaller than your likelihood of being struck by lightning this year.  (Doctor Merlin does not recommend standing in a thunderstorm holding a golf club and shouting imprecations at various deities just to improve one's odds of getting published, but she reserves the right to point and laugh later.  Firefox News takes no responsibility for anyone who tries anyway.)

You're far more likely to be told no.  Current copyright law states that copyright begins at the creation of a work, published or unpublished, and ends seventy years after the death of the author.  (Timeline to be extended as the date of Walter Disney's death simply refuses to change with the needs of the Disney corporation.)  Authors, creators, publishing houses, and all the people employed by same have a vested interest in keeping copyright hold on their toys and maintaining trademark on their brands.  Letting you make money from their stuff means they run the risk of making less.  While Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer might be making big bucks, most working writers see sales as the difference between making a mortgage payment and not, and they take a dim view of anyone negatively affecting that.  This is the reason behind the copyright notice on this website.  If you take our articles and post them in their entirety somewhere else, we don't get paid, the website doesn't make money, and we have to shut down.  The same argument has been used recently in the Scans Daily debacle, though it ignores comics fans who spend extra money to buy hard copies of things they've already enjoyed online.

  Copyright matters can get complicated fast, which is a big reason why the companies involved just say no.

Well, you say, since they're going to say no anyway, maybe I should just go ahead and do it.  And to this I say, as long as it's then posted at fanfiction.net or similar, and paid for by applause and virtual cookies, go forth and godspeed, young fanthing.  If instead you get thee to an agent and send out press releases and sell advance copies on eBay, well then, we're going to have a problem.

We do not professionally publish our fanfiction.  We do not talk about selling our fanfiction for money.  No, not even by soliciting donations from our fanbase so we can take time off from our day job to focus on finishing our Epic Fanfic.  Certainly not by claiming that copyright only covers characters that have been illustrated, so stealing the names, locations, and previous plots is A-okay under copyright law and trying to publish anyway.

We post online.  We post in 'zines, charging just enough to meet costs and no more.  We do it for love and for recognition from our friends and for bragging rights and for one more notch on our way up the ladder to BNFdom.  The second we ask for money, we break the unwritten, unspoken, and totally not legal contract with the powers that be, the contract that says (or would, if it existed) we do our things and they pretend we aren't here.  When that line gets crossed, even by the most sadly misinformed and overentitled fanwriter with delusions of competency, it screws the rest of us over too.  The pros stop ignoring us and start sending cease and desist letters.  Entire fandoms have had to go underground because of the actions of a few idiots.  (The bitterness is still strong with the Blake's 7 old guard.)  We do not show our fanfiction to the pros, not even when you think the actor would be honored to read all the slash about his character, and we do not sell our fanfiction without explicit permission from the copyright holder.  Which we won't get.

That means you.  That means your best friend.  That means the biggest big name fan in your fandom.  That means stupid people trying to become big name fans by drumming up interest in their sub-par Twilight sequel by courting "controversy."  So don't do it, not unless you want half of fandom to come down on your head and the other half to use your username as a punchline for the next several months or years.  Commemorative icons will be made in honor of your failings, and the wank fallout can be seen from space.  Don't let this be you!

Create.  Always create, because if you're a fanfic writer, you can't help it so you might as well revel in it.  But disclaim your work to acknowledge what's not yours, and don't try to make a buck on it, and don't be a pretentious twit (says the woman who talks in the third person all the time) if someone points out the pooch you unintentionally screwed.  (That poor dog.)  Post to your blog, post to the archives, post to the mailing list, post to the newsgroup, post in a fanzine or three.  And yes, if you've changed your OTP to a lesbian couple living high times in Siberia in the 1890s, you might possibly get to see it in print because it's divorced enough from the source material for TPTB not to care about the coattails you're riding.  This will be more likely if you don't try marketing it as a fannish tie-in novel but instead allow the story to stand on its own.

Sell your own stories.  The ones we share here we can only ever give away.