Fanbinding has exploded in popularity in the past few years. Many fanbinders do adhere to a strict gift-economy stance in line with the writers whose work they’re binding, often limiting the money they collect, if any, to covering material costs. But the people selling bound versions of popular fics for profit are cut from a different (book) cloth. As they make money off works the authors themselves cannot sell, they’re putting those authors—and, arguably, fan fiction itself—in an untenable position.
“Technically speaking, the reproduction right belongs to the author of the fic, because that’s the ‘copy right’: They are the only person with the right to make copies of the fic,” says Stacey Lantagne, a copyright lawyer who specializes in fan fiction and teaches at Western New England University School of Law. Even though she notes it “might be considered an…
