More on me being really uncomfortable with (read: dislikes strongly) fanfic on Goodreads
I went on record when I first found Kindred Spirits uploaded to GR back in April, and with artwork added that belonged to sinyhale, that I wasn’t okay with it. She wasn’t notified…
Most definitely this is not okay, and doesn’t have my permission. That said, I spend so little time on GoodReads that I don’t really know what’s up here. Is this person posting links to the fics? Are these under our fanfic pseuds? Any info much appreciated.your fic is listed here. honestly, I’m a little confused, because while I’ve been familiar with the unfortunate phenomenon of fic being added to GR, as far as I can tell the works themselves are not actually being uploaded to or archived on the site.
As someone listed in the original post who’s been aware for a while that about eight of my stories are on GoodReads, I’m not fussed about this at all. The actual story has not been uploaded (although in one case fanart associated with the story was uploaded as a cover, which I agree ought to have had the fanartist’s permission).
Otherwise, though, this is like getting worked up about a link to your story being on pinboard or delicious or a recs site—GoodReads isn’t a professional review forum, it’s a website where people talk about what they’ve been reading lately and whether they liked it. It strikes me as sort of a weird place to talk about fanfic, but clearly there’s some subset of fanfic readers who congregate there.
Even when it comes to the covers, they are only doing thumbnails. Which is akin, to my mind, of pulling a quote from the story for reviews. Fair use, on both counts, for reviewing. (But I speak as someone who generally, unless I’m lucky, does her own cover art.)
I have no problem with authors adding notes to their fanfic about where they want their fic to be discussed. Just as I have no problem with fans not seeing those requests or upon seeing them, deciding to go ahead and discuss fanfic in the places they do congregate. As a fan community, we’ve tried to control where fanfic is mentioned for decades with little success: first we objected to it being mentioned on Usenet, then websites, then mailing lists, then LJ, then twitter etc). And I suspect we will continue to try to control who is allowed to discuss or mention our fanfic, where they can discuss it, and how they can discuss it. But to pretend we *can* control where fandom migrates or that we *can* prescribe fandom behavior by waving a moral/ethical/etiquette flag is hubris.