Amazon’s Fan Fiction Store Is Officially Open

Remember when Amazon announced Kindle Worlds back in May? The service would allow writers to create and sell fan fiction based on a number of licensed properties, like Vampire Diaries. It’s an incredibly innovative approach to fan fiction, and now it’s available to all.

Amazon announced today that the Kindle Worlds Store is open for business. The store launches with over 50 commissioned works written by already accomplished authors. Now the submission portal has been opened to all so they can submit their own fan fictions to the store.

“Today, we launch the Kindle Worlds Store and the platform that will enable any writer to benefit from writing in one of the Worlds we’ve licensed,” said Philip Patrick, Director, Business Development and Publisher of Kindle Worlds. “We look forward to hearing feedback from readers and writers, and hope to learn and improve as time goes on.”

First things first – this isn’t fanfiction.net. You can’t just go writing about any property that you want. You must operate within the franchises that Amazon has been able to license thus far. Thankfully, the retail giant has secured licenses for a number of popular franchises that pretty much beg for fan fiction:

Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment division for its New York Times best-selling book series Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar; Pretty Little Liars, by Sara Shepard; and The Vampire Diaries, by L.J. Smith

Valiant Entertainment for Bloodshot, X-O Manowar, Archer & Armstrong, Harbinger and Shadowman

Best-selling authors Hugh Howey for Silo Saga, Barry Eisler for his John Rain novels, Blake Crouch for his Wayward Pines Series, and the Foreworld Saga by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo and more

To publish stories in any of the above worlds, you’ll have to do the following:

Choose Your World: Choose a World to write in and read the content guidelines.

Sign Up and Submit: Sign in (or sign up) with your Amazon account and submit your work using our self-service submission platform.

Review and Publish: Amazon Publishing will review your submission for compliance with the stated guidelines and we’ll publish your work once approved. Each sale of the Work will result in a royalty to the author.

Promote and Track Your Work: Post publication, sign into Author Central to track progress on your work.

Amazon says that it’s currently working to secure more licenses across books, movies, TV shows and video games, but has nothing more to announce at the moment. Let’s just hope they can get the license to Jurassic Park. The potential for Ian Malcolm fan fiction is too large to ignore.

You can get started on your officially licensed fan fiction journey here.