Lots of people have a Patreon or Ko-fi for their fanworks, but that's pretty legally iffy. Are they just going along with hoping they don't get told to stop, or is there a specific loophole, or what? I'm considering the idea but would need to know if there was a secure way to do it.
all i know is that if you take commissions for fic you cant link your patreon on ao3 and some people have apparently gotten in trouble for even saying that a fic was a commission, so be careful Unfortunately i dont know anything else about how to go about this, sorry
As far as I know it's basically just praying that you don't get told to stop. In terms of fanfictions, you basically need to not mention your patreon ANYWHERE on ao3. At all. Period. Also hide mention of the work being a commission if it is one. I personally wouldn't fuck with the idea of fanfic commissions on ao3. If I did one for pay it'd be something I sent the person in private. Maybe it'd go on my tumblr blog at best, but that shit is going to be kept Far From My Ao3 Account. Even tipping. I'm a bit less concerned about being hated for being That Person Who Makes You Pay For Fic, personally, as I'm already working in a fic medium that's hated. But like the concerns of my Ao3 account getting fucked because I broke the site's rules matter a lot for me and I don't think it's worth the risk.
What would be likely consequences if you did? Would it just be a "stop that" order from a lawyer and no further consequences if you did stop? That would be worth the risk, but I don't want to go to court over it. The way I've seen other people do it to avoid the Person Who Makes You Pay For Fic issue is that they post all their stories up in public anyway, and the Patreon rewards are to vote on what they write next, not to get exclusive access.
The thing is, without knowing exactly what fandoms you'll be writing under, it's near impossible for us to give you that information. Some authors are okay with it, some are not, and some are okay so long as it remains at the same ratings as the original material (JK Rowling, for instance, having sent a letter threatening legal action to an archive for explicit Potter fics on the grounds that a minor would stumble upon them). Some will send DMCA requests, some will send letters threatening legal action. And that's for just non-profit fanfiction in general. Once you start factoring money, that changes a lot. Some might not mind tipjars but object to commissions, some of the ones who threaten legal action might add in the fact that you need to pay on top of infringing on the author's copyright due to the fact that you have profited off of said infringement... Again. It's really hard for us to say. #IANAL
I was thinking Homestuck as my main one because ficcing for it is easy; Hussie does have rules about what art commissions are okay but I don't know if it applies to fic. Eh, prob'ly best not to bother then.
Is fanfiction not generally covered under fair use? I'm not really aware of any cases where it's come up, though; and given that fair use is exclusively a defense case law is kinda important. Weird, though. How it seems to be totally a-ok for artists to accept commissions of a particular character or franchise, but not for people to write stories about them?
It's currently ambiguous as to whether it does fall under fair use or not in American law. It's part of why OTW has a legal team to defend the concept of fanfiction as being fair use due to being sufficiently transformative. There may be some cases relevant to this in their thing about their legal arm.
