Pingoodle
Hi everyone! Cheers to the person in my inbox, I figured I may as well put a recent post about this because everything else is long since buried. I always figure that if one person has a question, a lot of other people do as well. If for whatever reason anyone wants to have a discussion Iām open to it, though Iām not around on Wattpad much these days.
So what if people convert stories? Iām glad you asked! Thereās two situations here to be discussed. The first one is where fanfiction or other online, unprofessional works are converted. The second situation is where published novels, and novel series are converted.
In the first situation, sometimes... itās fine. If you asked permission to convert and the author said yes then hey! Nice! Convert away! Everyone is onboard, everyone is having a great time, Iām happy for you.
If you did NOT get permission, thatās where the harm starts. I stumbled into conversations about conversion in the first place because a friend of mine was very distressed and on the verge of deleting their fanfiction because it had been converted to Camren on Wattpad. I went to see the story to see if I could help report it (I could not, for unpublished work only the original authors can report) and right there in the āsuggestedā was... more converted stories.
Iām a writer. Iāve written a lot. I know that writing takes time, and thought, and energy. It also often means putting yourself in your stories. In one of my stories, thereās a scene taken right from my own life of a time when I felt the worst Iāve ever felt. Conversion without permission is taking the work and the passion of someone else and saying āI donāt care about you, this is mine nowā. That sucks. Donāt do that.
Also: itās against the law, fanfiction or not, and itās against Wattpadās policy as well. Did you notice the tick box when posting a work that says it has to be yours? Thatās there for a reason!
Pingoodle
In the second case with published work, itās extra illegal. In fact, itās so illegal that Wattpad doesnāt even require you to be the copyright owner to report it ā you can just link to the goodreads or Amazon page for the published work.
Besides the law though, unless youāre converting a book by JK Rowling pretty much, youāre doing direct damage to an author. Authors really, really donāt make a lot of money. Conversion is just piracy with a coat of paint ā and often the books converted are from small authors, self published or from small presses. These are the authors that are struggling to make money and keep writing even BEFORE the threat of piracy. Further, Iāve often found queer books converted. All the problems that authors face are made worse if they are trying to publish queer books, especially F/F. Youāre hurting people who are already struggling.
(On JKR: I only mention her because she became a billionaire by writing, which never happens. She's an awful person with an awful ideology. Trans people deserve support, TERFs do not.)
Truly though, I have full confidence that if people put the time towards writing instead of converting, they would end up with good stories too. Anyone can write, it just takes time and practice. Whatever you write will be much more specific to your ship than anything converted could be too!
One final note: Iām not specifically targeting Camren. I truly just do not care enough about this one ship to target it. And no, this isnāt a homophobic attack either. Conversion is unethical no matter what kind of ship the story is being converted to.
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