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question on author rights and the term canon?
example: we all know that comic books have multiple authors all writing about the same character over time and most are considered canon instead of fan fiction. So if an author sells the rights to their characters/ world or whatever you want to call telling them to go ahead and write what they want with it. would the new stories written using that world and characters by the new owner be considered canon or fan fiction.
2 Answers
- 3 years ago
The owner of the rights, since they're the ones who can actually add anything.
The original author having sold his rights is limited to peevishly saying "well I don't like that."
Fan fiction is what is written by people who have no right to publish.
- 3 years ago
Following on from Crow's answer, whoever owns the copyright gets to decide what's canon.
With comic books (as well as films and TV shows), usually the publisher or studio or network owns the copyright - mainly *because* they use hundreds of writers over the years, and it would be unworkable if every writer owned the characters and stories they created, and had to give permission for every subsequent story that used their characters or referenced events in their stories.
Novels tend to have only one author, so the publisher sees no problem with letting the author retain the copyright and just licensing publication rights for some set time. If the book proves popular enough to merit a sequel, the publisher will want the same author to write it, because that's what the public expects.
