Fake 'Harry Potter' Books Written In China

http://www.11points.com/Books/11_Amazing_Fake_%27Harry_Potter%27_Books_Written_In_China

by mapleoin • 16 years ago

58 17 16 years ago

jbellis• 16 years ago

This makes me think that it's a shame we'll never have a modern equivalent of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, because nothing new will ever enter the public domain after the 1998 copyright act.

jerf• 16 years ago

Good news! For you! Maybe less good for others!

http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/ -> "we currently hold over 60,000 stories"

The search page must truly be seen to be believed: http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/storytype.php Metadata search as you've never seen it before!

Sturgeon's law is in full effect, of course, but don't forget its fuzzy-logic contrapositive: 10% of everything isn't crap. I can't say I've drunk deeply from this well, but I've read a couple of things that makes you wonder why the author bothered to "steal" the setting at all, when they could quite clearly make their own. (Though it also shows the value of editors and their mighty Red Pens of Cutting Out About A Third Of The Text.)

derefr• 16 years ago

> makes you wonder why the author bothered to "steal" the setting at all, when they could quite clearly make their own.

It gives the work a prefabricated audience. It's much harder to convince [random member of the public] to read "my original novel" than it is to convince [random ______ fan] to read "my ______ fan-fiction."

wisty2• 16 years ago

Yet we all think Apple's App store policies are draconian. Besides, it's not about copyright. It's about trade marks being expanded to include characters. I'm cool with trade marks (I wouldn't want to buy a book by JK Rowlings if it was actually written by Umberto Eco), but re-using characters doesn't seem so bad.

bmj• 16 years ago

The same thing exists for Jane Austen, like http://www.austen.com/.

petercooper• 16 years ago

I've read a couple of things that makes you wonder why the author bothered to "steal" the setting at all, when they could quite clearly make their own.

That's branding in action. Some people think "branding" is only about logos and letterheads, but it can come down as far as a group of characters and a setting in a story, too. Having the same characters and setting as novels they've already enjoyed, Harry Potter fans would probably get more out of even badly written fan fiction than they would from an all-new environment.

(From the author's point of view, perhaps they just didn't get a break or didn't have the determination to make it. At least by hijacking the Potter brand, they might get read.)

When I was a kid in the early 80s, I had a racing game where you could set the names of the other drivers to anything you liked.. so I set them to names of my friends, family members, etc, and it made the game far more fun even though there was no logical reason for it. Instead of winning a race against generically named computer racers, instead I could be kicking my grandpa's ass until the last corner.. there's something fun about that. So it goes with fan fiction, themed/cartoon porn, and similar pastiches.

rms• 16 years ago

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality! I posit that it is the best Harry Potter fanfiction of all time.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...

hernan7• 16 years ago

I'm not sure about that Sturgeon's contrapositive... Are you sure that there is a 10% of, say, Goregrind or telenovelas or vampire romance that is not crap?

meric• 16 years ago

Hmm this sort of shows what copyright laws do... cut out a lot of crap, but you lose some good stuff too.

BoppreH• 16 years ago

The last book makes me wonder if the story is told just by Harry's point of view, as in no omniscient narrator. It could make things interesting.

This article beats the superhero's schoolbags by far.

thenbrent• 16 years ago

I lived with a guy who downloaded "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" as a PDF about two months before the book's actual release.

He read all 600 pages, then said it was probably fake, but still a great read.

ern• 16 years ago

Something similar happened to me: a few years ago, I downloaded "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", and almost read the whole thing before I realized it was fake (the fake book said that Dudley died, and I remembered reading somewhere that it was another character who was killed off).

There was a fair amount of sex in the book, but I assumed that JK was adjusting for the kids' growing up. I have never actually gotten around to reading the real thing.

hristov• 16 years ago

So in China somebody actually gets paid for writing fanfiction.

I have to say I like the guy that just printed the lord of the rings with the names of the main characters changed to harry potter characters. He truly understands how the global economy works. He is like one of those contractors that charge you 1000 hours worth of work for dirt cheap price, and you think you are getting a great deal until you realise they delivered some GPLd software with the license terms removed and the file names changed.

Fake 'Harry Potter' Books Written In China

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