Yeah, I had this moment in the middle of making my previous reply where I thought "Sophie, are you spouting ill informed crap? Because I think you may be." (Why must interesting conversations in fandom always start up when I'm feeling particularly ill and stupid?) But the thought didn't process far enough to actually changing the comment very much :/
So: I guess prose publishing culture is such that while "available for free online" and "professionally published" aren't entirely mutually exclusive, in practice they do tend to be. I'm so far removed from the attitude of "I will put this for free online then when it's popular put it behind a pay wall" I have no idea how the AO3 should deal with it, but it does seem against the general principles of the archive.
Going back to my original point, I still think it's wrong to see "being on the AO3" and "Being sold commercially" as mutually exclusive, since there is that teeny subset of people who sell their prose yet keep it free online, and there's also going to be increasing numbers of people using the archive for fanart and comics where the culture is different.
Re: Ah, I think we have some unspoken assumptions in conflict
So: I guess prose publishing culture is such that while "available for free online" and "professionally published" aren't entirely mutually exclusive, in practice they do tend to be. I'm so far removed from the attitude of "I will put this for free online then when it's popular put it behind a pay wall" I have no idea how the AO3 should deal with it, but it does seem against the general principles of the archive.
Going back to my original point, I still think it's wrong to see "being on the AO3" and "Being sold commercially" as mutually exclusive, since there is that teeny subset of people who sell their prose yet keep it free online, and there's also going to be increasing numbers of people using the archive for fanart and comics where the culture is different.