I'm so glad to see AO3 making it absolutely clear that none of these things are allowed to even be HINTED at.
Here's some of the language from the new post about AO3's police on commercial promotion:
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There is a wide variety of things that are not allowed under AO3's non-commercialization rules.
Any other language which one might interpret as requesting or having requested financial contributions, whether for yourself or others. This covers indirect references, euphemisms, or other language intended to get around the TOS. Some examples of this include:
Thanks for the coffee!
My ☕ username is the same as my username here
This chapter is brought to you by my patrons
You know where to find me if you want early or bonus chapters
Check out my Twitter to learn how you can donate to me since I'm not allowed to discuss it here
If you want to hear more about my ideas, talk about fandom, or find more of my stuff for a coin, visit my Tumblr
Solicitation is not allowed, whether it's for yourself or on behalf of someone else.
#as writers we CANNOT make any money off of our fic#we could endanger our entire ecosystem of authors#does no one remember the Anne Rice stuff#we do our work out of passion and for free. if you want to make money off of your writing DONT WRITE FANFICTION <- prev
Alas, I'm fairly sure a lot of the people whining about not being able to force capitalism into their hobby probably weren't born yet when Anne Rice was sending lawyers after and doxxing fanwriters for violating her copyright. *takes a heavy drink of water like it's bourbon* I feel old.
AO3's structure is of a nonprofit, noncommercial library of fair use transformative works. it is not a market or vendor space, and so they cannot allow commercial works to be hosted there.
if you WANT to make money off of your fanfiction, you can assume the legal liability for doing so on another site, such as wattpad, patreon, etsy, bluesky, facebook, etc. they are different sites that aren't nonprofit archives of fair use transformative works, and they have different regulations.
they also will not protect you from any legal actions against you.
AO3 has lawyers, which protect their users and their archive from copyright claims, specifically under fair use laws that guarantee that because none of the works had been made for money, none of the works could be prosecuted as copyright infringement, since they weren't competitive with the source material's owners.
you can't have your cake and fuck it, too. you can't use AO3's structure in ways that specifically endanger AO3's explicit mission, terms of service, and operating parameters.
either you follow the rules, or you go somewhere with different rules, or you break the rules and get kicked out when you're caught.
