fracturedchassis asked:

Hello, Neil. I have a question regarding the general "trend" where authors always say that they don't read fanfiction.You mentioned in a tweet that it's something you 'legally shouldn't ' do. Is this a thing that is enforced everywhere in the author community? I just find it weird that nobody says that it's a legal thing, and just shrug it off as 'don't read it. don't want them to affect my ideas'. I guess it's a bit of both and i get the second part, I'm just curious if it's also a legal thing

neil-gaiman answered:

Long ago when the world was young fan fiction came with lengthy disclaimers. As a young author one knew of people who had been sued or been threatened with legal action by writers who had written fanfic. So many writers won’t read fan fiction of their works for the same reason they don’t want to be sent ideas for sequels to their books, and for the same reason TV companies don’t read unsolicited scripts and story ideas. It’s legally cleaner.