For anyone who might be writing fic in order to raise money/donations for a cause, please remember not to mention that anywhere on AO3. It is against the Terms of Service to charge money for fic, even if that money is not going to you, personally. Please don’t mention commissions or donations or fundraising or patreon or kofi etc etc in a fic or on your profile. ❤
I will boost this signal, mostly for myself because my brain is apparently a fucking colander and I can’t remember shit sometimes; and also add, if you’re the one who commissioned a fic, don’t mention that on ao3 either. Not even in your bookmarks! I forget other people can see my notes there. Please don’t get your writing friends in trouble, like I almost did a couple of times :(
Just say ‘i asked for this pairing/trope/continuation/whatever’ Don’t say ‘i commissioned this’.
i’ve had “if you enjoy my writing, click here” with a link to my kofi in all of my end notes for a couple years and nothing’s happened, so maybe try that
Nope. You’re still breaking their TOS by having a site like ko-fi directly linked, and if anyone finds that out or someone reports you, you can lose your entire account. They have to enforce these rules in order to protect us from copyright laws. It’s why for decades individual fandom creators used to put “I do not own this work or profit from it” at the start of every fic/chapter.
What you can do, is say “follow me on tumblr” and promote your ko-fi on your tumblr. But I’ve seen people do the link to their ko-fi/patreon without explicitly mentioning them and still losing their accounts or getting hit by warnings cause someone reported them. (The one person I knew who outright lost their account just kept doing it repeatedly despite multiple warnings, like a doofus, so that was on them.)
(I think there may be exceptions for certain charity drives, but I don’t think ko-fi and patreon are protected by that)
Hi! Former AO3 Abuse team member here! It’s been a bit, so I’ll admit that my knowledge may be slightly out of date. But generally speaking you cannot:
Link Directly to:
- Kofi
- Patreon
- Amazon
- Your private book site where you sell your writing
- Any other fundraising site such as gofundme etc
If you link and are reported your work is in danger of being deleted, but you will be given a warning and time to fix any issues.
You also cannot mention that a work was directly commissioned with $$, hide the rest of your work/novel/chapter/ or in any way paywall the remainder of your work. Things like “support my writing here!!” are usually no go.
General phrasings like trade, requested, asked for, etc are OK.
Joy is correct in saying linking to your tumblr which advertises your kofi or fundraiser is ok.
If you are reported, the AO3 team will do their best to let you know EXACTLY what works and what phrasing is not allowed. They do issue a blanket “responsible for the rest of your works” statement so be thorough.
AO3 WILL NOT DELETE YOUR WORK, BAN YOU, OR IN ANY WAY REMOVE ITEMS WITHOUT WARNING. IF YOUR WORK IS DELETED YOU WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL CONTAINING THE DELETED WORK. KEEP YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS CURRENT. NEVER USE A STUDENT EMAIL ACCOUNT.
Thank you for that 💖
I did not know this and I think it’s very important others as informed as well.
Curious question: what of a kofi link in your profile, unrelated to a specific work?
