Fan fiction involves taking an established story or universe's characters or setting, and creating a new interpretation of it through the author's point of view.

Franchise Fiction is where an author is hired to write a story set within an established story or universe's setting, and offering their own interpretation.

The difference that I see is that one gets paid, while the other can be subject to Cease and Desist orders if the work's owner is stingy enough.

Now, I'm not using this comparison as a way to defend either side, since there is a lot of garbage in both Fanfiction and Franchise Fiction works. But it really got me wondering: if someone who started out writing fan fiction was suddenly hired to write official stories for the same universe, would that somehow validate their earlier, non profit contributions?

I think the main problem comes from how different franchises approach continuity, which can either make it easier or more difficult to find a place for a writer's work. I can think of three distinct examples that share a wealth of both Franchise Fiction and Fan Fiction, and their differences to how they approach both.

Star Wars, Star Trek, and Warhammer 40000.

Star Wars operates on a canon system, with films and television taking priority over novels and games. Everything that can be worked to fit together is, while anything that doesn't, or is a direct contradiction of a higher level of canon is declared non canon. This automatically invalidates any contributions of fan fiction, since they aren't able to be applied to the canon rating system. However, there is a brand known as "Infinities", which directly involves what if scenarios. Stuff like the Dark Side events of Force Unleashed or Knights of the Old Republic fall here. So there is still working space for Fan Fiction, even if it will not be seen on the same level as established works.

Star Trek goes about it differently. Only the films and television are declared canon, and anything written is considered free reign. Several series, such as the Relaunch Novels, focus on continuing the stories set by the television series, but for the most part, Star Trek novelizations are what if scenarios published as books. This gives much more leeway to fan fiction writers, since their stuff is pretty much on the same footing as all printed Star Trek works. And I believe that on one occasion, a Star Trek fanfic was actually acknowledged by another book, written and published.

Warhammer 40000 goes one step further, and declares pretty much everything fair game. The franchise itself actively encourages creativity from the fans to create their own unit fluff, meaning that something as mundane as a story about two soldiers falling in love during a Tyranid War is just as canonical as the wars for Armageddon. Only certain things, such as the Emprah or major players, are off limits, but even then, if someone wants to write a story where Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM) plays a poker game with Empie, the Chaos Gods, Q and Discworld's Death, it can still be considered valid, if brought on by a weird ass dream, or by some Warp clusterfuck.

So, the way I see it, there isn't much of a difference between Fan Fics and Franchise Fics, apart from payment and credibility. Especially in works where there is an attempt to accommodate the consumer's own creativity, I think that it is a good thing to share the distinction.

The main difference I see is quality control, at least in terms of content. While that one Mass Effect novel was pretty bad, from what I heard, at least it wasn't actively destroying the world the original creators made.
On the other hand, something like, say, My Immortal would never be published.

I think you're pretty much right. Franchise fics should possess a higher quality of writing, more accurate use of lore, and even ideally access to some inside knowledge of the universe that regular fans are not yet privvy to, but for a number of reasons this just doesn't seem to happen.

Often the problem can start with the authors chosen to write the books, as generally the types of authors that offer their services in this way are doing so because they don't have the literacy proficiency to create and sustain their own works, so they leach off the in-built consumers of a more popular franchise (I know this is not always the case).

Another problem is that they will often not initially be familiar with the franchise they are writing for, and even if they do make an effort to read up on lore, Sci-fi universes are so huge and complicated they often won't be able to take in everything, and they are writing under deadlines, so at some point they have to stop reading, open Microsoft word, and give their subject the best bash they can. This coupled with the near-rabid obsession for detail most fans have for their series will lead to every small detail they got wrong being picked up on and broadcast as a tragedy.

I've never really read a franchise fic book for these reasons, although I'm sure I've thumbed through a couple at a library at some point.

I suppose the only real difference is quality control: You know when you buy a franchise fic book that it will be complete, and done to a passable competent level of quality to have been published, whereas a fanfic may not be complete, not even written in decipherable English, and can degenerate at any time into madness if the writer gets fed up or stuck or just quits altogether in mid sentence.

TheBobmus:
I... I want to stop reading. So badly.
But I can't.
Why is this so bad, and why am I going back to read some more?!

*shakes TheBobmus*

Stop, man! Stop! For the good of mankind and your sanity! Stop!!

OT: Yeah, you've got it spot on, OP, though I was thinking you could split fan fiction into three: the serious; the parody; & the insult. I think each label should be self-descriptive... only of which the first the franchise will be willing to accept if feeling magnanimous, the second it'll tolerate at a stretch and the third it'll deny the existence of.

Hazy992:
It's a good point actually. I actually sort of considered Episode of Bardock a kind of official fan fiction. Also, if you're a DBZ fan and you haven't watched it yet, what are you still doing here? Go watch it. Now. It's awesome :D

And now I welcome the sweet embrace of death. When a Funi dub comes along, I'll watch. I won't listen to a fan dub, or the 80 year old granny Bardock from the japanese audio.

The difference my friend, is editors.
With fan fiction you can just go nuts, but with franchise fiction there will be an editor hired specifically to keep you from pulling any stupid shit. Mind you the editors don't always do the best job of reigning authors but the difference is that they are there in the first place.

smearyllama:
The main difference I see is quality control, at least in terms of content. While that one Mass Effect novel was pretty bad, from what I heard, at least it wasn't actively destroying the world the original creators made.
On the other hand, something like, say, My Immortal would never be published.

I had a really lengthy explanation thought up, but that actually about sums it up. Basically it amounts to the fact that Franchise Fiction authors are usually kept within extremely rigid guidelines whereas Fan Fiction authors are free to take a piss on the franchise and usually do.

I escaped from another forum so I wouldn't have to deal with more Nozawa-whining...and now I get THIS?

Anyway, no, there's not much of a difference. Fiction is fiction. Although I doubt J. K. Rowling would bastardize her own creations by having Draco Malfoy rape Harry Potter in the bathroom.

It all depends on the difference between the franchise itself and it's fans. For example, most MLP fanfiction would never get published by Hasbro because it's 15 year old and more males writing fiction based around a show for mainly little girls. Whereas with stuff like Warhammer 40K, Mass Effect and Fallout fanfiction a lot of it could get published because you can see stuff like sex scenes, gore, dark themes, drugs and all that in the actual franchise.

Using TES as an example, there were references to events that were in (or at least, referred to in) the two books in Skyrim. It just depends on what franchise it is, some are more important than others.

TheBobmus:

smearyllama:
My Immortal

I... I want to stop reading. So badly.
But I can't.
Why is this so bad, and why am I going back to read some more?!

Because you haven't heard of Metroid High School yet ;)

Hazy992:
It's a good point actually. I actually sort of considered Episode of Bardock a kind of official fan fiction. Also, if you're a DBZ fan and you haven't watched it yet, what are you still doing here? Go watch it. Now. It's awesome :D

o.o? they animated that? i saw it in manga form a while back, it felt very 'fan fic-ish' with the time travel and all

I think the main difference is that the professional authors generally get told what kind of story to do, or they're told which things are off limit which things are fair game.

In fanfics, everything's fair game. You'll probably never find an official Star Wars story where Anakin and Obiwan begin a steamy, sex filled romance; but in fanfics, I'm sure you can choose at least 100 variations of that story.

TheBobmus:

smearyllama:
My Immortal

I... I want to stop reading. So badly.
But I can't.
Why is this so bad, and why am I going back to read some more?!

There are several readings of My immortal on youtube that are well worth a listen.