Making money writing a new Anime "season"

any ideas?

You can contact the corporation and ask them for their manuscript submission procedure, or whether they plan to release tie-in products and if so could you submit your writing credentials and a book proposal. In both cases they'll probably ask for your agent to handle it, and that's as far as my knowledge goes.

If your work can be classified as parody you would be legally in the clear under Fair Use, but if it's a big corporation they'll sue anyway just on the off chance you can't afford a lawyer.

If it's just straight-up fan fiction, the only defense you'll have against a law suit is not making money off it - and that's not actually a legal defense that will hold up in court, it's just that it's typically not worth anyone's time to sue over the average word salad on fanfiction.net. If you write good stories that get some traction with the fan base there's been cases of fan fiction writers who've been offered contracts by the parent company and other cases where the writer got sued into oblivion so caution is advised.

Your best bet is to get a lawyer, an agent, and a business plan - if you can afford only one you probably need the agent more to handle contact with the company that owns the intellectual property. If you can't afford either, you should rethink your plan and see if you can't use your ideas to produce an original work without directly using the IP.

"Romeo and Juliet" has been ripped off a thousand and one ways in everything from horror to musicals, but only someone who uses the actual names and settings of West Side Story instead of producing their own ripoff of Shakespeare get sued.

I believe it's possible to get 200k fans easy. With that kind of power it's tempting not to try and make money. Does it matter if it's direct income or if it's indirect?

I'm not a lawyer or a literary agent, talk to one of those for a real answer - but my preliminary gut feeling is that most trademark owners won't care how you monetize their intellectual property, just that someone who isn't them or someone with a valid license from them are making money in some way.

On the other hand, if you're talking about licenses for a foreign property they can be surprisingly affordable if you aren't talking mass-market stuff like Pokemon. I believe there's a few lawyers around the forum with courses on licensing.

This is one of those areas where the big IP owners are for the most part dead serious, look up Righthaven and their business model of suing bloggers who excerpt a single piece of content from their properties or the bills for $800 per image Getty Images routinely sends out for unauthorized use. I would not play around with this fire before consulting a professional who can advise you on how to do it in a way that doesn't end with you starting at the wrong side of a subpoena.