That best-selling romance book? It might be based on fan fiction
That best-selling romance book? It might be based on fan fiction
Romance novels do big business for the publishing industry, and there’s a new source for those books going mainstream. As Elizabeth Held wrote in Vulture, publishing houses are looking to the world of fan fiction for new writers, converting their already-popular fanfic into books.
“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Held, a self-proclaimed “avid reader” and writer of the book recommendation newsletter “What to Read If.” The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kai Ryssdal: So for those who aren’t familiar with the world of fanfic, which includes me, by the way. What kind of stories do you find out there on, for instance, the site you talk about in this piece called Archive of Our Own?
Elizabeth Held: So fan fiction is kind of a giant, underground community that’s starting to pop up anywhere. So a lot of the stories you find on Archive of Our Own, which is also referred to as AO3, are love stories featuring characters from all sorts of different books and movies. A lot of “Harry Potter,” Marvel and “Star Wars.”
Ryssdal: So, let’s talk about a couple of things here. First of all, the business case for this, the “Marketplace” reason we have you on this podcast, is that literary agents are now finding their way to fan fiction authors. As opposed to the other way around, which is usually authors have to go screaming and hurting and crying to find a literary agent. What’s up with that?
Held: So this was really interesting to me because when “Fifty Shades of Grey” came out about a decade ago, that started as “Twilight” fan fiction, and the author E.L. James was kind of squirrely, she didn’t want people to know it was fan fiction. But now, like you said, literary agents are approaching fan fiction writers like Ali Hazelwood, who is a New York Times bestseller. She wrote a fan fiction story that features two “Star Wars” characters, Kylo Ren and Rey Skywalker, and she imagined what it would be like if they were able to fall in love together. And a literary agent read her story and really loved it and encouraged her to submit it. So they worked together to kind of change the nature of what it would look like as fan fiction into something that a major editorial house would publish.
Ryssdal: Okay, so setting aside for a minute, the actual romance of the story, because I can totally see that. Here’s the catch, and not that I’m carrying George Lucas or Bob Iger’s water on this one, but they own the IP for those characters and and nobody else does.
Held: That’s right. So a lot of times when you read a story, a fan fiction story on Archive of Our Own, it includes that little disclaimer saying that. And when fan fiction writers republish their work by a publishing house, they go through a process that’s called typically filing off the serial numbers, where they make it so that a story, that even if it has its roots in other IP, is something that can be read and enjoyed separately.
Ryssdal: Publishers, instead of now having to find and develop and, you know, source all these authors, these these authors now are kind of being handed to them on the proverbial silver platter.
Held: Definitely. And what you see in the “Star Wars” fan fiction community is that they are so excited that these authors that they started reading their fan fictions of years ago are now getting published, that they are showing up in droves to support them and like landing them on the bestseller list.
Ryssdal: Right, it’s a ready-made audience right?
Held: Exactly.
Ryssdal: So for you as a reader, right, as a person who absorbs this kind of content. Do you prefer fan fiction? Or do you like sort of the finished product that gets turned into something that’s sold by the major publishing house?
Held: So I am not a huge fan fiction reader anymore. I in my teens read a lot of “Harry Potter” fan fiction, but have kind of grown out of that recently. I think there just hasn’t been a story that has captured me enough. That said, I just find this trend really fascinating. And like I’ve been watching it from afar for a while.
Ryssdal: Is it all romance novels? I mean, are there no good like Westerns in there or science fiction or anything like that?
Held: It’s mostly right now playing out in romance. But I wouldn’t be totally surprised if we started seeing it spread to other places.
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