{"id":37266,"date":"2017-02-14T02:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T07:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37266"},"modified":"2020-07-07T11:48:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T15:48:14","slug":"fanfic-from-grubby-subversive-literary-backwater-to-big-bucks-and-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/02\/14\/fanfic-from-grubby-subversive-literary-backwater-to-big-bucks-and-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"Fanfic – from grubby, subversive literary backwater to big bucks and recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Forbes<\/em>, Hayley C. Cuccinello<\/a> traces the early beginnings of the fan fiction community from Kirk-slash-Spock to Fifty Shades<\/em><\/a> and beyond:<\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, fanfiction is fiction written by a fan that features characters from a particular mythical universe such as a TV show or book. Its cousin, real person fiction (RPF), portrays actual individuals \u2014 typically celebrities \u2014 such as Harry Styles from One Direction.<\/p>\n

Though the Fifty Shades<\/em><\/a> itself has been dismissed by many as \u201cmommy porn\u201d and \u201cthe Great Idiot American Novel,\u201d James is the most commercially successful fanfiction author of all time. After removing references to Twilight<\/em><\/a> from Master of the Universe<\/em>, a practice known as \u201cfiling off the serial numbers,\u201d E.L. James published the renamed Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em> with Writer\u2019s Coffee Shop, an independent Australian publisher that was created by fans to commercially publish their work.<\/p>\n

The results were astonishing. To date, James has sold over 70 million copies worldwide, including print, e-books and audiobooks. In 2013, Forbes<\/em> named E.L. James the highest-paid author in the world, with $95 million in earnings, thanks to her massive book sales and a seven-figure paycheck for the first movie adaptation. In 2016, E.L. James was the eighth highest-paid author in the world, earning $14 million in 12 months, which brings her four-year total earnings to a whopping $131 million. With Fifty Shades Darker<\/em> now showing in U.S. theaters \u2013 and hitting the international box office on Valentine\u2019s Day \u2013 James\u2019 fortunes will only continue to grow.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\u201cKirk and Spock are the granddaddies of slash fanfic, which goes all the way back to when fans were writing it out and handing it to each other at conventions,\u201d says Andi VanderKolk, co-host of the Women At Warp<\/em> podcast. Some authors collected their works into fanzines that were typically sold at cost.<\/p>\n

Many fanzine authors would later find professional careers. Lois McMaster Bujold, writer of sci-fi series the Vorkosian Saga, contributed to numerous Star Trek<\/em> fanzines in the late 1960s. Sci-fi and fantasy author Diane Duane, who has authored over 10 Star Trek<\/em> novels, previously wrote fanfiction.<\/p>\n

There are many other examples outside the Star Trek<\/em> universe. Darkover<\/em> author Marion Zimmer Bradley not only allowed fanworks but published a few of them in official Darkover<\/em> anthologies. Television writer and producer Stephen Moffat, a former Doctor Who<\/em> showrunner and current showrunner for Sherlock<\/em>, previously wrote fanfiction. \u201cI refuse to mock [fanfiction], because I\u2019m a man who writes Sherlock Holmes<\/em> fanfiction for a living,\u201d Moffat told Entertainment Weekly<\/em> last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Forbes, Hayley C. Cuccinello traces the early beginnings of the fan fiction community from Kirk-slash-Spock to Fifty Shades and beyond: For the uninitiated, fanfiction is fiction written by a fan that features characters from a particular mythical universe such as a TV show or book. Its cousin, real person fiction (RPF), portrays actual individuals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,831,28],"tags":[1384,1023,122,85,223,134],"class_list":["post-37266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-business","category-media","tag-fanfiction","tag-loismcmasterbujold","tag-movies","tag-sf","tag-startrek","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9H4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37266"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58531,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37266\/revisions\/58531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}