It all feels a little familiar: a work of fan fiction with a massive online following; a six-figure book deal; a slew of media coverage riddled with misconceptions about the nature of fanworks. “If you’ve ever wondered why anyone would spend their spare time writing fan fiction, you better think again,” one outlet writes. A similar message, albeit more of a gentle joke: “Apparently, it really pays to spend your free time writing about your favorite teen stars. Take that, parents everywhere!” But some got straight to the point. One article that begins: “Gone are the days when fan fiction was the best kept secret on the internet” continues: “SIX. FIGURES. Christ we need to pack in this jounalism [sic] malarky [sic] and start writing fan fic, pronto.”
And then yesterday, a Guardian piece surely intended as pure snark that managed to hit the same old nerves. “Fan fiction is big business”, the mock-Q&A asserts. “So this is how you get rich? Write in a stream of consciousness style about celebrities having sex with an impressionable young woman and wait for the money to roll in?” All of this is, of course, about one particular work of fan fiction. The celebrities in question are the members of One Direction, especially Harry Styles; the “impressionable young woman” is Tessa, a stand-in (in fandom, what’s known as a Mary Sue, or the more euphemistic “self-insert”) for the author, 25-year-old Texan Anna Todd; the money rolling in is six figures for her trilogy After, which she’s been publishing on the story-sharing site Wattpad. With nearly 300 chapters between the three installments, After has been viewed more than 800 million times. Todd signed a deal with Simon and Schuster, with whom she’ll work to, as the cliché goes, “file off the serial numbers”: the proper names will have to be changed (and all those chapters will be whittled down to three regular-sized novels, too).
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