Stories that started life as fanfic

I guess the first question is - HOW much of it is fanfiction? Is it a fanfic novel you just scrubbed the names off of and did a search/replace with new ones?

You don't have to tell any prospective publisher it started off as fanfiction - UNLESS you've already posted it online. In that case you do have to point out it's been accessible in one form or another to the public for free.

So... how much of it is fanfic and how much is original? There's the million dollar question...

Going through the same problem as you: Never Online is a fanfic AU rewritten (and still being rewritten). So curious about what kind of answers this gets too.

My personal guess is not to say it's a past-fanfic during the query? It seems logical to me to wait until an agent asks for a full MS, or even if they ask for representation, though I'm hesitant on waiting that long...Though it seems like the representation fanfiction has could hurt your chances if mentioned too early.

Writers Coffee House, the first publisher of 50 Shades, would seem like one obvious possibility.

Sheryl Nantus said:

You don't have to tell any prospective publisher it started off as fanfiction - UNLESS you've already posted it online. In that case you do have to point out it's been accessible in one form or another to the public for free.

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Yeah. I agree with that.

As long as it bears little to no resemblance to the original fandom, and it's not been published online, I wouldn't mention it was ever fanficition. If it is published online, I'd take it down now. If you've taken it down and substantially revised it since then and added new material, I might say something like, "An earlier version of this novel was available in an online writer's forum, but the novel has since been removed and substantially revised and has not been accesible online for some time." I would try to avoid mentioning its fanfic origins if possible - unless it was on a blog with thousands of followers begging to see it in print or something like that. I think works with fanfic origins are a tough sale for most publishers, for fear of lack of originality, copyright issues, and the knee-jerk association of fanfic with horrible writing.

The key, IMHO, is the part where it's never been published, never appeared online, was never available to readers. Erego, it was a draft. Who cares what it was based on? Who cares what your original intent was? If someone read it without knowing it started out as fanfic, would they know after reading it? If not, don't worry about it.

http://www.omnificpublishing.com/

http://thewriterscoffeeshop.com

I'm with Shadowwalker. I fell in love with a TV show and desperately wanted to write fanfic about it. I also like to get paid, and I'd really like to avoid getting labeled as a plagiarist. So I skipped the fanfic step completely and went right to an original story "starring" the actors from the show. It sold to a romance e-publisher and did rather well. However, by the time I was done, pretty much everything had been changed except for the general physical descriptions of the leads. In my head, it's them. On the page it's somebody else. Unless you're a fan of the show, you probably wouldn't guess what inspired it. Even the fans might have trouble.

I've since admitted in several blogs who my inspirations were, and nobody's really seemed to care. The publisher didn't take it off the site and the show's lawyers didn't come calling. I even wrote a sequel which is doing okay, and at some point there should be a third.

In the wake of the whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing, though, I'm kind of sorry I didn't write a fanfic version. It might have gotten me a larger following and more sales ...

I know Cassandra Clare started off as a Harry Potter fanfic writer - not sure if any of her books were originally fanfic, though.

The writers coffee shop no longer accepts previously posted fanfic, per one of the editors.

I'd be wary of expressing that just because of the potential legal issues. It sounds different enough that it's a completely new thing, but it seems like it could potentially set you up for trouble.

kaitie said:

I'd be wary of expressing that just because of the potential legal issues. It sounds different enough that it's a completely new thing, but it seems like it could potentially set you up for trouble.

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Plus, provided you tell people it was a former fan fic or it somehow comes out that it was a former fan fic, you could receive some scrutiny from fellow writers. Just saying it could happen, not doing it myself but just warning you.

If it's totally AU, never been posted online, etc. - I wouldn't call it fanfic. You were inspired by certain characters, that's all.

Prospective publishers don't care about your inspiration, they care about what you've produced. If someone familiar with the original material could read your story and see the connections, that's a problem. But if you've removed it so far from the inspiration that there's no real connection anymore, there's no problem.

I wouldn't mention it. I don't think this is being dishonest, it's just keeping irrelevant information out of the discussion. I won't tell my publishers that I got the idea for my next book because of political issues in my neighborhood and then combined that with a character inspired by a guy I had a crush on in university and then added two dogs based on dogs I met at the dog park last weekend, etc. My inspiration isn't important - the product is what's important.

Captcha said:

If it's totally AU, never been posted online, etc. - I wouldn't call it fanfic. You were inspired by certain characters, that's all.

Prospective publishers don't care about your inspiration, they care about what you've produced. If someone familiar with the original material could read your story and see the connections, that's a problem. But if you've removed it so far from the inspiration that there's no real connection anymore, there's no problem.

I wouldn't mention it. I don't think this is being dishonest, it's just keeping irrelevant information out of the discussion. I won't tell my publishers that I got the idea for my next book because of political issues in my neighborhood and then combined that with a character inspired by a guy I had a crush on in university and then added two dogs based on dogs I met at the dog park last weekend, etc. My inspiration isn't important - the product is what's important.

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Now, I think this is also true as well.


Maybe you should change it to what you plan to publish it as(or similar to it anyway) and have someone in the fandom read it to see if they recognize any similarities? I hope I'm making sense.

I wrote and published an angel hero paranormal romance with a digital first publisher. My hero was inspired by Spike from Buffy, and in some ways was like him. Blond, built, naughty, sexy. With white wings, and no British background ect. But in my mind he was Spike, if Spike had been a bad boy Guardian Angel from our prehistoric past. Lol.

I never told the publisher who inspired me to write that character.

Captcha said:

Prospective publishers don't care about your inspiration, they care about what you've produced. If someone familiar with the original material could read your story and see the connections, that's a problem. But if you've removed it so far from the inspiration that there's no real connection anymore, there's no problem.

<snip>

My inspiration isn't important - the product is what's important.

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Yep. In the end, that's key, IMNSHO. Many of my characters are heavily influenced by my favorites in fandoms. That's how they will always look in my head. The reader isn't in my head so they'll never know (especially if I've done my job right as a writer).

Pterofan said:

I'm with Shadowwalker. I fell in love with a TV show and desperately wanted to write fanfic about it. I also like to get paid, and I'd really like to avoid getting labeled as a plagiarist. So I skipped the fanfic step completely and went right to an original story "starring" the actors from the show. It sold to a romance e-publisher and did rather well. However, by the time I was done, pretty much everything had been changed except for the general physical descriptions of the leads. In my head, it's them. On the page it's somebody else. Unless you're a fan of the show, you probably wouldn't guess what inspired it. Even the fans might have trouble.

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Speaking as a fanfic writer and reader, I'd just like to throw this caution out there.

Learn to identify the trademarks of fanfiction. The over-reliance on the fans reading to know the milieu (so description gets skipped) and make sure make sure make sure that you haven't fallen into the fanon traps and the obvious things that fanfic authors rely on to make the fandom characters identifiable (other than their names) even if they were written in an AU setting.

There have been a few times I've picked up books (mostly in epublishing, I'm sorry to say) and been reading it and...it's hard to explain but I can simply tell by the writing that it started as a fanfic. In fact, one book I read I even knew the fandom because of the way a characteristic of one of the characters was described. It was a stock fanon fandom phrase (over)used in the fandom used to describe a unique characteristic of the character.

Pterofan said:

In the wake of the whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing, though, I'm kind of sorry I didn't write a fanfic version. It might have gotten me a larger following and more sales ...

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I admit...me, too.