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Should a Published Author let on about Their Fanfiction?

Harry Potter YaoiI’ve always been a bit bothered by another M/M Romance author’s bit of advice that given to me during a chat. The advice was basically this: Don’t tell anyone you wrote fanfiction.

Now, as an M/M Romance author who got started in this business by writing Fullmetal Alchemist  fanfiction and has used this fact as much as possible to let my fanfiction readers know that – hey, I have some original published stories, too, and  they’re a lot better than the fanfiction stories – I can’t let myself really believe this is good advice. It seems to me if someone likes your fanfiction stories, then they’d probably like your original published stories, which are quite often a hell of a lot more polished and professionally edited. For me, I look at the fanfiction as fun free reads. And I loved writing them. I got to have fun with someone else’s characters and quite frankly, the whole episode taught me a ton about how to write and what readers wanted to read.

And to tell you the truth? I’m proud of my fanfiction stories. Sure, there was a lot of head hopping, typos and the like. But people expect that sort of thing in fanfiction. Sometimes, I almost feel as if there’s a lot more freedom in fanfiction. I can test a few things out and see if I’m wacked for writing something like that or maybe it’s the best idea ever. (I’m liking that term, best XXX ever lately, LOL).

We as published writers need to promote about as much as we need to write good stories and to think we shouldn’t use that avenue of ourselves to promote our work just seems… wrong. I know I’ve read some pretty damn good fiction on fanfiction.net and adultfanfiction.net. So to think that all that literature out there on those sites is bad writing, well, I don’t subscribe to that view. And if you’re a published author and want to write a bit of it for fun, why not? And why not promote it as yours?

What do you think? How do you other authors feel about this issue? And yep, if you look to the right there in my links, you’ll find my fanfiction.net site and can read all my fanfiction stories if you’re so inclined:)

2 Comments

  1. Rachel m

    I believe its fine if people should know that an author write fanfiction. I believe it allows people to see where the author started out and how much they have progressed as a writer, also it allows the reader to see some the authors work and if they like it they will be more inclined to read more from the author which in turn helps to boost the authors popularity. So right on you public authors/fanfiction writer you just keep on writing that sweet writing and I as your loyal reading will keep on reading.
    PS It so great to know that there are writers out there who love yaoi as well.

  2. Andy Sykes

    should it matter at all – you are just another writer, except apologies here, but if you do not want to tell anyone then that is your business – if people enjoy your books which i do then i do not care – i just want to read the book and then wait for the sequel if there is one or buy another book – my only concern is they are only ebooks – but that is the way of the world – but it is just that i have been brought up with paper and that is what i am used to but it would not and has not stopped me buying them. Keep on writing and with the art – they are both has important as each other.

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