Publishing Fanfiction?

Something new I noticed on AFF (besides the new layout) is this thing called "AFF Author Spotlight"

...dear lord...

The first author who was featured was actually pretty cool I thought. For one, she didn't actually publish her fanfiction and it was going to a good cause.

However the latest author to be featured...ermm....

I have nothing against publishing books but this seems a little fishy too me. And before you get mad at me I have a pretty good reason why. While I don't think that the kpop ficdom is mono I don't want AFF to turn into something like the Twilight ficdom.

I'm sure everyone has heard of 50 Shades of Gray- infamous for portraying wrong and also because it was originally a twilight fanfic. The story of how FOSG was published is pretty long so I'll just paraphrase it however if you want to read the full story click here. And seriously I recommend reading the full version because it is pretty amazing and a great read.

Anyways...back to how FOSG and the Twilight ficdom and relate to this new AFF featured author.

Twilight had so many great fanfics and it would make sense for the authors of these great fics to publish their fanfiction, it starterd to get a lil bit shady tho. Basically if an author wanted to get their fic published or publish their book they would just change the names of the characters (aka Edward to a John Doe name and Bella to a Mary Sue name) and send it to a publisher. If their book got accepted for publishing they would take down the fic,

So for example, if I took one of my god awful kyuyoung fics, replaced Kyuhyun with Ken, and Sooyoung with Sarah I could send it in to be published. If the publisher said "yeah let's publish it" all I would have to do is just delete the fic and try to get my subscribers to buy the book.

Recently I heard that people in the Twighlit ficdom would only publish a few chapters of their story and make people pay for them to see the whole completed story.

Which is how I connect the whole AFF author who was featured. She only posted 10 chapters of her story but then doesn't post the other chapters and has the whole story published in a book where she changed the names of Sehun and the oc. So in short: to read the whole story you'd have to buy the book and replace the Sehun's new name with his actual name for the fanfic experience. While I don't think that publishing a book is bad, I just think it's kind of awkward and fishy to publish your fanfiction.

So, my question is:

Do you think it's okay to publish fanfiction?

I'd like to know what you guys think.

Comments

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Crazycakestop #1 May 15, 2015 15:02:33

Just thought I'd join in and say what I think. So, hi! I actually think it's great to see young people getting their work noticed and actually published. I think it's a real good achievement. I think that it's amazing to see that someones hobby (fanfiction writing) can be turned into reality and generally at such a young age. However, I agree with you on the fact that the author should not have posted 10 chapters in order for people to buy her book. That's just annoying, selfish and ridiculous in my opinion. So, I think it's great to see fanfiction being turned into actual novels, but it's so stupid to hear that some people are almost FORCING people into buying their book...

Conversemaniac #2 Aug 28, 2014 04:35:10

First of all, sorry for being nosy, I happened to find your blog while searching for Twilight/kpop AU fanfics :P. To be honest, It's a bit hard for me to see fanfiction turned into books, because... Well.. I have yet to see a fanfiction that's good enough to turn into a book, but considering that there are already too many bad books in the literature indutry. The last time (and first time) I heard that a fanfiction was turned into a book was 50 Shades of Gray or Grey (can't remember which one is it), and that novel is bad in every way; it doesn't depict correctly, all the characters are bland, it has a fanfiction flow to it (which is not normal for a novel). I haven't read the "True Beauty" one, but I have a strong feeling it won't be goos. However, I wish her the best, since she is a fellow kpop fan, and is trying to write professionally. A lot of big authors wrote fanfiction too, but they never thought about publishing their fanfiction because they KNEW that those stories weren't good enough. This is just my opinion, though. :)