It’s been five months now since I last updated any of my Pokémon fanfics. For the most part, I’ve been working on original fiction instead, most notably on a novel that I hope to publish traditionally. To many people, perhaps most people, this would be viewed as a far better use of my time. Original fiction, and especially that which is traditionally published, is viewed in a very good light by society. The average person you meet is likely to be impressed if you tell them you’ve published a book, while likely looking down on you if you mention that you post a lot of fanfiction. Not to mention the fact that one can actually make a living off the former while the latter can only be secondary at best to your occupation or your education.
What, then, is the point of writing fanfiction? Should I even continue writing it when I could be spending all that time and creativity on original works instead?
I am currently in a position where one path seems just as open to me as the other. Even if I fail to find an agent or a publisher for my completed work, the option of self-publishing is always available in our modern world. Additionally, I am under no real social or economic pressure to pursue one path or denounce the other. I have a stable source of income and I am independent.
The true question, then, is what the point of writing fanfiction is for me. This question is more different from the general question than it may first appear. Even with such a great degree of independence, it can be difficult to separate my own ideas and values from those that culture, society, and the structure of publishing itself have quietly soaked into me.
When I started writing fanfiction, I didn’t have very deep or well-considered thoughts about it. I wrote my first piece in the same way I would have written the start of an original novel or a short story. The only difference was the thought that I “couldn’t do anything with it”, since at that time I truly did have my eye on traditional publishing alone. Later, I posted it just because my sister was posting fanfiction of another type and I saw it as a fun exchange, similar to when we’d taken turns writing a story in a notebook we passed back and forth.
But since I had posted it on a public website, namely Wattpad, I knew that other people might read it as well. I was absolutely enchanted by the idea that they might find it and praise my abilities, especially because I saw my work as being of better quality than the other works the site was showing me. I was bestowing a high-quality gift upon the readers, and surely it would become more popular than all these books that were littered with misspellings and amateurish writing.
And it was when that didn’t happen that I realized something was unfair. Wattpad did not seem to have any systems in place to automatically determine the quality of a work and promote the better ones more heavily. Instead, it seemed that my work would only be found through the online equivalent of word of mouth. I had to do my own marketing. And since the website prevented me from using any traditional tactics like buying a billboard (aka placing an advertisement for my book on the website itself, which was not allowed except inside a tiny area that readers never really accessed), promoting it at a bookstore (aka making it more visible to people searching for new books to read, which was completely controlled by an algorithm no one outside of Wattpad understood completely), or using some other form of media (social media would be the only one available, and this was completely useless to a person who did not have any and would probably have less than ten followers in any case), I had to use the only form of “marketing” that seemed to work for other users on the site. Namely, I had to make my book more visible by making myself more visible.
Wattpad works like a social media site in many ways, including the fact that users follow each other and receive updates from the people they follow. If I had followers, they would be notified when I posted something, essentially making advertisement dependent upon personal popularity. But it is impossible to become popular if no one knows about your existence. So in order to advertise your book, you first must advertise yourself. You must reach out to other users and hope that they become interested in you and, ideally, in your work as well. A novice might think that you could simply ask another user to read your book, but any experienced user knows that this is the very height of rudeness except in very narrow circumstances. No, the best way to make yourself visible is to find users who look like the type to appreciate your book and show an interest in what they are writing. In some cases you can even trade favor for favor—I’ll read one chapter of your book if you read one chapter of mine.
This, I quickly found, was an uphill battle for a person writing fanfiction. Many of the users who wrote and posted original works openly refused to read it, and the only people who could both be easily found and could be dependably counted on to show an interest in me or my book were those who wrote fanfiction of the exact same type. This was, in the best cases, because people wrote what they loved to read, and, in the worst cases, because they were incentivized to give me attention in the hopes that I would give them more attention in return.
At any rate, being incentivized to read fanfictions of the same type as mine only increased my sense of injustice when I found ones more popular and lower quality and when I found ones equally unpopular and of quality similar to mine. Being ignored or looked down upon by other types of users had the same effect.
I didn’t like the system, so I sought to change it. I wanted to increase the visibility of works that deserved it. I wanted to use that increased visibility to draw in more generalized readers, who would realize that fanfiction could be of good quality as well. I began to write fanfiction in order to prove it could be done well.
In my quest to right some wrongs, I began posting reviews of books on Wattpad, hoping to help readers find ones of good quality and avoid ones of bad quality. Instead, I drew the interest of those who wrote the books I reviewed, who naturally had an interest in hearing what others thought about their work, and of other users who wrote reviews because, again, Wattpad’s system encouraged users to give attention to books similar to their own. I saw this as a good first step, however, since any attention is better than no attention and my book would at least be advertised to a wider audience than previously if those people gave it attention and it showed up in the feeds of their followers.
Ultimately, though, my reviews never seemed to draw in any of the generalized readers that they were originally intended for, nor did the review account I ended up joining and later leading. Additionally, I was increasingly incentivized to review only (or at least mostly) books that were similar to the ones I wrote because I had many followers who only followed me for that type of content. And I was encouraged to keep writing fanfics similar to my first because very few of my followers read a book I posted for a different fandom, meaning almost no one read it at all. The system only created a self-sustaining loop in which I was followed mainly by those who wrote similar fanfiction and they in turn were followed mainly by those who wrote similar fanfiction to themselves and I was incentivized to follow my followers and the followers of my followers. Instead of reaching a wider audience, I became part of a mostly enclosed community of similar-minded people who mostly read and wrote one type of thing.
At that point, I began to write fanfiction in order to appeal to that community. The way to gain visibility was to appeal to that specific set of people. In order to have any hope of being recognized beyond it, I needed to be popular enough there to get the numbers that would make the elusive general users realize that my book might be worth their time. But this strategy was doomed to failure because fans enjoyed books that non-fans would never be interested in or be able to get into. Fans got bored with explanations of fandom-specific concepts, while general readers required them. Fans read many fanfics in the fandom and wanted something different, which often meant depicting more of the obscure aspects of the fandom that casual fans might struggle to relate to or understand.
In the end, fanfiction became a competition in which all the writers of this small, particular, enclosed community wanted to be more popular than all the others. And that, I believe, is what led to the toxicity that led to my departure, not just from Wattpad (which was caused by something else entirely), but from the community itself. As well as the departure of other notable users.
Was this the inevitable result of trying to get the best results within Wattpad’s constructed systems? Perhaps not, but I find it difficult to believe that the system of the website itself played a heavy hand in shaping the motivations of its users. These motivations—to be a popular person, to write better than anybody else, in some cases to be better than everyone else—can only ever be unhealthy and destructive in the long run. In some cases even in the short run.
Is this the point of writing fanfiction? To be recognized as the best? To have the highest read counts? To become internet-famous?
Not for me. I never wanted any of those things personally, or, if I did, I only wanted them in moderation. If I had wanted to achieve internet fame at any cost I could have done a much better job of it than I did after having spent so much time and having learned so much about the systems. If I had wanted to be recognized as being better than everyone else I wouldn’t have stopped trying to win the biggest category of the community awards after the first year I took first place in it (an achievement I hadn’t expected to win easily, if at all). I wouldn’t have forfeited my chance to enter at all the following year by becoming a judge. I wouldn’t have done everything in my power to help my competition in the later years when I entered just one smaller work per year.
I don’t claim to be a perfect person or even a perfectly selfless person, but the point is that I know I don’t want to continue writing fanfiction if the only goal is to get high stats and popularity and bragging rights. I wanted to raise up an entire community, to bring it into the spotlight for the larger world. I wanted to succeed with everyone else, not in spite of them. But over time I’ve learned that there are systems in place both online and offline that make that goal nearly impossible to accomplish.
Why are the systems set up that way? Why does Wattpad’s recommendation algorithm target the books it does while leaving behind the ones I worked so hard to recommend in its place? I don’t believe that it’s an accident that it seems to work so poorly when it comes to recommending fanfictions or making them visible. As a computer programmer by trade, I know that they could choose to dedicate resources towards such tasks as creating a search system similar to the one on Archive of Our Own (AO3), which I have found to be far more helpful and easy to use for readers of fanfiction. I also know from experience that business decisions about where to spend time and resources usually, if not always, come down to what will be most valuable for the business.
Is it valuable for Wattpad to promote fanfiction? For the most part it is not. At least not anymore. In the early days of the website, when it didn’t have any content apart from public domain books, it needed a way to get content that people would read in order to draw in more authors and thus more readers. A mostly-empty website that has a workable system can be a great playground for writers of fanfiction. The only thing to lose by posting a fanfiction on a new platform that never gets popular is a bit of time (you can always post it somewhere else, and maybe you already have), and the possibility to gain more readers is increased if you’re one of the first users on a site that later does get popular. A new site doesn’t have as much appeal to original writers, who probably want to make money, or, failing that, have a tool that helps them to make money elsewhere (offering free works to a new audience in order to advertise works that can be bought elsewhere) or later down the line (a large audience that can offer feedback that will help them learn and grow until they’re good enough to publish for real). Fanfic readers and writers increase the users of the website and make it more appealing to those looking for a website that has an audience.
Fanfics can possibly be turned into original works if fandom references are removed after popularity strikes (as Wattpad did with After), but only original works can draw both traffic and monetary profit. Original books that prove themselves to be popular on the website can get publishing deals, movie deals, or become monetized on the site itself. It is in Wattpad’s best interest as a business to build a system that helps their company to find books that can help them make money. Popular books. Because the more popular they are, the more people might buy them.
So it makes sense that Wattpad wants to reward the quest for popularity. The traditional publishing industry also wants to sell as many books as possible. When I am working on my original novel, I’m not likely to forget that for very long. I know that in order to get traditionally published I need to write something that an agent and/or a publisher will want. And they want what will make them money. They want what an audience will want to buy.
But fanfiction is not monetizable. By its very nature it can’t be bought or sold. And I think this is the real reason that many people see it as being worthless. After all, just think of Disney’s retelling of classic fairy tales or Shakespeare’s plays about historical figures like Henry IV. Does the general public scoff at Disney’s unoriginality by stealing characters like Cinderella? Or make fun of Shakespeare for telling stories about real people who were famous during his time? No. Is it perhaps because Disney makes a lot of money for itself and the works of Shakespeare continue to have monetized performances and films made out of them?
And, speaking of Shakespeare, making any money off the plays at all would be incredibly difficult to do if they didn’t maintain such a high public perception as works of art of the highest quality. Even if those who make money off of Shakespeare are simply taking advantage of the fact that his plays are already beloved and justifiably praiseworthy, they are clearly not raising any objections to them on the same principles that at least some of them probably use when disparaging real person fanfic.
Whether it has a good reputation or a bad one, no one can make money off of fanfiction. Indeed, if fanfiction has a good reputation, all the companies who want you to be spending money on their form of entertainment are effectively losing money for all the time you spend reading things for free instead. That goes double for the company or individual who owns the source material if it begins to sell less because of the existence of fanfiction or other fan-created things (which, incidentally, is when fanwork gets banned altogether). It is within the best interests of those companies and every person they have influence over to continue giving fanfiction a bad reputation. It is within their best interests to promote and normalize their values and the systems that serve them.
But why should we apply marketing ideas to something that is impossible to monetize? When you think about it, the only thing popularity can earn for the author of a fanfiction is popularity itself. Sure, there is the classic argument about wanting to reach more readers. But is the extent of your reach more important than the depth of it?
I want to have an impact on the world through my writing. It’s true. But often the way to become the most popular is to water down the work. In seeking to create something that will be read by the most people, you need to avoid things that will turn off even a tiny portion of them.
When writing something that you hope to sell, there must be a certain level of compromise between what you want and what the publisher or the audience will want. When you write fanfiction you can write something that only you will love and it won’t be a waste of your time in any way as long as you enjoy the process and result of it. You can write something exactly the way you want to write it and be surprised to find that you have deeply touched one reader or a small group of readers out there who are just like you or who appreciate your particular style and way of writing. They will probably appreciate it all the more if you write something they can’t find anywhere else, or that can’t easily be found. In a world of companies appealing to the wider audience, fanfiction and other free works can appeal to the minorities whose tastes are not being catered to.
If you write something that touches another person so deeply that it changes zir life, isn’t that just as valuable, if not moreso, than writing something that touches tons of people in a minor way? And isn’t it still valuable if the only life it changes turns out to be your own?
Perhaps the point of writing fanfic is to do what you can’t do in other forms of writing. Or to do what other forms of writing discourage you from doing.
And maybe any systems that fanfic writers make use of or construct for themselves and their communities should be ones that have these goals in mind or serve to further them. I think I will keep writing fanfiction and posting it on AO3. At least for now.
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