andhumanslovedstories:

It really is crazy how if you mention you write fanfiction with people outside fandom, they’re always like “you should change the names and try to sell it.” It misses the point (fun), but more importantly to me, I get slightly (and I know irrationally) insulted on a craft letter. Excuse me, my fanfic is entwined with the canon, thank you very much. I wish sometimes less entwined. You wouldn’t believe the stupid bullshit some of my fics have to include because of canon.

Hahahaha this, so much.

I have written original work– both professionally and self-published, even once getting noticed enough to have a review in a well-known magazine.

It makes VIRTUALLY ZERO MONEY.

Unless you are 1. astonishingly lucky in the connections you make, and/or 2. willing and able to work an entire job at marketing what you wrote…. You are gonna end up making, like, less than five dollars a month.

This goes for both self-published and professionally published, in my experience. Self-published sells fewer copies, but the author makes more per copy. Pro-publisher sells more copies, but takes about 90% of the profits to cover pro publishing expenses. (This percentage is standard throughout the industry and not an exaggeration.)

And– in my opinion, worse than making zero money? Is getting zero feedback.

I get VASTLY more actual comments on my fanfic than I ever get on a published book that’s been in print the same amount of time.

Sure, I put in shittons of work to create entire settings and characters and plots from scratch. And I do it well! And it’s a whole different set of skills from those that fanfiction requires.

And, supposedly, a more respected set of skills?

But not really. In practice, nobody cares.

Whereas, the skills I use in writing fanfiction?

The Pattern Recognizer that I send scanning through every scene and line of dialogue in the source material to find things that can be made to fit together? The brilliance of a conspiracy theorist/fiber-artist weaving beauty across a wall of photos and text clippings, a web of connections, scaffolding over plotholes until they become dazzling intricacies of logic; over chaotic nonsense until it becomes perfect and mind-blowing sense?

That skill has gotten me more contact with actual people who value my craft than…. well, than anything I’ve ever done.

Nothing creative I do makes any significant amount of money. Creative stuff just doesn’t, as a rule, and hasn’t for many years. There are many reasons for this– and many attempted ways around it, but none of them have ever worked for me.

But creative work can bring human connection.

Sometimes.

And the likeliest way for this to happen is to get in someplace where people are already interested in the material before they start to look at yours.

And… realistically, most of the time, that’s gonna be fanworks.

Filing off the serial numbers on my fanfic would be ludicrous. Not only do those serial numbers go so deep that they’d require cutting out half the connection-making cleverness that makes my fanfiction work–

–but they’re also the reason anyone cares enough to try reading it in the first place.