3 Harry Potter fan fiction authors are coming to a bookstore near you

Fan fiction — the creation of unsanctioned, unofficially published, new works usually based on popular novels or films — was intentionally never mainstream.

There are the legal issues — copyright laws, intellectual property laws — of drawing from someone else’s creation, for one. Fan fiction authors also have historically considered their online arenas (Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net and others) more of a sandbox, a place to play with new ideas using characters and worlds people already know and love.

Take, for example, fan works imagining Harry Potter and friends in their 8th year at Hogwarts. Or pairing Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger romantically — dubbed “Dramione” fan fiction.

But this summer and early fall will see the wide publication of three books by popular Dramione Harry Potter fan fiction authors: Rose in Chains by Julie Soto, Alchemised by SenLinYu and The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley.

Soto’s romantic fantasy is a reworked version of her fan fiction The Auction, centered on a heroine who is sold to the highest bidder. SenLinYu’s debut fantasy about a woman with memory loss in a war-torn world is a revision of her popular Manacled. Brigitte Knightley’s debut novel, an enemies to lovers tale, is an original work.

Knightley, who calls her debut “a love letter to reluctant attraction,” was first noticed by a literary agent for her popular fan fiction Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love.

“With fan fiction, the beauty of it is the community,” said Knightley. “You kind of come into a premade community who is already sort of predisposed to really like your work just because it’s, you know, transforming something that they already like.”

More acceptance of the pull-to-publish process

Most fan fiction authors don’t worry too much about how much of their work plays off a published author’s book or film because they are writing for personal fun, not for profit. Some works do get noticed by publishers who solicit these stories and help their authors rework them to distance them from their original: It’s called pull to publish.

Pull to publish isn’t a new concept, but writers and publishers say it’s a growing area. The idea of moving from fan fiction to traditional publishing used to be a virtual nonstarter, but stigmas around fan fiction are lifting.

“I know a fan fiction writer who pulled to publish in the early 2000s and then denied they’d ever written fan fiction,” said Stacey Lantagne, a copyright lawyer focusing on fan works and professor at Western New England University School of Law. “That was not a cool thing to say, not a cool thing to admit … so if you went looking for it, you’d have a really hard time identifying those authors because they just didn’t ever connect those two parts of their background.”

Lantagne says it appears that more fan fiction is being pulled to publish than a few years back, based on what she’s seeing in her work and because more people are talking about it openly, though it’s tough to track data on this area of publishing.

“I find that people are more willing to connect those two parts of their background now,” she said.

Knightley, whose debut novel comes after 25 years of writing fan fiction, says fans are coming around to supporting their favorite authors in a new way too. “There’s this moment happening now where people are seeing an opportunity to say, you know what, you have given me X amount of years of pleasure, of joy, of reading. And now I can sort of thank you in a real way. I can tangibly support you. You’re launching this career and, you know, I’m here for you.”

Famous fan fiction-turned-mainstream

Back in 2011, a single book drew mainstream attention to the fan fiction world.

Unless you were an avid member of the Twilight fandom in the late aughts, you’ve probably never heard of Snowqueens Icedragon’s Masters of the Universe — a fan fiction with the vampire romance’s main characters Bella and Edward at its heart. There’s a better chance, though, that you’ve heard of E.L. James’ bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey. The origins are one in the same.

A version of the famously erotic trilogy was originally published on Fanfiction.net by James under the pen name Snowqueens Icedragon. Its transformation from fan fiction to a traditionally published series is one of the most recognizable, and successful, examples of pull-to-publish fan fiction today.

“When you get stories that are really popular in fan fiction, you will read the comments, you will see when everyone talks about it on chat forums, or even in their reviews — readers say ‘man, this is such a good story. If it was published, it would be on my shelf. I wish this was on my bookshelf,'” said Jennifer McGuire, a founder of The Writers Coffee Shop, the now-shuttered Australia-based publishing house that first discovered James and published Fifty Shades of Grey.

The rights to Fifty Shades were later bought by Vintage Books. McGuire founded The Writers Coffee Shop with other avid fan fiction readers with the goal to publish the talented fan fiction authors they loved.

Since then, there have been a number of other high-profile reworked fan fiction books pulled into the traditional publishing world. Another Twilight fan fiction became J.M. Darhower’s Sempre in 2012. Ali Hazelwood’s 2021 novel The Love Hypothesis and Thea Guanzon’s 2023 book The Hurricane Wars were both pulled-to-publish Rey and Kylo Ren Star Wars fanfics.

Thao Le, a literary agent who has discovered and worked with many fan fiction authors including the likes of Hazelwood, Guanzon and Knightley, says there are even some mainstream stories rooted in fan fiction from years ago. Consider Wicked, she says. It reimagines a world and characters that had already existed.

The difference now, she says, is that pulled-to-publish stories don’t shy away from marketing and publicizing those fan fiction origins.

“Fan fiction is no longer a secret guilty pleasure,” Le said. “The marginalized communities, women, BIPOC, queer, etc., who make up a good chunk of fandom and romancelandia are no longer afraid to be proud of what they create and consume.”