The wonderful, wacky world of fanfic

Think of any relatively book, movie, or TV show.  There is fanfic about it somewhere.  Go type it into a search engine “Your Book of Choice + fanfic”.  You’ll get results.


Fan fiction is basically additional material produced by fans of a media title.  The internet has made it easier than ever to find fanfic of whatever you want.  The newest hottest blockbuster movie, TV show, or book tends to be the easiest to find.  These are of course produced without the original creator’s consent and often take characters in directions that weren’t intended.  New characters get added.  Old annoying characters get killed off in the ways fans dreamed about and never got.  Characters finally hook up with the person they’ve been making gooshy eyes at for the entire series .  Bromance blossoms into actual homosexual romance.  There’s sex scenes that would never get past censors.

Due to the overflowing abundance of fan fiction on the internet, it often seems like a modern online only phenomenon.  But it’s hardly new.  Mainstream publishers snap up fan fiction of books that have fallen out of copyright.  There’s at least 20 books put out by mainstream presses that are spin off’s of Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice that are sequels, prequels, retellings from a different perspective, or just downright weird retellings.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is one of the best known current ones.

Many literary properties have large amounts of spin off works not written by the original author.  Sometimes these even become well enough know that the spin off works that were not created by the author are incorporated into the main body of the work. A lot of what’s including in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos was not actually written by Lovecraft.  They’re later additions.

Fan fiction can also produce crossovers between two unrelated works.  Copyright law may prevent the two properties from merging, but that doesn’t mean fanfic can’t mash them together!  For example, Del Rey published an anthology of Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu stories (Shadows Over Baker Street), mashing together Doyle and Lovecraft’s characters.   (it was actually approved by Doyle’s estate) Recent works that are still under copyright won’t be produced by mainstream publishers, but you can still easily find truly bizarre crossovers in fanzines an online.  You always wanted a Twilight/Batman crossover or how about Twilight/Jodi Picoult crossover? How about Twilight and Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None? Twilight and Jane Austen’s  Northhanger Abbey?  Twilight meets the Golden Girls?  The possibilities are endlessly bizarre and illustrate just how eclectic people’s tastes are.  (Golden Girls?  really?)

Fan fiction is actually even older than the printing press.  Writers, poets, storytellers, and troubadours often wrote about characters they didn’t create.  They added on to existing tales, or retold them from a different perspective.  The 1001 Nights incorporates many of these into the narrative.  The various Arthurian legends play off each other but involve many different authors.  The Aenid is basically fan fic of  the Illiad and Odyssey.  (and if you really want to start a  fight, the various “lost” gospels are really just Bible fan fic… )

Aside from derivative works produced by main stream publishers, various small presses produced all kinds of fan fic before the internet.  Various early 20th century magazines printed fanfic of well known characters like Sherlock Holmes or Jane Austin’s various heroines. Sometimes these were even produced by people doing type setting at home!  Fan fic in printed form really exploded in the 1960s with the availability of cheap photocopies and mimeographs.  Star Trek was one of the driving forces behind the explosion of fan fic in the 1960s, but other properties generated content as well.

What does this all mean for booksellers?  Collectors may often be actively on the hunt for pre-internet fan fiction.  Many of these were published in simple fanzines with staple or tape bindings.  They’re often black and white and printed on simple copy paper.  Older ones from the turn of the 20th century may be falling apart.  In general, they’ll frequently look like something you want to pass over as junk.

However, those lost works may be worth quite a bit to a collector since fanzines generally had very low circulation.  Fan fiction has its own continuity and conventions and sometimes will build on earlier works. If you find something that is referenced in another well known piece, or even a work that was published by a mainstream publisher, it may be quite valuable. Sometimes things that were published by a mainstream publisher first appeared in a fanfic publication.  Sometimes mainstream works that look a lot like a certain property but have just enough difference to avoid lawsuits appeared first in a fanzine as fanfic.  The author then just went through and changed the names when seeking mainstream publication.  So the fanzine may contain the first draft of a better known book!

If you find these and sell them at the right venue, such as a convention dedicated to that particular property, you may be able to command extremely high prices for some of them.  They will also probably sell well online to completist collectors.   They may also do well on specialty listing sites. The printed fanzine period is largely over, so the majority of what you might find as a print copy will be for older properties.

Of course, these fan works are somewhat dubious with regards to trademark and copyright laws.  Ones produced by main stream publishers are generally in the clear as they will have worked out the copyright and trademark issues with the source author or their estate.  Or if they haven’t, they’ll be the ones facing the problems.  Ones that are produced in people spare rooms are the ones that are a bit dicey to handle.
In some cases they may be protected under laws regarding works of parody.  Some may be in the clear because they’re set in the same world as the property but don’t actually involve trademarked terms or characters.  However, many of these do lurk in a nebulous grey area with regards to the law.  Generally newer works with megaproperties will be the most dubious and you may want to skip handling them all together since they’re almost certainly in violation of trademark somewhere and you may get a cease and desist from some lawyers.  (Disney properties in particular are likely to attract the attention of lawyers)  Old or obscure works are probably in the clear.  So that fanzine of Disney characters from 1990 is probaly not worth the legal trouble, while the 1920s Jane Austen fanzine probably has no lingering legal issues.  Just be aware that while these types of items can be very lucrative and fascinating to find, they may sometimes cause legal issues!