Fan fiction is everywhere, if you know how to look

When Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings began pitching literary agents 15 years ago, they kept their interest in fan fiction a secret.

Known by their combined pen name, Christina Lauren, the best-selling romance duo met through their shared love of Twilight fan fiction. At the time, Billings says, coming from fandom “was much more of a black mark on you” if you wanted to break into mainstream publishing. This was just before “Fifty Shades of Grey” — a novel that began as a rewriting of “Twilight” — became a global publishing phenomenon. Now, Hobbs and Billings work in a publishing industry with a vastly different attitude: one far more receptive to authors who got their start writing unauthorized works online for other fans, based on previously existing characters and worlds.

Fan fiction’s ascendance comes as entertainment and media companies are turning to established intellectual property to shore up the eroding economics of their industries. It also helps that many of the decision-makers grew up online, with active accounts on Wattpad, Tumblr and other fan-fiction-friendly platforms. Agents directly solicit writers of popular fan-made works, and new books proudly advertise their “fic” roots. Fan fiction didn’t invent tropes like “only one bed” or “friends to lovers,” but fic websites popularized tagging and searching through them, and these categories have become a mainstay of promoting genre fiction of all kinds.

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