A couple of essays about the issues of fanfic getting traditional publishing book deals. This post is dedicated to 
behansu
Some key points:
• It’s bad for fandom — authors yanking their fanfics moves fandom closer to white heteronormative media. Authors may start writing with the intent of getting published after they build up an audience on fanfiction sites.
• It’s bad for traditional publishing — fanfic is built on an existing IP, with a built-in audience. Why accept an original manuscript when you can get one that’s already beloved, with just enough plausible deniability to not get sued?
• Jenny Hamilton writes: “Feed fanfic into capitalism, and it comes out shaped like capitalism. The job of agents and editors is to find authors whose books will be successful, which means finding ways to cash on social media trends—like the BookTok popularity of Dramione and Reylo … [prioritising] redemption arcs for fashy white guys. Two of the three Dramione novels coming out this year feature a female main character enslaved by her male love interest.”
• Tessa Gratton: We need to be self-sustaining through mutual appreciation, the cycle of fic to art to podfic to new art to sharing links to new fic to meta to headcanon and eventually fanon that eclipses canon truths. That’s the only way to keep this power moving toward the margins.
OP note: I attended a talk by Naomi Novik a few years back where she was asked about fanfic authors publishing original manuscripts (not tradpubbing former fanfics.) Novik made really good points about how fanfic authors would need strong editing and original writing practice, because fanfics have worldbuilding and character archetypes built in for them. There’s a lack of heavy lifting. Depressingly, this seems to be a feature and not a bug for the tradpub agents who scour Ao3 and similar.
Highly recommend reading both essays in full.
Source1 Reactor Magazine — Jenny Hamilton
Source2 Fansplaining — Tessa Gratton
