Can Fan Fiction Help You Sell Your Own Books? (Yes... With Some Luck)

Most of us are at least passingly familiar with fan fiction. A lot of people read it, and for a lot of writers it can be a comfort zone, or a project that comes with training wheels before they go out and carve their own worlds from scratch. However, one of the best-known things regarding fan fiction is that you are not allowed to sell it, since we aren't talking about public domain properties, here.

That doesn't mean you can't still use it as a tool to increase your earnings as an author, though.

It's not a guarantee (nothing in this world is), but if you are someone who has been looking for a professional reason to play around in an already-established sandbox, this might be what you've been waiting for.

After all, there's a lot of readers out there waiting to meet you!

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Finding Readers in Your Fandom

Fan fiction has a long (and occasionally contentious) history, but these days fan fiction communities tend to be left alone as long as they aren't directly selling/profiting off of the intellectual property in question. While there have been notable exceptions, such as Disney siccing its lawyers on fan artists, or the big blowup with Games Workshop coming after fan animators for projects in their Warhammer 40K setting, incidents like these have become less and less common over time.

So, let's say you wrote a fan fiction piece that got pretty well noticed within the community. Even if your story gets thousands of reads, that doesn't directly put money in your pockets... however, it can act as a billboard for you to try to get those readers interested in some of your other work.

As an example...

One of the better examples that comes to mind are my short stories Waking Dogs: A World Eaters' Tale and Field Test. Both of these are fan stories set in the grim darkness of the far future that is Warhammer 40k, and both of them have been mildly successful in terms of being circulated among the fandom. They even reached the point where someone on Reddit who had no idea I was the author recommended that I read them if I were looking for more good content... which is sort of a surreal situation to be in.

However, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of those stories you'll notice that I have a section that directly links to more of my work. Not only that, but I specifically draw attention to my sci-fi noir thriller Old Soldiers, which is also about gigantic, genetically-engineered super soldiers created to fight a war for survival against unknowable alien entities. So the logic goes that if readers enjoyed my take on Warhammer 40k stories, maybe they'd like to take a side step into a novel that's in the same ballpark, but most definitely in a universe all its own.

I used a similar strategy with my fantasy series The Silver Raven Chronicles, which has been cataloging my RPG group's run through the Hell's Rebels adventure path. Following the events of a pre-written campaign, the series is meant to capture the attention of those who would enjoy stories about leading a rebellion, and punching devil-worshiping fascists in the face... but it also acts as an attention-grabber so that folks will check out my other stories like The Irregulars, or my daggers and witchcraft novel Crier's Knife.

It is worth noting that for this strategy to work, you need to actually get the attention of the fans in the community. Sometimes you can do that with one story, but sometimes it will take more than that. You'll still need to create the best possible piece of fiction you can, and to spread it as far and wide as possible so that it doesn't go under anyone's radars. And even if people see it and react positively to your tale, that's no guarantee that they'll actually read any of your other work, or buy your other books... but they might.

And that is more or less what marketing is about; weighing the odds, and rolling the dice on what your audience might do.

Incidentally, for those who are curious, the Silver Raven Chronicles has 4 installments at time of writing:

- Part One: Devil's Night: A mysterious vigilante prowls the streets of Kintargo.

- Part Two: From The Ashes: A protest becomes a riot as the new "mayor" attempts to establish control.

- Part Three: The Raven's Nest: The burgeoning rebellion establishes a secret base.

- Part Four: Circles in Salt: The Ghost joins the Silver Ravens, striking a blow against Thrune.

Option Two: You Can File Off The Serial Numbers

There is another option you have available, as well. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of energy, but you can make it work for you if you so desire. In short, if you have a popular fan fiction that has a noted number of fans, you can re-work it to remove the intellectual property that isn't yours (while keeping the same core structure of the narrative) and re-release it as a novel that your built-in audience can then support.

As another example...

The books Freya's Baby, Tearing Down The Wall, and Freya's Baby Shattered are all by Alice Liddell, whose work you should definitely check out. While she's published literal dozens of books that cover all sorts of genres and topics, these particular books have their roots in one of her fandoms... namely the Nickelodeon cartoon Hey Arnold!

Alice has been a part of that fandom for years, and back in 2011 she wrote what turned out to be a pretty popular fan fiction. It was available online for years, and as such things go had a pretty decent fan following. However, reading back over it, she realized it could be improved... and if she was going to improve it, then it was also possible to remove the scaffolding of the cartoon's intellectual property at the same time. So she took it down, retooled it, brought it up to standards, and turned it into an original work.

According to the author herself, this garnered some mixed responses. Some readers were excited, eager to pick up copies of their own to see how the story had changed. Others threw a hissy fit that it wasn't free anymore. However, if we're talking about how the sausage is made when it comes to fiction, recycling a project and turning it into something fresh, while also keeping at least a portion of its existing fan base (who are now brought even more deeply into your orbit as a creator) is nothing to turn your nose up at.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

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