Etsy sellers are turning free fanfiction into printed and bound physical books, and listing them for sale on online marketplaces for more than $100 per book. It’s a problem that’s rattling the authors of those fanfics, as well as their fans and readers.
Several sellers, easily found on Etsy and very popular, each with hundreds of five-star reviews, are selling copies of fanfiction taken from sites like Archive of Our Own (Ao3) and reselling them as bound books. The average price of these bound copies is around $149. Some sellers claim that they’re simply covering the cost of materials, while others just sell the books, usually with the fanfiction writers’ Ao3 username on the cover.
I’m a big fan of fanfic, I support it and consider it a serious literary genre. It’s basically the folklore of our modern times. I’m also not a fan of how extensive and restrictive copyright protection has become.
That said, I do find it amusingly ironic when fanfic authors get in a big huff about their copyright being violated.
I think there’s a difference between using pre established characters and settings vs wholesale copy pasting someone else’s entire work to sell as one’s own (or directly and solely profit off of, regardless of whether credit is given). Whether or not there is a legal distinction between the two in terms of copyright, there’s absolutely a line to be drawn on overt plagiarism.