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.
No, I sure don’t. I wish I did.
BUT – I will say this. Depending on the product it’s pretty self-evident who the individual makers are on Etsy. If you do your research, like doing image searches, it’s also usually pretty self-evident what is mass-produced and/or counterfeit.
So I still use Etsy, but only in a very limited way, and only if I can assure myself with some level of certainty that the item I want is actually what some individual maker produced themselves.
Nothing wrong with mass-produced items if they’re not counterfeit, I just prefer not to get them through Etsy.