The Fan Fiction Launch

            Now that we understand why fan fiction can
prove useful to you as a writer, and have discussed some ways in which we can
grow and develop our craft as writers through fan fiction writing, there seems
to be one piece that is still missing in this puzzle: PUBLISHING.

            As
writers we are always looking for ways to get our writing out to our readers
and spread our ideas. In the past we have spoken about options for
self-publishing vs. using a publishing company to publish your new and exciting
ideas. The trouble with deciding on how or when to publish your book always
comes down to whether or not there is a market and how to best target that
market.

            Aside
from all the potential artistic benefits, fan fiction might actually help
develop your “street cred” in the world of writing and publishing before
attempting to publish your own totally unique idea. This may seem
counterintuitive considering what we discussed about some peoples’ opinions
surrounding fan fiction, but the fact is, there is a huge market out there for
fan fiction.

            Thanks
to this growing market for fan fiction, there are many useful publishing
utilities in place to get you started. Kindle Worlds is one such potential
outlet. Through Amazon, several licenses for fan fiction have been secured, and
more are being developed as we speak. This gives you the ability to write and
publish fan fiction on a wide variety of subjects, where the dirty work has
been done for you. Not only that, but it allows you to get 35% of the royalties
on the stories that are bought by readers. The exciting thing about Kindle
Worlds is that it is constantly growing and offers various digital formats of
your story, and may even have the option to publish hard copies of your book in
the near future.

Fanfiction.net is
yet another online outlet for publishing your work. Movellas.com and
Fictionesque.com are other options. Most of the options I’ve listed here are
easy to maneuver and relatively low stress, low to no cost, and already have a
loyal following. Obviously Kindle Worlds is one where you can actually sell
your fan fiction and many others are just a place to make your story available
to the public. But a free audience is better than no audience when you are
starting up.

The idea behind
all of these options is just getting the chance to publish your work, start to
refine your writing craft, and build a following audience who is excited about
what you have to say. It can’t be ignored that you are catering to a specific
population with fan fiction so you may lose some when you eventually cross over
into writing other genres, but it never hurts to get as many people as possible
reading and giving feedback on your work. It’s how we grow. Being so close to
the New Year, maybe it’s time to make a promise to ourselves as writers that we
will make more of an effort to get our voice heard (and this might even be
through fan fiction!). Then maybe… just maybe… 2014 will bring greater
success and growth for us all as we live this crazy life of writing!