*gasp* *hack* *horrors*

“Marketing and fanfiction in the same sentence? That’s soooo wrong! I do this for fun! I do this for me! I do it because I have an artistic urge yearning to be free!”

But if you think about it, marketing is what almost all fanfiction writers do to a greater or lesser degree, whether or not they’re aware they’re doing it.

Don’t believe me?

Okay, fine.

If you’re writing fanfiction just for you, then why are you posting your stories on public Web sites where anyone can read them? Why do you post chapters one-at-a-time in a serial manner (even if the story isn’t a WiP) rather than posting the whole thing at once? Why are you looking for fanfic newsgroups where you can post your work for an audience pre-disposed to liking your stories? Why do you have a LiveJournal account so you can write whatever you want without fear of it being yanked out of the public eye by cautious Web site owners? Why do you get a thrill whenever someone posts a review?

McFly? Hellooooo, McFly? Hey! Where are you going? Don’t walk away yet! I got a simple answer right here.

You want an audience. You want people to read your stuff. You want eyeballs fixed on your every golden word. You want people regularly checking to see if you’ve updated your stories.

Don’t feel bad. Professional writers do the exact same thing. Whether it’s a magazine writer, a novelist, newspaper reporter, or someone toiling anonymously for a client, the writer wants the audience to be eager for the next thing that comes off the keyboard. The difference is professional writers are more aware of the role marketing plays in attracting an audience if only because their paychecks depend on it.

Since fanfic writers don’t get paid, the “coin” is measured in feedback, recommendations, pimping from other people, awards, requests for stories to be archived, and lest we forget, the Google ego search.

This has been something that’s been bubbling in the back of my brain since Writercon in Vegas, but only recently has it somewhat solidified into this bizarre treatise of mine below. It’s something I’ve subconsciously done since I started writing BtVS fanfiction in 2002, but it’s only recently that I’ve consciously realized what I’ve been doing.

Which is funny, since I’m a writer in real life. I should’ve seen the connection and recognized what I was doing a lot sooner than this.

Stop Whining! You’re Giving Me a Headache!

To be honest, several meta discussions on the nature of fanfiction and certain subgenres of fanfiction have brought this connection between fanfiction and marketing into focus:

• het vs. slash divide.
• perception that gen and/or het stories are becoming increasingly ghettoized or dismissed as a legitimate form of fanfiction.
• complaints from some gen/het writers that they feel they’re not taken seriously unless they write male-male (and to a lesser extent female-female) slash.
• proliferation of “all human AUs” in certain fandoms (BtVS and AtS are not the only ones that have this subgenre) and whether this should be considered “original fiction” or actual “fanfiction”
• the relative merits of crossovers and whether or not it’s “permissible” to change canon just to make two incompatible universes fit or (my favorite) why no one appreciates crossovers where one universe is utterly unfamiliar to the vast majority of the fanfic public
• BNFs don’t deserve to be worshipped and are overrated when they produce something/well they’re worshipped because people like their artistic output and you’re just jealous
• RPFs suck/rock/it’s an invasion of privacy/it’s all good clean fun
• RPGs are not real fanfiction/oh yes they are
• character-bashing and Mary Sueing/Marty Stuing

A lot of these discussions very quickly devolve into a “why, god, why” mindset among writers who feel they’ve been unjustly ignored because they’re not writing stories that fit into “trendy” tastes; because they write gen fic instead of shipper fic; because they write het instead of slash; or because they feel they’re being unjustly pissed on because they write for a character or pairing that’s not wildly popular.

Just FYI, the next step after the above complaints and whining is further devolution into accusations of homophobia, rampant snobbery, hints that the other side is mentally unbalanced, generalizations about entire fan groups, invocations of Godwin’s Law and Sturgeon's Law, CAPSLOCK OF RAGE, netspeak, bad spelling, and all sorts of wank.

Between you and me, the issue here is that the writers are asking the wrong question.

It should never be, “Why don’t you love meeeeeeeee?”

It should always be, “Who’s my audience and how do I find them?”

( Warning Will Robinson! Long! )

Thanks for hanging on until the end of this monstrosity.

I will eventually make myself available for any flames or tomato throwing at your earliest convenience.