Writing a New Text
The Role of Cyberculture in Fanfiction Writers’ Transition to “Legitimate” Publishing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12920267 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Monica Flegel (Lakehead University, corresponding author), Jenny Roth (0000-0001-8047-5740, Lakehead University) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 253-272 |
| Publication date | 2016-04-10 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Women s Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1754-1476 • E-ISSN: 1754-1484 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/cww/vpw010 |
| OpenAlex | W2330053655 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 8 |
The debate about the monetization of fanfiction and what that might mean for fan writers and systems of publication has been carried out in the blogosphere and among scholars. The publication of the 50 Shades of Grey series (2011–12), and licensed fanfiction on Amazon.com’s Kindle Worlds, however, makes the question of fanfiction publishing largely irrelevant: the monetization of fanfiction is here, regardless of the naysayers. In this article, we move beyond whether or not fanfiction should be circulated in a gift economy or published for profit to examine, through interviews with authors who have “pulled to publish,” the continuum between fandom and traditional publishing. We find that cybercultural fandom provides important benefits for women writers. Although some of the authors who contributed to this study still define authorship as something other than fanfiction, the competing discursive tension in their responses to questions about authorial legitimacy indicates that although the idea of the author may be bound by extant ideology, the author herself is hardly fixed. The fluidity of the respondents’ thinking around authorship is reminiscent of the opportunities offered by the liminal space of the Internet that nurtured their careers. Indeed, the birth of these “legitimate” authors from online spaces is a physical manifestation of Donna Haraway’s cyborg identity moving from a space it requires to exist initially, because of gendered pressures in the “real world,” to actualization
Blogosphere · Commodification · Cyberculture · Fandom · Media studies · Netnography · Political science · Publishing · Social media · Sociology · The Internet · World Wide Web · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Digital Games and Media · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |