The Fanfic-To-Published Author Pipeline Is Real – And We’re Loving It
I grew up reading fanfiction like it was my religion — Wattpad, Tumblr, and AO3 being “the big three” fanfic platforms.
Back then, fanfic was something you whispered about, half-embarrassed. Now? It’s a straight-up career path—and honestly, I love that for us.
Seeing bestselling authors like Ali Hazelwood (The Love Hypothesis), Ana Huang (Twisted Series), and Anna Todd (After) go from writing on fanfic platforms to full-blown publishing deals feels like a win for every reader who used to scroll late at night, leaving unhinged comments after each chapter. It’s not just about tropes or romantic scenes (TBH that helps). It’s about recognising that these stories that are crafted by people writing for joy, for comfort, and for community, are worthy of filling up the shelves, taking the spotlight, and selling out book tours.
Fanfic was never “Less Than”
We just weren’t supposed to admit that we loved it.
Fanfiction—aka fanfic—is precisely that: fiction stories written by fans, for fans, about the characters or worlds they love. Whether it was a retelling of a love confession that never happened on your favourite TV show or an entirely new universe where your One True Pairing (aka OTP) finally got their happy ending, fanfic gave us room to explore stories the original creators never would.
If you were a teen who was chronically online in the 2010s (slowly raises hand), you know reading fanfiction wasn’t exactly cool. At best, it was a guilty pleasure. At worst, it was the punchline of a joke about lonely girls writing stories about marrying Harry Styles. But those of us who got it understood that the dopamine rush of reading something so familiar but reimagined in a completely new way.
Fanfic allowed readers to explore feelings that weren’t always easy to say out loud. It gave us permission to fall in love with whatever characters we wanted, regardless of where they came from—earth, outer space, or a teen drama series that had no business making us cry that much. It also gave us access to entire communities built around obsession and connection, where you didn’t have to explain why that one deleted scene meant everything to you. Fanfic spaces were full of people who just got it. It was raw, unfiltered, and written in real-time with comments flying in at midnight.
So it makes perfect sense that the fanfic writers who spent years building or rewriting entire universes, crafting the love stories fans actually wanted to see, and updating every Wednesday night at 11:59 p.m.—are now the ones leading the next generation of romance and YA fiction.
The pipeline is working because it was never “just practice”
People used to treat fanfic as a training ground. Like, if you wrote enough for free, you could eventually graduate to “real” writing. But that idea is outdated. Writing fanfic is real writing. It always has been.
Think about it: fanfic writers know how to build an audience, keep readers hooked, and master plot pacing better than most people with creative writing degrees. These writers understand tropes inside and out, and aren’t afraid of playing with POV, structure, and style—just for the fun of it. Honestly, sometimes the comments section doubled as an editing room: live reactions, real-time feedback, and the occasional all-caps meltdown when a cliffhanger hit too hard.
When authors like Ali Hazelwood say their work started as Star Wars fanfic or Anna Todd blew up on Wattpad with After (originally a Harry Styles story), it’s not a coincidence that their stories have gone viral. They know how to tap into obsession—and they know what it means to write for love first, not for validation.
It’s not just about tropes – It’s about who gets to tell the story
What’s even more exciting about this shift is that it’s opening the door for more authors of colour, queer writers, and writers from marginalised communities to break into traditional publishing. For years, those voices were overlooked by major publishing houses. But in the fanfic world, those writers built their own audiences from the ground up.
Take Ana Huang, a daughter of Chinese expats who wrote stories to practice her English. Huang uploaded her first novel to Wattpad when she was 18. Her Twisted series went from a self-published success to viral TikTok fame to an international bestseller.
Fanfic made space for stories that weren’t being told anywhere else. Now those same stories are on bookstore shelves, BookTok feeds, and Hollywood option lists. And it’s not because the industry suddenly decided to “take a chance”—it’s because readers showed up, loudly, for the voices they believed in.
If you’ve ever posted a fic, take this as your sign
I think a lot about how fanfic helped shape the writer I am now. It taught me to care more about emotion than perfection. It made me value reader feedback. It showed me how powerful it is to write the story you want to see in the world—even if no one else gets it at first. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. But if you do want to write something original one day, know that your fanfic wasn’t a distraction, it was the beginning.
So if you’ve ever posted a one-shot or spent all night formatting tags on AO3—congratulations, you’re already a writer.
