Wattpad to Bestseller: Can Fanfiction Writers Really Go Mainstream?
theteenmagazine.com – Thursday September 18, 2025
In recent years, authors like Ali Hazelwood and Beth Reekles have moved from fanfiction to mainstream publishing. Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis began as Star Wars “Reylo” fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3) before she reworked it into a romance novel. Reekles, who wrote The Kissing Booth, first published the story on Wattpad as a teenager, and later it became a global hit and a Netflix movie.
These success stories raise important questions. Does fanfiction-style storytelling translate well into traditional publishing? Do platforms like Wattpad and AO3 help or hurt new writers? And why is fanfiction so addictive in the first place?
Fanfiction has long been a space where writers can explore beloved universes such as Harry Potter, Twilight, and Star Wars. Over time, some of these writers have reworked their stories and found publishing success. Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fanfiction before being retooled and published.
In Hazelwood’s case, her Reylo fanfic caught the attention of a literary agent on AO3, which launched her career. She then altered names, plot details, and pacing to create The Love Hypothesis.
Other writers have followed similar paths. Estelle Maskame posted Did I Mention I Love You? (DIMILY) on Wattpad as a teenager; the book attracted millions of reads before being traditionally published and selling over a million copies. Filipino author Jonaxx (Jonahmae Pacala) also built a massive Wattpad following that translated into bestselling novels.
AI could never replace my authors. But, without regulation, it will ruin publishing as we know it
theguardian.com – Thursday September 18, 2025
Basic principles need to be enshrined to protect the sacred craft of storytelling from this automated onslaught
The single biggest threat to the livelihood of authors and, by extension, to our culture, is not short attention spans. It is AI.
The UK publishing industry – worth more than £11bn, part of the £126bn that our creative industries generate for the British economy – has sat by while big tech has “swept” copyrighted material from the internet in order to train their models. Recently, the AI startup Anthropic settled a $1.5bn copyright case over this issue, but the ship has undeniably left the harbour and big tech is sailing off with the goods.
As a literary agent and CEO of one of the largest agencies in Europe, I think this is something everyone should care about – not because we fear progress, but because we want to protect it. If you take away the one thing that makes us truly human – our ability to think like humans, create stories and imagine new worlds – we will live in a diminished world.
Many great writers have written about why stories are the lifeblood of humanity and how an artist’s job is to tell us truths we may not want to hear. Having worked with writers such as John le Carré, Elif Shafak, William Boyd and David Nicholls, I know first-hand where great storytelling comes from.
Le Carré was born in 1931 and survived a childhood with a conman father and a mother who abandoned him when he was five years old. He came of age as the cold war began. Treachery and betrayal was his childhood and proved – to paraphrase Graham Greene – to be the bank balance of his writing life. During his time with the secret services, it was through writing reports – and getting feedback from senior officers – that he learned to write. His skill was derived from the personal, his upbringing and his craft.
Five Pointers for Writing a Genius (Even If You Aren’t One)
crimereads.com – Saturday September 13, 2025
"[H]ow do I write a genius level character and, more specifically, a character who is much smarter than I am?"
As a fan of the mystery genre, I grew up reading about these intellectual titans. Sherlock Holmes and his quickfire deductions, Hercule Poirot’s touting of his little grey cells.
I adored reading about these genius detectives, but I never thought too much about the process of creating them.
Yet, when I wrote my story, The Return of Moriarty, I finally had to contend with the strange question; how do I write a genius level character and, more specifically, a character who is much smarter than I am?
It seems almost paradoxical. If I can create characters who exceed my own intelligence, can I go to a party and act wittier than I am? It seems bizarre to tackle a character with faculties you don’t yourself possess and, after finishing the novel, I was surprised to find the same question being asked by aspiring writers across the community.
And yet, my journey to answer this question was fascinating, and the solutions I discovered so chock full of literary theatrics, that I thought it only right to put all my best answers in one place; a set of five tips and tricks for writing a genius, even if you aren’t one.
Charlotte Ingham on writing a slow burn romance
culturefly.co.uk – Wednesday September 10, 2025
The only thing I love more than reading a slow burn romance—one where I have to fling the book on the bed simply to scream, “Why is nobody kissing?”—is getting to write one instead. For me, the best tension comes from the almostmoments. Where the chemistry is so off-the-charts that you’re convinced something is finally, finally, about to happen, only for fate to intervene (or for the characters to be too completely, hopelessly, oblivious) and you’re left kicking your feet in simultaneous glee and frustration.
A Match Made in Hell allowed me to take this to another level, thanks to the lust trial. In order to escape Hell, Willow must complete seven tasks by resisting the seven deadly sins, but it’s particularly tricky when the person tempting her to give in to lust is the one person she’d love to give in to.
But one almost moment isn’t enough. For a slow burn to truly work, it has to be built up from lots of little almosts. As excited as I was to write that scene, I first had to lay the groundwork for that will-they-won’t-they moment, using both the earlier sin trials, along with the time they spend together in between, to allow their budding friendship to build into something more.
What Nobody Tells You About Rejections By Book Editors
medium.com – Wednesday August 27, 2025
Not long after I moved from the New York area to Alabama, I went to a bookstore event where I met a local writer who recently had failed to sell his first novel. He thought he knew why no publisher had bought it.
“New York editors don’t like books about the South,” he said.
I was incredulous, and not just because I’d met a lot of those editors while covering the publishing industry as a journalist.
Editors “don’t like books about the South”? Was the writer talking about the region that had produced William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Alice Walker?
Our conversation was taking place two hours south of Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee and Truman Capote grew up. A famous resident of our town was Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump, a novel the bookstore displayed steps from where we stood. About 30 minutes away, the faculty of the University of South Alabama included the novelist Jesmyn Ward, who had won a National Book Award for her Salvage the Bones and would soon earn her second, making her the only woman and only black author to win that prize twice.
To my mind, all of that didn’t prove that “New York editors don’t like books about the South.” It proved — if anything — the opposite.
An Exclusive Look Inside the Essential Literary Magazine Granta
earlybirdbooks.com – Monday August 25, 2025
Granta magazine was founded in 1889 as The Granta, a student literary journal at Cambridge University. It published works by such great authors as A.A. Milne, Michael Frayn, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
In 1979, the magazine switched from being a student publication to the literary quarterly that it is today. Each issue includes the best authors discussing one aspect of daily life. Ten years later, Granta Books was founded as an imprint devoted to the same ideals as the original magazine: to publish, in the words of founder Bill Buford, “only writing we care passionately about.”
Granta has remained devoted to promoting new and fresh names in literature and to only publishing the highest quality writing. For an intimate, small press, Granta has an outsized number of prize winners, including 31 Nobel Prize laureates, and a huge cultural impact on the literary scene.
What Are the Best Writing Tools?
vocal.media – Monday August 25, 2025
Looking to write smarter, faster, and better? Whether you are a student, professional writer, content creator, or blogger, the right writing tools can make all the difference.
With so many online tools for writers available, it can be overwhelming to choose the best ones. This guide highlights the top free writing software, from brainstorming ideas to writing a perfect copy.
1. Brainstorming & Idea Generation Tools
Before a single word is written, ideas must be captured and shaped. These tools help with creativity and organization.
Evernote is like a digital notebook. You can create notes, add checklists, save web pages, attach images, or even record audio reminders. Writers often use it to collect story ideas, blog inspirations, or references they stumble upon during the day.
-
Best Features: Syncs across devices, allows tagging for organization, integrates with apps like Google Drive.
-
Why It’s Useful: Writers don’t always sit at a desk. If you think of a story idea while commuting, you can note it down and revisit later.
-
Best For: Journalists, bloggers, and students.
Indie Presses Provide a Haven for Midlist Authors
publishersweekly.com – Sunday August 24, 2025
Independent literary publishing has a proud tradition of nurturing authors who’ve subsequently moved on to success at larger houses. Take Percival Everett, for instance, who published his fiction with Graywolf Press for decades before bringing his prize-winning breakout hit, James, to Doubleday.
But there’s a reverse trend that’s building steam: authors are moving away from corporate publishing to independent. While some are being turned away by the conglomerates that once published them, others say they are switching because they prefer the care and attention that indie presses provide.
Savvy authors and agents, Europa Editions publisher Michael Reynolds says, have long known that smaller publishers typically only put out books they feel strongly about, with the entire staff invested in their success, rather than books “being championed by one lone, intrepid, but increasingly powerless editor at an anonymous corporate imprint.” Europa, which published Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels in the U.S., is one of many independent publishers who have welcomed the growing group of major house midlisters—and, in some case, marquee names—seeking asylum at smaller presses.
Author Rie Qudan: Why I used ChatGPT to write my prize-winning novel
theguardian.com – Monday August 18, 2025
“I don’t feel particularly unhappy about my work being used to train AI,” says Japanese novelist Rie Qudan. “Even if it is copied, I feel confident there’s a part of me that will remain, which nobody can copy.”
The 34-year old author is talking to me via Zoom from her home near Tokyo, ahead of the publication of the English-language translation of her fourth novel, Sympathy Tower Tokyo. The book attracted controversy in Japan when it won a prestigious prize, despite being partly written by ChatGPT.
The author speaks conversational English, but her translator, Jesse Kirkwood, is also on the line, interpreting questions and answers when needed. At the heart of Sympathy Tower Tokyo is a Japanese architect, Sara Machina, who has been commissioned to build a new tower to house convicted criminals. It will be a representation of what one character – not without irony – calls “the extraordinary broadmindedness of the Japanese people”, in that the tower will house offenders in compassionate comfort.
In the novel, Sara, herself a victim of violent crime, wonders if this sympathetic approach to criminals is appropriate. Does this sympathy reflect Japanese society in reality?
“It’s definitely prevalent,” says Qudan. One of the triggers for writing the novel, she adds, was the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022. “The person who shot him became the centre of a lot of attention in Japan – and his background elicited a lot of sympathy from people. He had grown up in a heavily religious household, and been deprived of freedom. That idea had been in my head for a long time, and when I came to write the novel, it came out again as part of the process.”
The question of public attitudes towards criminals runs through the story, in serious and satirical ways. Potential residents of the tower must take a “Sympathy Test” to determine if they are deserving of compassion (“Have your parents ever acted violently towards you? – Yes / No / Don’t know”) … and the ultimate decision will be made by AI.
Censorship from the other side of the aisle: New book considers publishing trends
as.cornell.edu – Wednesday August 13, 2025
As a new doctoral student at Cornell, Adam Szetela Ph.D. ’25 noticed an interesting trend in the book publishing world. Rather than criticism from people on the cultural right about the morals —or lack thereof — in current titles, authors and publishers were being slammed by folks on the cultural left, who were attacking books as racist or sexist, or questioning an author’s sensitivity.
“A lot of this is coming from a place of good faith,” Szetela said about the trend, which he writes about in “That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing,” published Aug. 12 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press and distributed by Penguin Random House. “But while the right is remaking the world in its image, the left is standing in a circular firing squad.”
Szetela said this new version of self-censorship is fueled by the vast reach of social media today.
Get the free newsletter | Submit a news item or article | Get Writers' News for your website
