I was just emailing back and forth with a friend and we came to an interesting conclusion. She and I have both sold our stuff professionally. We both consider small publishing and fan fiction writing potentially as "serious" as pro. (We all know the lesson of Emily Dickinson, et al)

The average fiction print run for low-readership authors (i.e. nearly all of us) is 5,000. The average sell-through rate is well short of that number, which means most first-time authors aren't going to sell a second book via contract (in other words, nearly all of us). The average novel (including all of Stephen King's, et al) resells 2.5 times (don't ask me how they figure this stuff). Ergo, over the lifetime of the book (several years -- the publishing window where it's shelfable is 3-4 months), using rough statistics, the average general novel will be read 1.5 times. That means, over five years years, we're going to be read by (if we're lucky) around 5000 sets of eyes.

The average fan story on Fan Fiction Net receives a lot more "reads" than that a ... .

This is an expansion on a post I made before the holiday season last year that has come to be more and more meaningful as time goes on.

Real BNF = someone who has genuine, demonstrated ability as a writer/artist/organizer and who has been around a long time (ten years is "long" ... two years is "not long"). Suzi Lovett is a real BNF, Susan Matthews is a BNF, EPS/lil_shepherd/all-her-pennames is a real BNF, Kathy Resch is a real BNF, Alayne Gelfand is a real BNF, etc. ((I will add that I've met a couple of REAL BNFs who are also jerks but have excluded them in this instance.))

Faux BNF = This requires two identifications: They are (1) Someone who writes endless awful, unedited (truly), un-beta'd (really) creative typing. They often write in response to challenges/prompts or solely to take part in post-and-praise circle jerks. They do not attempt to make anything of their work because they know their little coterie of sycophants will fall in to praise them. Together, they set upon those who fall outside the circle. This is the second necessary element: (2) Someone with a big ego who writes solely to have "followers" praise them. This secondary element is often augmented with sock puppet/troll personas which are very easy to spawn (and thus hide behind) on LJ.

Here is an excellent site about sociopathy/online bullying aka "active mobbing", which is what psychiatrist call the Faux BNF/sycophant bullying phenomenon.

I'm excerpting the following few paragraphs from the above UK link in the hopes those who participate will recognize themselves (although I know they won't).

( quote )

My friends Lyn and Annie have suffered as a result of it. Various other friends of mine have also. And I have ongoing problems (although now mainly low grade) with a few faux-BNFs I have mentioned (and others I haven't). I mainly ignore them, but it is an annoyance I shouldn't have to deal with.

The problem is the sociopath at the center of these hubs will not care about their behavior. They rarely have a conscience of the kind we speak of. They only care about perpetuating their rumors against those who would take attention away from them.

I'll be posting more about this problem from my perspective in the next few days, but I'd like to throw open the topic to any of you who've had similar problems. I'm going to remove the anon posting ban for the immediate period so that you may post anonymously if you prefer. Fandom bullying has become a real problem lately.

ADDED: I need to point out that I'm not for a moment criticizing casual, just-having-fun fan fiction writers. As I've said before, weekend tennis players don't have their games critiqued so neither should casual fan fiction writers. I ONLY include these post-prompt, etc, writers IF they also meet the arrogant/bullying/circle jerk definition also. I've written from prompts before. Whatever you do to have fun is your business. It's only the people who use such circles to harass others that I have a problem with.

What Einstein missed out on may be the discovery of a Nevada/Hawaii based snowboarder/surfer named Garrett Lisi. The universe kinda looks like a 60s needlepoint, but it is even testable which makes it all the more interesting.

Lisi's theory was inspired by mathematic's fashionably chic pattern called E8. E8 has been hanging around the halls of science since 1887, but has only been formally adopted in the last year or so.

Lisi says "E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."

So here it is, y'all -- the universe:



Here's the whole story.

On a far more trivial note, my fic's back up.

Let's hope it's one of peace and justice.

I'm deeply glad the whole holiday season is behind us. No need to be forcefully merry anymore. lol

Okay, having seen the rising tide of fan fiction reader rants cropping up on LJ and other places, I decided to fire up a comm for fan fiction writers. Here we may carp about stupid reviews, rants, and other annoyances as we see fit. What's good for the goose, etc, etc.

http://community.livejournal.com/fanwriterrants/

fanwriterrants

I won't be able to promote this a lot, so feel free to post it to those you think might find it of interest. If it flies, it flies.