Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Published?

So, after posting a fic, it occurred to me that if I just changed a few lines, I might have something publishable. Problem is, I haven't a clue where to start.

Are any of you guys published?

How do you go about it?

Yes, I've done it. For my second novel, I adapted "The Long Road Home" for publication and my new publisher loved it. After four very extensive rewrites and edits later, it's now in the typesetting stage and I should have a cover design soon. (Can't wait to see it! ) It's going to be released late this year or early next under the title "Between the Lines." (They're even doing an unabridged book on CD. Yay unabridged!)

Because of the extensive rewrites, not much of my original fanfic is the same. It's more suspenseful and deals a lot more with the bad guys than LRH did. Villains are different, too, and there are different subplots. Anybody who has read LRH probably wouldn't even recognize it as the same story. But adapting the fanfic gave me a good, solid story to start with. So yes, adapating fanfics can be done!

If you're looking to go that route (publishing), I'll tell you, it's not for the faint of heart. This is my second novel, and it's worse than natural childbirth. I have enough rejection notices to wallpaper my house. You have to be very thick skinned and as iron-willed as can be to keep working at it.

If you are shooting for the national market, you'll need an agent. None of the big national market publishers will even open your manuscript envelope if it's not submitted through an agency. And I'll warn you, getting an agent can be even more difficult than finding a publisher. (That's because a good, reputable agent will have a lot more connections and you'll stand a pretty decent chance of getting published because of him/her.)

What else do you want to know? Email me and I'll answer any question you want! I'd be happy to put another fanfic writer on the road to publication.

I think it's different for everyone - I sort of fell into writing about role playing games at a time when there was a British games magazine that would publish articles about almost any game, and a shortage of British writers who could write about them reasonably coherently and were prepared to accept the pitifully poor money paid for games writing at the time.

I sold a lot of articles fairly fast, which gave me the confidence to try submitting articles to US magazines, and eventually to try writing about my other hobbies (most notably computing and photography) which paid considerably better. Along the way I wrote about other things, and made a lot of friends including some pro fiction authors. That got me an invitation to contribute to some shared world SF anthologies, which so far are my only fiction sales. I've also reviewed, mostly games but also SF, and written a couple of articles for New Scientist.

Right now I'm back to writing about RPGs (or rather I never stopped), and design my own games, and I'm thinking about having a try at some children's fiction - based, as it happens, on something I wrote for an RPG.

I really can't recommend that career path to anyone else though! But it's one of life's little ironies that Terry Pratchett knew who I was before I knew who he was, because he was a regular reader of the games mag I wrote for, and that Neil Gaiman's first fiction sale was to a mag that had my thirtieth or so games article in the same issue.

I've sold several re-written fanfics to True Romance and True Love magazines. They accept unsolicited stories (4000-7000 words).

I'll disagree a bit with Erin's comment about needing an agent. It all depends on the publisher. I have a manuscript with Harlequin/Silhouette and most of their lines do not require you to submit through an agent.

Writers Market lists fiction markets and their submission guidelines. Many markets have their guidelines on their websites.

I will agree with Erin that it's not for the faint of heart. I'd be happy to answer questions as well.

Well, I managed to get an email address for a magazine and sent off my story. It's been at least a week though, and I haven't heard a peep from them; rejection or otherwise! I think I can handle rejection, but dead silence I just don't know what to do with. It's one of the reasons I've never successfully gotten a job yet.

Also, writing seems to pay nothing, and yet all of these people seem to want my money. What's up with that?

And Marcus: HOLY COW.

You shouldn't expect to hear from anyone for a month or six weeks, so don't be surprised at the silence after a week. Did you address it to one of the editors?

Re magazines paying nothing: During the Depression, writers used to be paid 1 cent per word, so a 2000 word story was $20. In today's dollars, that would be the equivalent of being paid $100-200 for the story. However, writers are rarely offered that much nowadays. One of the writers on a list I'm on figured that his last story earned .003 cents per word.

True Romance and True Love pay 3 cents a word. They also accept email submissions. Sometimes I hear quickly. OTOH, they've had one story over a year. It's not much but I earned enough last year to pay my way to a national writing conference in San Francisco.

Are they asking you to pay to have your story published? If so, RUN! That is known as vanity or subsidy press and you do not want to get involved with that.