Book Buzz

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Jessica | November 2025

Welcome to Book Buzz, a monthly newsletter featuring book news and recommendations from some of Regina's favourite public librarians.

Fanfic 101

Fan fiction, or fanfic, is writing inspired by fandom. It's written by fans of an existing work where they use copyrighted characters and settings to create their own stories, or it can be fiction based on real life celebrities like singers, actors and professional athletes. Because writers of fanfic can’t profit from using another creator’s intellectual property, fanfic is generally an online phenomenon where people can freely share their fanfic through an online forum like Archive of Our Own (AO3) or Wattpad.

Fanfic is becoming more popular as publishers keep finding new authors and adapting existing fanfic into their next bestseller. In fact, in 2025, three Dramione fanfics (fanfic that features Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series) were reworked in order to be legally published and became instant bestsellers, and word is more are coming in 2026.

Did You Know?

E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy began as a Twilight inspired fanfic and sold over 150 million copies worldwide.

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy
By Brigitte Knightley

Enemies to Lovers

Banter-Filled

Alchemised
By SenLinYu

Dark Fantasy

Prisoner of War

Memory Loss

Rose in Chains
By Julie Soto

The Chosen One Falls

Dark Fantasy

But why do people love fanfic so much? There are various reasons, but some standout factors are:

Fanfic writers are invested in specific characters and like to continue or “fix” the stories to suit their tastes, or they are invested in the storyline and like to keep the general plot but add new elements or change the genre (i.e. realistic fiction to fantasy and vice versa).
They love the setting or world of the original work and want to explore it further. You only need to look at the many official spinoffs in the Star Wars franchise to get a sense of how hungry people are for more stories set in specific worlds.
They're reading to see diverse voices set within canonical worlds. Fanfic writers can play with original characters’ identity by switching gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality and more, or add in new characters to diversify the original work.

If you are reading for representation of a specific identity, try our Novelist Plus digital service. Novelist Plus helps connect readers with endless reading recommendations, and you can filter your results by identity.

Several bestselling authors like Christina Lauren, Cory Doctorow, Ali Hazelwood and Naomi Novik have experience writing fanfic, and some credit the supportive nature of the fanfic community in helping them hone their abilities.

The Love Hypothesis
By Ali Hazelwood

Star Wars Reylo

STEM

Romance

Beautiful Bastard
By Christina Lauren

Twilight

Enemies to Lovers

After
By Anna Todd

Harry Styles

College

Romance

Honourable Mention:

In Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Cath writes fanfic about Simon Snow, a fictional fantasy character similar to Harry Potter. Excerpts of Cath’s Simon Snow fanfic are interspersed throughout the novel. After the success of Fangirl, Rowell published a new fantasy series featuring none other than Simon Snow.

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