Eli Cugini

In fanfiction, you have a lot of very young writers, you have untrained writers, you have writers who are kind of prioritizing a sort of excitement of engagement over editing.

And I do think that can dovetail with certain existing problems in the literary landscape, like less availability of editors.

Editors are often just so overworked now.

There's a lot of understaffing in publishing.

I think this is particularly a problem with genre authors.

I think this happens a lot with debut authors in general and minoritized authors in particular across all kinds of axes of minority.

Like, I'm very worried about that kind of problem.

But sometimes you get people kind of like, well, fan fiction is killing publishing.

Hell, I wrote about fan fiction in, I think, a relatively even-handed way.

And I had various people like, why are you not talking about this like it's the apocalypse?

And it's like, because I don't think it is.

And I think if it is, that's not really fanfiction's fault.

But like, you have some very good books out there that have obvious affinities with fanfiction.

I do, however, think it often requires certain kinds of skill to rarify tropes in that way.

And when it's easier to just sell something with a bank of tropes on the back, where you don't necessarily have to execute them properly,

That is an inherent problem with fan fiction adaptation.

As one of the two literate men.

Actually, one of the women I interviewed, Sarah Briette, has written about very well for Defector.

It's called like the plight of the white male novelist or something.

Things that have happened in publishing to do with there being fewer men publishing novels.