Authors used to treat the word fanfiction like a dirty little secret, but our corner of the internet has straight up carried the publishing industry. Some of the most obsessed over books started out as fanfics.
From spicy office romances to historical fiction, here are nine insanely popular books that exist because of fanfiction.
1. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
The Original Fandom: Star Wars (Reylo)
The Backstory: Before it spent over 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, this STEM rom-com was a popular AO3 fanfic titled ‘Head Over Feet’ with 111897 hits. It featured the Reylo ship (Rey and Kylo Ren) in a modern academic setting. The publisher didn’t even tried to hide it, and if you look closely at the book’s original cover art, the male lead looks suspiciously like a carbon copy of Adam Driver…
2. Alchemised by SenLinYu
The Original Fandom: Harry Potter x The Handmaid’s tale
The Backstory: You cannot talk about Harry Potter fanfic without mentioning Manacled, the 370,000 word crossover AU fic that absolutely dominated the fandom with over 10 million hits on AO3. The author heavily reworked the Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger dark romance into an original gothic fantasy novel, which became an instant bestseller. It even has a Hollywood movie deal in the works.
3.The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
The Original Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
The Backstory: This book got started as a Sherlock Holmes ‘WingFic’; a highly specific subgenre of fanfiction that reimagines characters with angelic traits to explore themes of power and magic in an otherwise non supernatural world. In The Angel of the Crows, Sherlock becomes Crow, an unconventional and eccentric angel, while Dr. Watson is reimagined as Dr. J.H. Doyle, a war veteran harboring his own dark secrets. The book’s fanfiction roots are no secret, as Addison confirms in the author’s note that she initially wrote it for personal enjoyment before transforming it into a standalone piece of fiction!
4. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Original Fandom: Historical RPF (Real person fiction)
The Backstory: Okay, so the author hasn’t said it’s fanfiction, but technically, this Booker Prize winner can be classified as historical fanfiction. It’s 1862, and Abraham Lincoln’s son is dead (mostly). Willie’s spirit actually ends up trapped in the “bardo” aka the supernatural waiting room between life and death. The book features a massive cast of 166 characters (mostly OC ghosts) that Willie befriends while they all try to process being dead. This will be going straight on my reading list.
5. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Original Fandom: Ancient Greek Mythology
The Backstory: The Iliad but make it gay. This slow burn tragedy book retells the classic Trojan War myth through the eyes of Patroclus as he falls completely for the half-god warrior, Achilles. BookTok loves this book, and it has racked up hundreds of millions of views under the hashtag from readers filming themselves sobbing over the ending (personally, I want to avoid the heartbreak). The TikTok hype helped sell over 2 million copies worldwide. Even thousands of years later, we love Ancient Greek fanfic.
6. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
The Original Fandom: Twilight
The Backstory: No list would be complete without Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s the undisputed blueprint for the entire fanfic to bestseller pipeline. Originally posted on fanfiction sites under the title ‘Master of the Universe’, it has sold over 150 million copies worldwide and featured Edward Cullen and Bella Swan in an AU BDSM romance.
7. After by Anna Todd
The Original Fandom: One Direction
The Backstory: Anna Todd originally wrote After entirely on her phone as a serialised fanfic about a college girl and a toxic, tattooed version of Harry Styles. All 3 books ended up pulling in over 1.5 billion reads on Wattpad. Interestingly, her third book pulled in more views than the first (just an extra 70 million views on top of her 721 million from the first book). Todd had to legally change the main character’s name to Hardin Scott, but thankfully in the movies, he kept a British accent!
8. Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren
The Original Fandom: Twilight
The Backstory:
This writing duo, Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings (known to fans as Christina Lauren), had humble beginnings on FanFiction.net. Back then, they wrote under the usernames tby78 and iggyardent. This book was originally a wildly famous Twilight office AU called The Office, where Edward was a demanding boss and Bella was his stressed-out intern. It had over two million reads and was downloaded over 200,000 times before they scrubbed the names and turned it into Beautiful Bastard, an instant New York Times bestseller that launched a massive 10-part book series.
9.The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
The Original Fandom: Star Wars
The Backstory: The Reylo fandom is at it again! Before becoming a New York Times bestseller and a Goodreads Choice Award nominee, this fantasy started on AO3 as a massive Rey/Kylo Ren fanfic called Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors (written under the username Disordered). The author took this intense enemies to lovers dynamic, swapped the lightsabers for elemental magic and built a Southeast Asian-inspired world to land a three book publishing deal.