The next “Fifty Shades of Grey” is here. No, not the movie — you’ll have to wait until Valentine’s Day for that mess. This time instead of “Twilight” fan fiction — which “Fifty Shades of Grey” was derived from — One Direction fan fiction is making it big time.

“After” is the first installment in the four part series of erotic fan fiction that is now on the shelves, with the second book coming out Nov. 25. The series is being published through Simon & Schuster. The author, Anna Todd, has a six-figure deal and Paramount Pictures has already bought the movie rights.  

Fan fiction might not comply with conventional ideals of established creative outlets, but it has a strong and growing audience. Fan fiction is on its way to becoming a lucrative franchise and cannot be written off as just a perverse online hobby.

Fan fiction is often based on books, TV shows, movies and celebrities. It gives fans a chance to re-imagine their favorite stars and characters in an alternate reality. None of Todd’s characters are insanely famous boy band stars — they’re just based on their images. In Todd’s original online version, 18-year-old Tessa falls in love with tattooed bad boy Harry Styles during her freshman year at college. The other members of One Direction are in the book, too. Most are secondary character fraternity brothers but “Daddy Direction,” Liam Payne, appears as Tessa’s clean-cut best friend.

Fan fiction gives One Direction’s legions of fans the outlet to imagine themselves as their crush’s love interest. It gives the readers a sense of intimacy and connection with the stars who will never know they exist.

“After” may be a book for teen girls who are infatuated with Harry Styles, but that doesn’t make it any less legitimate of a business. While “After” is being sold in major bookstores, it is also still available for free on Wattpad, a site that prides itself as an online community of readers and writers sharing their work for free. Though fans can still access the book for free, they are choosing to pay for content they’ve already had despite the fact that the published version doesn’t offer much more than what’s online.

Even though Todd had to change the band member’s names for copyright reasons — Harry Styles is now Hardin Scott — it was a small price to pay for fans eager to see the book in perfect condition. The typos and plot redundancies are cleaned up and a few sex scenes are elongated. The books are flying off the shelves and presales for the second novel are already high.

Todd didn’t set out originally to make a profit. She wrote because she was a fan herself. She is a 25-year-old first time writer based out of Texas who began writing “After” through daily chapter installments on Wattpad. Todd would spend five hours a day writing “After” and the subsequent three hours interacting with her readers on social media. Todd has more than 200,000 twitter followers and unprecedented access to her audience.

“After” may not be a work of art, but just as with all things, there is good and bad fan fiction. The majority of it probably won’t make it to bookstores, but this is just the beginning for online fan fiction as a successful print product.

Erin G. Kelly is a senior broadcast and digital journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at egkelly@syr.edu.

Published on November 10, 2014 at 12:01 am