Transition Questions: Fanfic Writer to Published Author

I did some searching on the forum to see if there were prior discussions about fanfiction writers transitioning to published authors. I really didn't see anything. There were a few folks that said they had or did write fanfiction but that's about it.

I've been writing fanfiction since 1999, one particular fandom over others, but in various fandoms nowadays. From a marketing/business standpoint, I'm really hoping many of my readers from these fandoms will make the same transition as me into my original works.

I'm curious whether anybody has had such an experience...? Whether anybody has been able to gauge how much of their fanfiction readers transitioned with them and became customers? If so, did you do anything in particular with your fanfiction readers to encourage them to be paying customers? It's one thing to read a free fanfiction versus now paying your favorite fanfiction writer for a book. Or if anybody was a published author first, later did fanfiction, and drew in new customers thanks to the fanfiction?

I have a minor sense of what it may be like because many fanfiction writers in my main fandom became published authors. I've never spoken to any of these authors about the transition. However, they use a very particular technique in their writing to transition their fanfiction readers into customers. But, that's for one fandom, and I feel like they kind of pigeonholed themselves. I want to market to a larger crowd. The more readers I can bring with me is important.

Anyway, I'm hoping somebody has been through the experience from fanfiction writer to published/self-published author. Any pearls of wisdom from experience would be awesome.

Thank you both for a reply. I figured there's probably a handful of published authors that started in fanfiction first.

Sheryl, I think you're right that each fandom will be different. Some fandoms are more conducive to readers being able to transition over. The audiences in each fandom can be unique too. Like the XWP (Xena) fandom use to be (and still is) an older generation that has the money to purchase books. But, I know there's a younger generation starting into XWP, who may or may not buy. Then there's fandoms like Frozen or Maleficent, who are probably more younger readers and less will transition to original works.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. Thankfully I have the opportunity to talk to a lot of my current readers. Maybe I'll get a sense of who starts into the published material.

Thank you again.

Hey y'all, sorry for the delay in replying. I've been so caught up at my job. It's nice to have a few minutes and read everybody's reply. It's a lot of help!

So many of y'all changed your "names" as you went from fanfiction to published author? I plan to keep my pen name "Red Hope" because I don't want to lose my fan base. However, from a marketing perspective, I don't know how new readers may respond to an author named "Red Hope". Whether they would not take my work seriously enough to buy and read. I don't know.

I started in the Xena Warrior Princess (xwp) fandom, and I focus on femslash fanfiction. So naturally I'm moving onto LGBT original pieces. I know a lot of the XWP fanfic writers used "ubers" to get their XWP readers to become buyers. Not sure if anybody is familiar with ubers at all, but they're closely related to AUs (alternate universe). Basically the writer takes the shell of the two main characters and puts them into a new setting, time, story line, etc. For those writers and readers in that fandom, it was a great tool to transition those readers into customers buying the books.

I write in multiple fandoms, not just because I enjoy them, but because it's a marketing tool to spread my name wider. It's worked well for me over the last few years. But each fandom as a different crowd, but I think I've picked up more loyal readers, who will probably becomes customers. Hopefully I can find a way to measure it later. It'd be nice to have that following after writing so many years for fanfiction.

Thankfully I've been fortunate enough that I have readers asking when will I publish. I'm not sure how often that happens. But, that's why I'm leaning towards keeping my name the same so they can find me.

I guess I will see how this plays out in a coupe of months here. Thank you all for the feedback!