this is where i say, cool

[seperis]

Related to the entire Unfunny Prowriter making vague whining sounds about fanfic that we all celebrated in song and rhyme and whatnot, but much more interesting.

From comments,

Comments

[solar_cat]

Doujin is correct. (The whole word is doujinshi.)

I would also note that fandom_counts has 34,040 members, and that comm was created in an effort to show how many fannish people were on LJ (during... Strikethrough? I can't actually remember now. XD ).

[seperis]

thank you!

Oh man, I forgot about fandom_counts. Even given RP journals added, that is a lot.

[solar_cat]

There's definitely some doubling up on there (I know my normal journal and my fic journal are both members), but even if you assume everyone has two journals on there, it's still >17,000 fannish people on LJ who joined the comm. We are many! \0/

[lurkerlynne]

During the Strikethrough, yup.

I consider fannish writers to be amateur writers, meaning non-published, but a number of them are better than some of the dreck I find on the shelves. In fact, I've heard a vicious rumor that there are ::gasp:: professional writers who write fanfiction! O_O.

The Internet has allowed more people to air their work, be it stories, journalism or art, and the 'professional' world hasn't adapted yet. And it's probably not going to without a lot of kicking and screaming; to them, the Internet is not the place to find 'real' writers, 'real' artists, 'real' journalists. There are exceptions of course, show writers who seem to be paying attention to fandom for instance, but they seem to be the minority.

[fyrdrakken]

I don't think that's the kind of argument the so-called "pro writers" are going to really respond to -- on the one hand, I think they'd be more likely to take pride in being one of the rare lucky talented ones who achieve publication (and continue to use that as evidence for their own specialness), and on the other, twenty or thirty or forty thousand still isn't a really scary amount when compared to the book-buying public as a whole. If they don't get that fanfic amounts to free advertising for their published works, I don't see them as being really scared by the prospect of fannish boycotts of their books.

[seperis]

For the purposes of that post and the latest brouhaha, this particular argument was relevant in terms of numbers. That's why it's an interesting statistic to have around.

[fyrdrakken]

Why were the numbers important? I followed back to the comment thread you linked to but couldn't tell what point it was trying to make, and I'm not curious enough to pull up all those screencaps on the main post looking for it.

[seperis]

Characterization of fanfic writers as a tiny fringe group.

[kuhekabir]

i would be sooo cool to get a number that included all the languages...wow...

[seperis]

I'm hoping somewhere we can get a full count for that.

[pir8fancier]

I was sitting with a fellow writer at a book event, oh about a year ago. We had a total of three people and of that three, one was just a friend who stopped by to say hello. I would say it's terribly disheartening but, really, typical. Moving on. He and I had a LOT OF TIME to chat, and he and another mystery writer did an analysis (by putting together some stats on con attendence, communities, etc.) and he figured that we were all competing for the same, roughly, 20,000 active readers. You'd think mystery would be bigger than that, but I agreed with his assessment. There are not that many readers, but they buy a lot of books

[threegoldfish]

I am honestly surprised the Borders is still up and running.

[pir8fancier]

As someone said to me last night, they are where Crown Books was fifteen years ago, except they are being muscled out by B&N and amazon. Although the coupon thing seems to be a goldmine. I just ordered a book from them and with coupons, etc. it cost me $12.00. Which at that price they are losing money on, so yeah. How long can they hold on, one wonders?

[threegoldfish]

Considering most of the predictions I saw had them folding after last Christmas, I have no idea how they're still doing it.

[spaggel]

Makes me wish I still had my "My fandom just fucked your boyfriend and wrote bad slash about it" icon.

[seperis]

Appropriate icon would be so appropriate right now.

[spaggel]

*makes new one* Oh I feel so much better now.