May 2007: FanLib Tries To Commercialize Fic and Everyone Has Big Feelings

Read the fine print! This week, Emily dug deep into why exactly we need an Archive Of Our Own and tells V all about FanLib, a short-lived for-profit, idea-mining fanfiction site partnered with TPTB of several semi-fannish TV shows. The idea? Get fans to write episodes for you for no pay, then profit because the episodes are "what fans wanted to see happen." Needless to say, fandom had a lot of feelings about FanLib and then the FanLib founders had a lot of feelings about those feelings. Did you ever enter a sanctioned fanfiction contest? Where did you read fic in the pre-AO3 world?