Thank you! A lot to think about. I disagree that we should have requirements on platforms in order to call people engaging fannishly on there fans. We'd call delicious a fannish place, and all we did was bookmark fic (with commentary and shared tags). Both are googleable, and I've used google and come across delicious links before (as well as AO3 links, which tend to be the top links). All that to say, that I know I google for fic and I bet I'm not the only one.
I very much hear you on the author pages. That's not a great construct for fic, and I very much understand why writers are unhappy about that. Otoh, I do feel there are various levels of disingenuousness by many fans who do not lock and hide their fic and who regard recs and links and bookmarks other places as a good thing yet here they suddenly want to maintain authorly control. (Likewise, I was slightly bemused by the strong claims of community creation, which I incidentally agree singles out fanfic, at the same time as authors claimed their ownership over their words...)
Anyway, yes, the author pages are a bad thing, but I'm not sure how the suggested related books are fundamentally different from the way many if not most fans use bookmarking sites searching by tags or follow tags on Tumblr. It's not just your friends who suggest and rec and criticize--it's anyone who tags (behold the don't tag the hate battles).
As for my own experience--I wasn't trying to compare fiction and nonfiction, as published text with a work of love (though I'd argue that our book was a labor of fannish love and we are not making any money either :)--but yes, my awareness in readership was there. What i was trying to get at was that the review was NOT necessarily the assumed readership. But by putting something out there I can't control who'll read it. Just like a fan who puts something publicly online can't control who reads it.
I'm not sure how Morgandawn used to feel--I used to be a huge proponent of maintaining closed spaces and keeping fandom away from mundanes, the press, anyone who didn't actively search it out and knew our history...and I think over the last years, I realized both practically that fandom is ever growing and fannish activities have mainstreamed to be point of clear distinction of in and out becoming near meaningless, and theoretically that that is not a bad thing. It feels like a loss to me emotionally, but the barrier to entry into fandom has become lower again and again and that's a good thing. It means our demographics are changing the more mainstream we are, and that's not a bad thing!
Anyway, sorry to preach...I very much hear you on the author page, but everything else, to me, seems like one group of fans demanding that other fans follow their rules. And that can't (and really probably shouldn't) ever work. It didn't work when fans started going online, when lotrips and popslash fans started mainstreaming rpf and HP fans underage. It didn't work when various waves of fans broke the fourth wall and when wholesale copying became the norm on Tumblr rather than linking. (Heck, I remember when fans asked to link and that clearly didn't/couldn't work on the Internet).
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I very much hear you on the author pages. That's not a great construct for fic, and I very much understand why writers are unhappy about that. Otoh, I do feel there are various levels of disingenuousness by many fans who do not lock and hide their fic and who regard recs and links and bookmarks other places as a good thing yet here they suddenly want to maintain authorly control. (Likewise, I was slightly bemused by the strong claims of community creation, which I incidentally agree singles out fanfic, at the same time as authors claimed their ownership over their words...)
Anyway, yes, the author pages are a bad thing, but I'm not sure how the suggested related books are fundamentally different from the way many if not most fans use bookmarking sites searching by tags or follow tags on Tumblr. It's not just your friends who suggest and rec and criticize--it's anyone who tags (behold the don't tag the hate battles).
As for my own experience--I wasn't trying to compare fiction and nonfiction, as published text with a work of love (though I'd argue that our book was a labor of fannish love and we are not making any money either :)--but yes, my awareness in readership was there. What i was trying to get at was that the review was NOT necessarily the assumed readership. But by putting something out there I can't control who'll read it. Just like a fan who puts something publicly online can't control who reads it.
I'm not sure how Morgandawn used to feel--I used to be a huge proponent of maintaining closed spaces and keeping fandom away from mundanes, the press, anyone who didn't actively search it out and knew our history...and I think over the last years, I realized both practically that fandom is ever growing and fannish activities have mainstreamed to be point of clear distinction of in and out becoming near meaningless, and theoretically that that is not a bad thing. It feels like a loss to me emotionally, but the barrier to entry into fandom has become lower again and again and that's a good thing. It means our demographics are changing the more mainstream we are, and that's not a bad thing!
Anyway, sorry to preach...I very much hear you on the author page, but everything else, to me, seems like one group of fans demanding that other fans follow their rules. And that can't (and really probably shouldn't) ever work. It didn't work when fans started going online, when lotrips and popslash fans started mainstreaming rpf and HP fans underage. It didn't work when various waves of fans broke the fourth wall and when wholesale copying became the norm on Tumblr rather than linking. (Heck, I remember when fans asked to link and that clearly didn't/couldn't work on the Internet).
Hey, we do agree about Tumblr :) A lot!!!