The French publisher Lattes has sent “warning letters” to publishers it feels are infringing on the copyright of Fifty Shades of Grey.

The Telegraph had this quote from editorial director Laurent Laffont: ”Some of these titles, which pick up on elements of the book, are clearly parasitical … We would like those planning new releases next year to know that we are watching very closely to ensure they are not parasitical.”

Online authors should never forget that readers can travel backwards in Internet time and explore their earlier work. Author E L James scored a seven-figure book deal to publish the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and a movie deal quickly followed.

This erotica bestseller began as a work of Twilight fan fiction called Master of the Universe, earning a massive fan fiction following years before the book deal. Most traces of this fan fiction history have been removed from the Internet. Using the Wayback Machine, we were able to take snapshots from James’ old work–getting a peek into the book’s previous incarnation as an X-rated version of the Twilight story.

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Christina Hobbs

The book will be released in February, published under the pen name, Christina Lauren. Hobbs and Billings (pictured) share a blog called Swoontini. The pair are represented by Holly Root from the Waxman Leavell Literary Agency.

The Hollywood Reporter had the scoop: “The Office, which reimagined the Edward Cullen-Bella Swan relationship as a steamy love/hate romance between a boss and his assistant, was one of the pioneers of the Twilight fanfic genre, generating more than two million downloads, before being taken offline by the author in 2009.”

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io9 first spotted the hilarious customer reviews, many of them written about fictional misuse of the pink or purple pens. Here is our favorite:

Things were a bit better when I left school to go and work sweeping up hair at the local salon – yet again, the broom seemed to just fit into my grip as if it was meant to be there – and I saved up to buy a pink laptop. I still had trouble writing for a long time because, although the case was pink, the keys weren’t designed for female eyes which, as we all know, struggle to discern between shades of black and grey. I could write for about 4 minutes at a time, though, and that’s how I found out about these wonderful pens for girls like me.

As soon as they arrived, I was soothed by the pink packaging – I’d been feeling stressed after driving back from work because my hands just won’t stay on the black, leather-effect steering wheel in my cute mini. Anyway, I quickly found a piece of notepaper with pictures of kittens round the edges and had a go at writing my name. It was amazing! The pen just stayed in place between my fingers, just like it always had for the boys in my class at school. Well, in no time I’d filled a whole notepad and had to go and get another one! Now I’ve gone back to night school and hope to realise my ambition of enrolling on a childcare course next year. I’m also halfway through writing an erotic novel set in Victorian times – but with vampires!

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I am supposed to tell you that it’s evil and wretched and destroys anything and everything I’ve ever tried to accomplish. Truth is, this is supposed to be fun and entertaining, and when I hear about fan fiction using my characters, or when I see variations of my characters running around in an MMO, I think it’s the coolest thing ever. Truly flattering. Now, I can’t read the fan fiction, for obvious reasons, nor can I consider it “canon,” but I’m still flattered.

Salvatore is the author of The Crystal Shard, The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Hunter’s Blades Trilogy and many other sprawling fantasy novels. His work has spawned countless stories written by fans and an entire Lavender Eyes site dedicated to his fan fiction.

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This book was born as a serialized Twilight fan fiction story called The University of Edward Masen (abbreviated as UOEM by readers) written under the pen name Sebastien Robichaud. The original manuscript has been removed and the site for Robichaud has been deleted.

Using the Wayback Machine and other tools, we were able to take snapshots from Reynard’s old work under that pseudonym–archiving the book’s fan fiction history (like we did for E. L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey). We’ve included excerpts from the notes below, click on the individual links to explore the pages for yourself. continued…

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The Outsiders

Hinton noted “I normally do not have a problem with fanfics,” but responded to one fan fiction author who imagined an unexpected pregnancy (contains NSFW language) in her classic series. Hinton had an unequivocal response: “bangs head on desk … no no no.” You can read all her thoughts in the Storify post embedded below.

Earlier this year, Hinton told School Library Journal: “I have several things going on. I’m eternally wasting my time on Twitter. I’m also in the middle of a very superficial comedic supernatural thriller thing that I would like to finish. Also, I’m going to be working on webisodes in conjunction with the University of Tulsa film students based on my short stories.” (Author photo via)

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The book began as Twilight fan fiction, telling the story of “a sinful exploration of sex, love, and redemption” between a Dante scholar and his graduate student. Reynard had published with Omnific Publishing, a publisher “nurturing talented amateur writers into professional published authors.”

Knight Agency president Deidre Knight and co-agent Melissa Jeglinski represented Omnific Publishing in the deal with senior editor Cindy Hwang. Berkley will print 500,000 trade paperback copies of each book.

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The Wall Street Journal

The dispatch explored a number of interesting corners of the fan fiction universe where dedicated readers continue the stories they love the most. However, the piece didn’t link to any of the fan fiction works mentioned in the story.

Below, we’ve shared some links to help you read the stories mentioned in the article.

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AppNewser has more about the daily posting rates and activities of Wattpad users. In a note to readers, Wattpad CEO Allen Lau explored how the site had grown since its 2006 launch. Here’s an excerpt:

Since then over 5 million stories in 25 languages have been uploaded to Wattpad! Not many people know that we’re seeing engagement numbers which rival Pinterest, as we give users a new way to create and be entertained. In May, people spent over 1.7 billion minutes on Wattpad; crafting and sharing original new fiction spanning romance, mystery, sci fi, thriller, poetry and even fanfiction remixes and mashups that have interesting implications for brands and celebrities like One Direction. But Wattpad isn’t just about the big growth numbers. We’ve created a positive, emotional product that fosters creativity and self-expression. We’re democratizing the written word and seeing incredible new types of collaboration come to life.

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When asked about the bestselling success of E. L. James‘ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (a series that began as Twilight fan fiction) Twilight creator Stephenie Meyer told MTV News: “Good on her — she’s doing well. That’s great!”

In the short video interview embedded above, the novelist admitted she hadn’t read the erotica bestseller, but wished her old fan luck. Even though the book has its roots in fan fiction, Meyer said James would have been a writer no matter what inspired her. Here’s more from MTV:

“Fifty Shades” follows the sadomasochistic affair of college graduate Ana Steele and dominant billionaire Christian Grey … Christian represents Edward Cullen, a brooding, self-deprecating and impossibly good-looking man with a few secrets, while Ana is an adaptation of the clumsy and shy Bella Swan. Without Meyer’s novel, “Fifty Shades” might not exist. “It might not exist in the exact form that it’s in,” Meyer said. “Obviously, [James] had a story in her, and so it would’ve come out in some other way.” (Via Book Riot)

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The Wayback Machine has since removed this record. We contacted Internet Archive for more information, and received this response: “The Internet Archive honors requests from domain and site owners to exclude page from the Wayback Machine at their request.”

Our original post still contains screenshots of some of the deleted content, but if you search the digital archive for those records, you now get this message: “Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.”

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Vintage Books has included a disclaimer in its edition of Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James, acknowledging the book’s origins as Twilight fan fiction. Above, we’ve embedded a screenshot of the publisher’s note.

The copyright page includes this note: “The author published an earlier serialized version of this story online with different characters as ‘Master of the Universe’ under the pseudonym Snowqueen Icedragon.”

James removed the original fan fiction from her personal website, but we traveled backward in Internet time to archive the book’s lost history as Master of the Universe–it began as an X-rated version of the Twilight story. (Via Andrew Shaffer)

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This GalleyCat editor wrote an essay for NPR exploring the Twilight fan fiction roots of Fifty Shades of Grey, E L James‘ erotica novel that just hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times paperback best seller list this week.

Last year, veteran Amazon reviewer Amanda Ryan gave Fifty Shades of Grey her highest rating, calling it “Twilight XXX.” She acknowledged the fan fiction origins: “I really loved this story. I found myself drawing comparisons to Twilight a few chapters in–really, it’s impossible not to. It’s set in Washington state, our hero and heroine are mirror images to Bella and Edward, and the intense emotional and physical attraction to one another is remarkably similar.”

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Gold had no disrespect for the art of writing fan fiction–she honed her craft by writing Harry Potter fan fiction.

Fifty Shades of Grey is about a young woman named Anastasia Steele meeting a man named Christian Grey; Twilight is about a young woman named Bella Swan meeting a vampire named Edward Cullen.  At Gold’s blog, a few readers listed plot similarities between the Twilight series and Fifty Shades of Grey. We’ve linked to a few examples below–what do you think?

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Almost one year ago, Australian publisher The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House released the first book of the trilogy.  The book went on to sell over 250,000 copies in eBooks and paperbacks.

GalleyCat has obtained a copy of the original fan fiction manuscript (published under the name Snowqueens Icedragon). Below, we’ve compared the first few paragraphs of that book with the similar opening from The Writer’s Coffee Shop edition of the novel published last year (Publishers Weekly has a quote from the Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House publisher confirming the book’s fan fiction origins). What do you think?

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