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)

We published a long post looking at The Lost History of Fifty Shades of Grey recently, using the Wayback Machine to explore the Twilight fan fiction roots of E.L. James‘ runaway bestseller.

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.”

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)

Will the success of Fifty Shades of Grey inspire more fan fiction writers to convert their work into straight fiction?

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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Paranormal author Jami Gold asked her readers: When Does Fan Fiction Cross an Ethical Line? Her pointed question generated more than 220 comments about Fifty Shades of Grey, an erotica novel by E L James that began as Twilight fan fiction and landed a seven-figure advance.

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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Author E L James has landed a headline-making three-book deal with Vintage Books to publish her erotica series, the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Book blogger Jane Litte broke the news of the book’s origin–a work of Twilight fan fiction from 2009 called Master of the Universe.

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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Novelist and journalist Lev Grossman explored the world of Harry Potter fan fiction with his Time magazine piece, “The Boy Who Lived Forever.” Grossman debunked stereotypes about fan fiction writers and highlighted some famous examples.

Here’s more from the article: “If anything, anecdotal evidence suggests that most fan fiction is written by women. (They’re also not all writers. They draw and paint and make videos and stage musicals. Darren Criss, currently a regular on Glee, made his mark in the fan production A Very Potter Musical, which is findable, and quite watchable, on YouTube.) It’s also an intensely social, communal activity. Like punk rock, fan fiction is inherently inclusive, and people spend as much time hanging out talking to one another about it as they do reading and writing it.”

Why not read some fan fiction to celebrate the release of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2? There are nearly 420,000 Harry Potter stories archived at FanFiction.net. Author J.K. Rowling encourages fan fiction–perhaps her new Pottermore website will support these writers?