This One Direction erotica has been read by more people than live in the U.S. And its author just scored a huge book deal.
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| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | This One Direction erotica has been read by more people than live in the U.S. And its author just scored a huge book deal. |
| Commentator: | Caitlin Dewey |
| Date(s): | June 5, 2014 |
| Venue: | online |
| Fandom: | One Direction |
| External Links: | online here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
This One Direction erotica has been read by more people than live in the U.S. And its author just scored a huge book deal. is a 2014 article from The Washington Post by Caitlin Dewey. It is about After, a One Direction fanfiction, and the major book deal that writer Anna Todd received.
Excerpts
Yet another piece of salacious teen fan fiction is making the uncomfortable leap from blogosphere backwater to Barnes & Noble — but “After,” the three-volume tale of an 18-year-old’s torrid love affair with One Direction frontman Harry Styles, is something of a special case. It’s long been the marquee story on Wattpad, a self-publishing platform that hosted more than 32 million stories in 2013. And in that role, it’s been popular. Like mind-numbingly, head-scratchingly, wtf-inducingly popular.Per Simon & Schuster, the publisher that bought the book, the three books in the “After” trilogy have already been read a combined 800 million times. For perspective, that is: (1) almost twice the number of Harry Potter books that have ever been sold, (2) roughly 1.5 times the number of Apple iPhones in existence and (3) two and a half times the population of the United States.
In other words, “After” isn’t the next “50 Shades of Grey.” It’s already eclipsed that paltry franchise several times over.
Todd, the “After” author, has said she spends half her day writing and half her day interacting with fans; her most popular piece on Wattpad, after the “After” trilogy, is a 10-part interview in which she answered reader questions. (Sample inquiries: Where in Texas do you live? What’s your favorite nail polish color? Are you a Directioner?) She has more than 273,000 followers on Instagram, and 182,000 on Twitter. On both platforms, Todd frequently reposts fan art and comments from her readers. Maybe that seems like so much adolescent drivel, but it represents a serious shift in the role of the writer — traditionally a remote, solitary artist with little time or attention for fans. On Wattpad, at least, writing becomes more social. More collaborative. More “of the Internet,” essentially, with all the egalitarian values that entails. To quote the publishing consultant Charles Melcher, “now that everyone’s been given permission to be creative, new ways of telling stories … are being invented.”