THE FUSE

Romance books with origins in fanfiction are increasingly common on bookstore shelves. They come in different flavors, each with its own set of issues to dig into. The most common types are books derived from an established fanfiction ship within a copyrighted IP. These are, for example, the Reylo (Rey/Kylo Ren from Star Wars) and Dramione (Draco/Hermione from Harry Potter) fics with the “serial numbers filed off,” as people say. In 2025, at least three different Dramione fics were published traditionally. Some of the marketing for these books was bold enough to proclaim the book’s fanfic roots rather than obfuscating them. This blurring of the lines between the not-for-profit ethos of the fanfiction world and the turbo-capitalism of the publishing industry was honestly quite shocking to behold.