As someone who has been writing fanfiction for years, and hope to publish her original fiction in the future, I have noticed a trend of selling fanfiction on Etsy.

Since 2022, there has been a rise in bound fanfiction on Etsy, and it's reaching a point where authors are either restricting their fanfiction to registered users on AO3 or taking their fanfiction down all because sellers on the site are downloading, binding and selling their fanfiction. The authors have tried reporting the sellers, only to either get hate messages or blocked. Fanfiction has always been non-profit, and has always been free to read. If you want a physical copy of your favourite fic you would print it out and put it in a binder or bookbound it yourself. All the sellers are doing is putting fanfiction as a whole at risk, as it opens up the possibility for fanfiction authors getting sued.  Basically this will kill fandoms. Nobody. Has. The. Right. To. A. Bound. Fanfiction. The worst thing is, they're selling fics without the author's consent. Many authors publish their fanfiction on AO3, FFN, Wattpad and other fanfiction sites, and for people not even in the fandom or only cares about how much money they make, to go around stealing fanfiction and selling them without the author's knowledge or consent is low. Fanfiction is a hobby, and many authors write fanfiction for fun or to improve their writing.

The longer these sellers remain the more at risk fanfiction will be in, and the more likely fanfiction authors will be sued. AO3 and other fanfiction sites will be gone, and with it millions of fanfiction.