Should Stephenie Meyer have sued E.L. James when she had the chance?
FanFiction would be very different today, if she had.
Let’s begin with the basics;
FanFiction – sometimes abbreviated to FanFic or simply FF – describes writing that is about characters or in settings borrowed from another work of fiction. As the name implies, FanFic is created by fans of an original work.
I actually wrote an article for Overland waaaaay back in 2018 giving that exact paragraph definition;
In that same article I admitted that I used to write FanFiction. From the ages of 15 - 22 I wrote 24 stories that amounted to 391,522-words of FanFic, something I know and could calculate because my old FanFiction.net account still exists and I still get pings on my stories that are still up to this day. I was particularly prolific in Twilight, Buffy and Once & Again FanFic realms.
I recently dusted off my FF credentials once again, in an episode of the ABC podcast Download This Show;
And in that episode I made a pretty bold claim that I can in no way back up, but have oft-pondered which is; had Twilight author Stephenie Meyer sued E.L. James upon publication of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011, the current treatment of FanFic as another pathway to repackaging and traditional publication would be very different and possibly even, non-existent.
Again, let me back up. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight young adult novel about a young woman who falls in love with a vampire, first published in 2005. It is actually the 20th anniversary of said publication, and there’s been much fanfare (Crocs released a Twilight collab! … what is it the kids say? “Capitalism really popped off today!”)
In 2009 a British writer by the name of E.L. James began writing Twilight FanFiction called Masters of the Universe which took out all the paranormal fantasy, and aged it into a very adult and erotic category, by using BDSM and sado-masochistic sex to replace the vampirism allegory.
Eventually James’ FanFic got so big in online communities, that a virtual Australian publisher called The Writers’ Coffee Shop purchased the rights and started selling it as a print-on-demand and ebook title in 2011. The novel made the business at least $40m, according to court documents because - yes indeed! - there would eventually be a court case … Random House bought the rights to Fifty Shades of Grey from The Writer’s Coffee Shop in 2012, however one of the owners of the Coffee Shop was apparently cut out of the deal and entered into a lengthy lawsuit which she’d eventually win;
Fifty Shades of Grey publisher ordered to pay $11.5m in royalties to teacher. Jennifer Pedroza of Texas sued former business partner Amanda Hayward for defrauding her of money Writer’s Coffee Shop earned from popular erotic novels
At its absolute height, Fifty Shades of Grey was outselling the very Twilight property it was originally based on;
And as the Twilight franchise got adapted into five feature-films, Fifty Shades also got the adaptation movie treatment with a trilogy.
The one time that Meyer was pipped at the post on these various same-same concepts was in the male protagonist POV alternate-novel (and Meyer *hates* this fact) … E.L. James released Christian Grey’s perspective in the novel Grey in 2015, while Stephenie Meyer gave us Edward’s POV in Midnight Sun in 2020.
James’s genesis as a Twilight FF writer and that being the spark to her series was so interconnected to the Fifty Shades phenomena … James had nothing but praise for Meyer, and I guess because of the extensive internet-trail to Masters of the Universe she leaned into the FF origins rather than trying to hide them.
There is one question asked of James in that USA Today interview, that still haunts me and I ponder on the daily, however;
Q: Have you ever met Stephenie Meyer?
James: No, I haven’t. I’d love to, a great deal. She just flipped the switch and she (inspired) so many people and so many of my author friends met through the “Twilight” fan fiction world... I’m a Twihard through and through.
Because when Fifty Shades kicked off and became the juggernaut it did, myself and many people wondered if Stephenie Meyer would sue for copyright infringement. Not just because of the outright gall that at one point, this piece of FF was out-selling her original property. But I especially wondered if Meyer - who is famously Mormon (the whole vampire’s bite thing becomes an allegory for “sex before marriage”) - would take a stand on religious grounds, over her very chaste teen tale being turned into modern-day erotica;
Also because of that pesky little truth that it is illegal to sell FanFiction. It is works derived from copyrighted material, and while it’s technically okay (but can still get murky) to write and create FanFiction, selling and profiting from it is a step too far. And we’ve seen many modern iterations of various FanFic works getting slapped with lawsuits for pushing the bounds and cutting it too fine with monetisation without permission;
So why didn’t Stephenie Meyer and her publisher Little Brown, take E.L. James and Random House to court?
I don’t know, but I wonder *constantly* - and so do legal experts and commentators;
Potential Copyright Dispute Between Bestselling Authors (Berkeley Technology Law Journal)
Fifty Shades of Copyright Infringement? (Publishing Perspectives)
The Curious Case of a vampire and a billionaire (copyright licensing New Zealand)
Although the origin of 50 Shades is a well known, undisputed, and blatant infringement on Stephanie Myers’ copyright ownership, Myers has declined to bring legal action against E.L. James, although she could win. Her reasoning is that the genres of both books are vastly different, and the impact of 50 Shades sales is unlikely to have affected significantly the financial potential of Twilight.
From a copyright perspective, in changing everything that was associated with the Twilight universe, E.L. James’ work is substantially different, and it could be argued that it stands on its own, as a unique and original work. At the end of the day, bringing a lawsuit would probably be more trouble than it’s worth for both authors, but be warned, fanfic writers - keep it to the fanfic forum, and keep one eye on the sky.
I personally think the publishing world held its breath during that initial period when Meyer could have launched a lawsuit again James and Fifty Shades, and it would have gone down as a huge and hugely important case on copyright law - whichever way it ruled in the end, in Meyer’s favour or against.
But because she never chose to get litigious, I think it’s fair to say that FanFic writers and publishers got daring. Publishing now sees FanFiction (once a bastion of freedom separate from the commercial and capitalistic realm of “traditional publishing”) - as yet another goldmine to find reader road-tested works that they can “re-skin” to strip out the illegal copyrighted material and repackage to an in-built audience (across two fandom spaces; those of the original fan work, and those of the FF community) who cheer to see their “off-the-grid” FF authors being cloaked in legitimacy and respectability that the old-media of publishing houses affords them.
It’s gotten to be such a big conveyor-belt to success, that arguably the biggest book release of 2025 is a reskinned Harry Potter FanFiction … Manacled was a “Dramione” (Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger) piece of slave/master dark fantasy FanFic written in 2018 and uploaded onto AO3 (‘Archive of Our Own’) that really took off in BookTok realms in 2020
It became so big that it’s unsurprising that Penguin Random House nabbed the rights, in a deal that also netted the author SenLinYu (their AO3 handle, a pseudonym) a simultaneous movie deal;
The fanfiction written on a notes app that’s become a bestseller – with a seven-figure film deal. SenLinYu’s debut started life as Harry Potter fanfiction. The Alchemised author shares why they were drawn to a war-torn love story, how a conservative upbringing shaped their writing, and the snobbery around fanfiction
Decoding ‘Alchemised’ – the book whose movie rights sold before it was published
An Adapted Harry Potter Fanfic Is the Season’s Most Anticipated Novel. Author SenLinYu on adapting her wildly popular Harry Potter fanfiction Manacled into Alchemised -- one of the most hyped releases of 2025
Take its numbers: The nearly 16 million individual downloads of the author’s works; the 84,000 likes on Archive of Our Own, aka AO3, where it was first published in 2018; the 19 languages to which it’s been translated; the 71,000 ratings on Goodreads; the 470 million collective TikTok views. The TikTok readers (aka BookTokers) are especially vexed: People are clipping together their emotional states before and after reading — going into it excited and chipper, and finishing with red-rimmed eyes and stifling sobs.
Alchemised has stripped itself of its Harry Potter illegality as Manacled - character names have changed (though SenLinYu has been said to slip-up at recent appearances, still calling them “Draco” and “Hermione”), and a new magic system has been woven to create an oppressive regime of purist magic-users VS. a fringe and quashed rebellion. What remains is still allusions to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale - arguably because as is often said, everything in that novel is based on realities for women the world over and within various extremist regimes, coupled with the Old Testament (and therefore, not copyrighted) story of Rachel and her maid Bilhah;
Alchemised is not even the only “Dramione” book to be reskinned and released this year alone;
And you’ll be shocked to learn that J.K. Rowling - the author of Harry Potter who is normally quite happy to get litigious - has said nothing about these reskinned Dramione works being copyright infringement of her intellectual property, she’s seemingly given her blessing through silence.
And why wouldn’t she?
At a time when she has destroyed her own credibility and reputation through repeated transphobic commentary;
A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy
JK Rowling deletes transphobic tweets amid lawsuit by Olympic boxer Imane Khelif
When the creatives who once portrayed her beloved characters have admitted their own break-away from her worldview and she has lashed them with out-of-proportion nastiness;
And she has admitted to using her considerable wealth and HP earnings to making life harder and more dangerous for a marginalised group;
Heck, when she quotes Mein Kampf as some sort of perverted “gotcha!”;
BUT when she also has a new HP TV series to sell (a 10-year long project) and her brand needs a reboot too … of course she’ll take the soft-diplomacy legwork being done by FanFic writers reskinning their “Dramione” works, helping make her more palatable to modern audiences and keep her characters in the public consciousness.
It is absolutely understandable that people are asking about the ethics of even reading, let alone purchasing Alchemised, not for the FanFic connotation - but the legitimacy it’s likely affording the transphobic author of the original work it’s inspired by … and how a nonbinary author like SenLinYu can even stomach being part of Rowling’s rebrand, frankly.
mynameismarines - Mari - does a really good break down of the Dramione and Alchemised controversy
… it all makes me despair a little bit, to be honest.
That literary cannibalism gets rewarded over originality, that FanFiction which was once such a beautiful egalitarian space for fan-love, experimentation, and practice is now being mined and monetised, and that this is all happening and likely running cover for more works to be stolen and created using generative AI. In fact, Character.AI uses the very premise of FanFiction to run an AI-powered platform where users can create and interact with chatbots (known as “characters”), or chat with characters based on fictional figures and celebrities.
Five Weeks With Leo: What happens when a cynical middle-aged writer makes an A.I. friend? (really great 2024 SubStack post on this from Emily Gale)
It all makes me despair and circle back to my age-old pop-culture question; how would this all be so different, if Stephenie Meyer had sued E.L. James when she had the chance?
Maybe I’ll just have to write an alternate-reality, real-person fic to find out.
Great piece! Few years ago I would’ve said I’m glad she didn’t sue. But now in this landscape, I feel the opposite
This makes me think about the film and TV business and how everything is just a reboot or retelling now too.