The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by colleen philippi:

Naomi:
For purposes of discussion, I can imagine a case where someone was posting fanfic of so high a caliber that the original author's work compared unfavorably, with the result that fans deserted the original author and started only reading the fanfic writer's work.

Somehow, I really can't see this, at least with American Culture and the publishing process (all bets are off once you get out of that sphere, as that's the one I am most familiar with.) I have a hard time wraping my mind around that thought, simply because the reward/payment/status system in fandom is so different from the system if you go the professional route, and the size of the audience still so limited in comparison to new york times best seller that I just can't imagine how that could happen. I can see it as a fear, but I can't envison how to get it to work, the cultures are so different.

Mitch: And then you'd have a committee of people whose job it would be to sift through all the work that's been published in those universes and decide what's worthy of being accepted into the Canon.

It's my understanding that this is what is happening with the japanese equivelent of fan fiction, and has been happening for quite some time. Doujinshi is very popular, and is considered the equal in status to small press published work. (Some doujinshi artists do get paid for their fan published works) Rarely, some of the twists proposed in a popular doujinshi are adopted as canon. It's a very interesting concept, and does reflect a model for the process that you're talking about

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