#like plagiarising original fiction is just like a mythical creature in terms of how often you see it

[not-poignant]

Reading your original works, I'm kind of inspired to post my own on Ao3 as well (I can't publish as I write mostly queer pairings but I live in a place where doing so would put my safety at risk). But I was wondering Pia, is it safe to do so in terms of plagiarizers? Since anyone could access my work for free, would they be able to copy it? (Thanks if you reply!)

The thing with copyright is that if you publish it - it’s yours. If you can establish provenance (i.e. prove that you have drafts on your computer and so on) it’s yours. Copyright protection for original works (artwork, writing and so on) doesn’t require you to do anything special to be eligible for copyright protection, basically.

And AO3 is amazing at chasing up copyright issues.

Also, like, people scaremonger. The chances of original works being plagiarised are exceedingly low. In um...oh god, like 15 years of writing fanfiction, I’ve had my works stolen exactly twice. Once was for a phishing database so I didn’t give a shit (it got shut down anyway - people remember that whole thing right?). And once was someone who basically rewrote all of SALverse in their own words, complete with including Augus and so on - but they accidentally left whole sections in that were mine; whoops. I chased it up on AO3 and it was removed, although the plagiarised version is still on fanfiction.net (honestly that place is trash for site support, don’t use it). That being said, I don’t really care, because it’s not like it’s taking readers away from me (it’s not, it’s pretty badly written).

But that’s like two times out of an aggregate of hundreds of thousands of hits over many many many years.

(Art is a different matter. I’ve had my art stolen a lot and I’m pretty zen about it. I have my template Cease and Desist letter, DeviantArt helps you out eventually, and Etsy is respectful when you chase up that shit.)

To be honest, the biggest risk with posting original work on AO3 is not actually about theft at all, but these matters (rest under a readmore in case you don’t care about the rest lol):

* AO3 explicitly states it’s not a database for original fiction. Which means support and tag wrangling and so on for original fiction vs. fanfiction is low. You can’t for example ‘categorise’ your original fiction into subgenre or anything like that.

* AO3 audiences are generally highly resistant to original fiction (i.e. most have never looked for it on AO3 and nor do they want to read it on AO3). They may read original fiction on Wattpad (and indeed this seems to be the place to put it, I think), but unless you’re releasing chapter-by-chapter or already have like...a fanfiction readerbase who will follow you to original work; it will be very hard to find readers. This is primarily because readers search first and foremost by fandom and not by tag. Original fiction gets drowned as a result.

* If you ever wish to make a profit off your original work that you put on AO3, you cannot link to any profit-making sites on AO3, nor can you ‘hold back’ sections of story and make people pay for it (this isn’t a problem for me (but this is the reason I never say I have a Patreon on AO3), or indeed a lot of people on AO3, but I’ve seen people use original fiction on AO3 for this matter getting swiftly and quickly warned and then sometimes banned from the site - this is so that AO3 can preserve their not-for-profit status, and it will never change as a result - I think it’s awesome and fully support this, and am tired of authors whining about it but that’s a whole other matter).

I would love to see more original work on AO3, and I don’t know your general fandom/fanfiction experience (i.e. if I knew you were a fanfiction writer I’d probably be wording things a little differently? Like, have you written queer fanfiction before? That helps a lot on AO3), but it’s definitely worth keeping in mind that AO3 is first and foremost a fanworks site, and that even if you’re putting up solely original content, it helps to orient to AO3 from a fandom / fanworks perspective (i.e. serialise longer works instead of releasing everything at once, list shorter works with fandom-friendly tags like PWP or hurt/comfort etc., establish a fandom-friendly presence elsewhere, like Tumblr or Twitter or Dreamwidth or something, so that people actually know you exist, because they won’t find you through the Original Works tag, let’s be real.)

As for plagiarism, honestly, people worry about it way more than necessary. To date, that I know of, no person has come to AO3 and stolen original fiction and tried to make a profit off it. (However, I have seen in the m/m original novel industry, people stealing actually published novels and republishing them under another name and making a profit off those, which is like, a consequence of so many novels flying under the radar due to self-publishing lol. And even then, it gets chased up, it gets dealt with.) Works can always be reported; and you know, they are. 9/10 I found out about art theft because someone who liked my art said ‘hey I saw this and am not sure you gave your permission for this’ or ‘this person is stealing your art.’ And that one time the SALverse was plagiarised, a reader told me. So that side of things helps a lot).

(I’m sorry to hear you can’t publish for safety reasons, as well. Make sure your protections online re: publishing are solid in that sense, because the same risks that exist for those who indie self-publish under pseudonyms, also exist for those who publish under the same on AO3, and obviously I don’t know what your situation is - and I think it’s awesome that you’re wanting to take the leap - just...yeah. I imagine this is all stuff you’ve considered already though, and AO3 is an often-overlooked site which makes it easier to fly under the radar on too. But so is Wattpad, and it’s a lot friendlier to original fiction - may be worth looking into as well? Good luck anon!