Cyberattack shuts down Internet fan fiction library

One of the world’s most popular fan fiction libraries has been dark for over a week after a cyberattack forced it offline, leaving millions of fans without access to their favorite stories.

Since Oct. 29, anyone trying to reach Archive of Our Own — known to devotees as AO3 — has been met with a message saying the site is down for maintenance.

“It’s all over my social feed. People are in withdrawal,” said Johanna Sarriot, a writer and co-founder of pop-up romance bookstore Love Love Books in Los Angeles.

Fan fiction refers to stories written by amateur authors using characters and worlds from already-existing books, films or TV shows.

Contributors rewrite endings, invent romances or give minor characters their own adventures, then share them online for free.

Once a niche hobby, it has become a launchpad for the publishing industry, generating breakout smashes like E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, which began as Twilight fan fiction, and Ali Hazelwood’s bestseller The Love Hypothesis, which sprang from the Star Wars universe.

Launched in 2008, AO3 has become the genre’s main home, with more than 11 million registered users and nearly 18 million works stored on the platform.

In 2019, it won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work, one of science fiction’s most prestigious prizes.

“We wanted to make sure that there was a place for fans to engage in non-commercial creativity in ways that wouldn’t barrage them with ads, censor them to placate advertisers, sell their data, or do anything but provide a space for fandom,” said Harvard Law School professor Rebecca Tushnet, who helped found the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), which runs the site.

Romance fans have been among the hardest hit by the outage.

“Romance readers read really fast and they read a lot,” Sarriot said. For the bookseller, what is at stake goes beyond a Web site. Fan fiction is where many future authors learn their craft and where readers discover new writers.

“Writers who were able to cut their teeth on fanfiction, and just write as much as they wanted with all the joy and no constraints, can lead to really great novels,” she said.

OTW says it does not believe the user database, which holds usernames, e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords, was stolen, but cannot rule it out.

“AO3 is not gone! There is no data loss and we look forward to restoring the site as soon as possible,” Tushnet said.

The non-profit says it hopes to have things up and running again within a month.

For Web developer Yohan Mebrouk, the timeline is a sign of how serious the attack was.

The delay could reflect limited resources, he explained, or the need for a full software upgrade, which he called “an enormous job.”

Well-run sites keep backup copies of their databases, he added. “If they did things right, everyone will get everything back.”

In the meantime, Sarriot is happy to point stranded readers elsewhere.

“Come to Love Love Books and check out a romance novel!” she said, pointing to her shelves full of paperbacks.