Within My Bell Jar

TOP 10 BOOKS ON FANFICTION.NET BASED ON NUMBER OF FANFICTION (1999-2022)

To make this bar chart race, all series titles in the Books Section on November 29 (or the closest date to it) of every year were copy-pasted from Wayback Machine to Google Sheets, rearranged according to number of fanworks, and then inputted to Flourish to turn into a bar chart race.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to […] is short for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Romance of the 3 […] is short for Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.

In 2000-2003, FFN used Miscellaneous Novels as a catch-all tag for all books that didn’t have their own category yet. It was then renamed to Misc. Books in 2004-2007 before it was removed by 2008.

In 1999, fanfiction weren’t divided into sections like Anime/Manga, TV, Books, etc. yet. It was just a small list of mixed fandoms.

Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles was actually in third place in the year 2000 with 126 fanfiction. However, it was the only year FFN had fanfiction for her works, that’s why it doesn’t turn up in the bar chart race.

In 2001, a new category called Harry Potter Author Fics was in 4th place with 888 fanfiction, but this category was removed by the following year.

FFN also hosted Vampire Hunter fanfiction in 2001-2002, but was later on removed because its author L. K. Hamilton didn’t want fanfiction of her works.

The Tamora Pierce category was in the Books Section from 2001-2009 as a catch-all category for Pierce’s works before it was removed by 2009.

Similarly, the L.J. Smith category was in the Books Section from 2000-2007 as a catch-all category for Smith’s works before it was removed sometime in 2009.

I’ve decided to keep the author categories in the bar chart race since most if not all of their series did not get their own category until their author’s category was removed.

Originally, the fanfiction list was sorted alphabetically too, but was changed to number of fics at around early 2013.

By November 2013, FFN started abbreviating numbers above 1,000 to K, so exact numbers aren’t available for series with more than 1,000 fanfiction.

This bar chart was made with the assumption that the numbers listed in the Books section are correct. I can’t seem to get the same numbers for some of these series when I go to the specific series’ page and toggle ratings, other filters, and language to All though… I’m not sure where the discrepancy is coming from. (And it’s not the crossover fic numbers that need to be added to serie’s total fics from what I’ve observed.)

For example, HP currently has 844k fanfiction, but if you go to HP’s page and toggle ratings, other filters, and language to All, you’ll only get 800k fics. HP also has 51.3K crossover fanfiction, but adding those two still doesn’t equate to 844k…

Please refer to this post for more bar chart races.