Fan Fiction

Was reading some article online about most read books of the year where Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was mentioned and then a review of a book called Wicked telling the story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and it seemed interesting to me (obviously) - people are publishing fan fiction and the reading world is devouring it!
It's always been the general opinion that fanfic is written by complete hobbyists-adolescents who are destined for fanfiction.net and nothing more and yet here we are, with obvious derivative works being not only published but also marketed and receiving recognition and even fame. Is this a shift in the general outlook on writing of not-entirely-original material? I sure hope so! Here's why: while I think this is an odd thing to happen, unprecedented even, it's better than nothing at all. We could be living in a world where people didn't care enough about a classical work of literature to submerge themselves in it and resurface with a different interpretation. I also hope that this will be a gateway for people to create their own worlds and characters and wow us with them. Last but not least, I'm not against books like Wicked hitting the shelves because it means that for all us fanfic writers there's something out there besides the thrills of finishing a chapter and getting comments on the site from other writers like ourselves and the satisfaction of finishing a story. If we stick with it and become good enough our stories based on beloved characters can get published! We just have to be careful to fall in love with characters who are public-domain material, other than that it's a matter of quality and persistence. In short, Long Live Fanfic!