Archive of Our Own

AO3

It doesn't feel like Archive Of Our Own has been around since 2009. It makes me wonder where all the time has gone? It's one of the many projects owned by the Organisation For Transformative Works, who are a non-profit company who aim to preserve the history of fanworks.

Many fanwork archives from the 1990s and 2000s were disappearing because the sites they've been hosted on went out of business and eventually closed. Archive Of Our Own has been aiming to find these and other old fanfiction sites and import their stories onto their site, along with allowing members of the site to post their own stories. Archive Of Our Own specialises in fan fiction, but unlike fanfiction.net, it accepts original works as well. It's often referred to as AO3.

Getting an Account

At the moment, AO3 is an invite-only website. There are ways around it. If you know somebody who already has an account on there, you can get them to send you an invite. If not, you can request an invite on their site and be on their email waiting list. At the moment, there are about 10,217 people on their waiting list. They say that they aim to send 5,000 invites a day, so they should be able to be allowed in a few days. I remember getting one from a friend. Once you've got the invite link, logging in and out is straightforward after that.

Navigation

The layout of the site is a lot nicer than fanfiction.net's in my opinion. The red in the layout brings it all together and the layout feels modern. I found the site quite easy to use without any major issues. It always seems to load quickly most of the time and I've always been alright reading both on a desktop and my phone. I've always found it easy to find the sort of stories that I want to read. I've also found stories pretty easy to upload as well.

Features

The site is free to use and doesn't run any ads. It relies on donations from its parent company. From time to time, it will run campaigns to get readers to donate or volunteer on their website. I think the last time they've asked members to donate money was a few months ago. I haven't donated any money, but I know some people that donated generously to the site.

It has similar features to fanfiction.net, but you don't have the option to save any drafts on there like you can on fanfiction.net. However, it's a lot easier to edit and format stories on Archive Of Our Own than it is on Fanfiction.net. On Fanfiction.net, if you wanted to edit the story, you have to edit the original document stored on the site, and if it's not in your doc manager, you have to upload it again to edit it. In Archive Of Our Own, you can just go straight to the story you want to edit and edit the chapter there and then. Saves more time and adds less stress.

The tagging system is quite comprehensive, you can add as many or as few as you like. You have the options to list archive warnings, list any relationships established in the story. If the story crosses over more than one series then you can tag them all in it. Fanfiction.net only lets you put it in two archives. Which means for those who love writing crossovers, their work can be spread across more readers.

Two features that make it stand out from other story archives is the ability to use more than one pen name and the ability to orphan work that you've discontinued so that other authors can adopt them. These are some pretty good features that I think are really handy, but I've never felt the need to use them. I always tend to try and finish any stories that I write and I stick to Chloboshoka as my fanfiction pen name and use my real name for my original stuff.

You can also import stories that you've written from other sites, but you can't import stories from Fanfiction.net and Quotev.com, which are two pretty popular sites. I've tried importing a story from a forum, but it didn't come out so well, so I think it's better to just copy and paste it when you add new works in.

Community Spirit

Pretty much all authors seek feedback one way or another. Whilst the site has a lot of features to make this possible, I still find the community spirit lacking in a lot of departments. Users have the chance to comment and send feedback on stories, even anonymous users can comment on some stories, but feedback is like gold dust on this archive. Many authors are lucky if you get any comments on your story. The lack of feedback is the main reason why a lot of people still stick with fanfiction.net and Wattpad.

The most used feature of the site is the kudos button, which is designed to be a thumbs up to the story and it's influenced by the like button on Facebook. A lot of readers tend to rate and run. I don't really mind as much as I think the kudos feature is a way for readers to say, "Hey, I like this."

I think AO3 is a source of community spirit for other communities, but not the main drive for it. Some people say that stories on AO3 are better written than the ones on fanfiction.net, but I think that's just a myth as I've seen both good and bad on both sites.

Conclusion

Archive Of Our Own is a free to use story site that lets people use their imagination, but it's still in beta mode at the moment. If you value lots of feedback, then I think fanfiction.net and Wattpad are better choices. For smaller fandoms and franchises, than AO3 works better. If you're simply looking for another place to cross-post fanfiction, than AO3 is also a good choice.