Unofficial spinoffs of popular book series like A Court of Thorns and Roses speak to the success of the romantasy genre.Slow Burn/Slow Burn Books
It’s been nearly four years since the last instalment in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series was released.
And while there’s light on the horizon for fans – author Sarah J. Maas recently announced she’s finished a first draft of the sixth book – it’s been a long old wait for anyone desperate to know what happens next in the dramatic lives of these fae folk and the mortals who become entangled with them.
Commerce abhors a void, however, and in the long silence from the Prythian realm an entire constellation of ACOTAR-adjacent content has sprung up to keep the phenomenon alive. There are the umpteen special editions – including a $53 collector’s edition of the first book, complete with gilded end papers and a cloth slip cover – released by the series publisher, Bloomsbury, but also a host of unauthorized offerings, such as The Unofficial A Court of Thorns and Roses Cocktail Guide, A Feast of Thorns and Roses cookbook or an ACOTAR colouring book to keep your hands occupied while you listen to the audiobooks for the fifth time.
Spinoffs like these are not unique in publishing, says Kathleen Schmidt, the marketing consultant behind the Publishing Confidential Substack. When she worked at Skyhorse, an American publishing house, she helped launch an unauthorized Bridgerton-adjacent cookbook, for example.
“We had to be really careful,” says Schmidt of creating something that felt like it belonged in the Regency universe created by Julia Quinn, but didn’t actually infringe on any copyrights. These unofficial ACOTAR-adjacent books, in her opinion, simply speak to the gold rush around romantasy that the success of this series helped spark, and which other publishers are trying to get their own piece of.
“It’s not Sarah J. Maas’s publishers putting it out there. It’s other people knowing there’s a hunger out there for the brand, and using that for their own purposes – which in turn keeps fans interested,” she says.
And assuming there’s no actual IP infringement, Schmidt doesn’t think that Maas’s publishers, Bloomsbury, would be that bothered by this bandwagon-hopping supplementary content.
“The only time you get into trouble is if you’re using the exact art, the exact font, without properly licensing it. I’ve seen that before, and then the book is printed and [the publisher has] to get X amount of books destroyed because you can’t sell it any more,” she says.
These franchise-adjacent spinoffs fall into what Suzanne Norman, a senior lecturer at Simon Fraser University’s publishing program, calls the “grey area of fan fiction” when it comes to copyright.
She points to After by Anna Todd – which got its start on Wattpad as One Direction fan fiction – and E.L. James’s Fifty Shades franchise, which started life as Twilight fan fiction, as examples of how “an author’s work can be used, commercially, by enterprising people.”
When it comes to some of these ACOTAR-adjacent books, the line between inspiration and creation is much more direct than, say, the distance between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen and the literary characters who became Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele.
“Legally, the author or publisher could pursue legal recourse for copyright infringement,” says Norman, but many times the adaptation of the original material is simply accepted by the IP holder. “If it doesn’t harm the author of the original work – commercially, morally et cetera – pursuing legal action is often not worth it,” Norman continues. “And the fan fiction may, in fact, help sales of the original work, especially if said work is older or sporadically published.” (Not a problem in ACOTAR’s case, of course.)
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For Amanda Gauthier, director of curation at Indigo – which stocks some of these very titles – their existence is proof of an engaged, enthusiastic fandom that was born via word of mouth in the BookTok community, a place where loving a book can be more of a lifestyle than a passing interest … even as you’re waiting years for the next instalment.
“And in the meantime, to keep that special interest alive, there have been lots of ideas,” says Gauthier. “If you go to Pinterest, you’ll see ‘How to throw an ACOTAR party,’ or games you can play, like playoff brackets where people plug in the most dramatic scenes and you vote. It’s playful, and it keeps people connected while they wait for the next book.”
For a retailer like Indigo, stocking these universe-peripheral titles – Dungeons & Dragons or Minecraft cookbooks, for example, or colouring books for classic novels like Anna Karenina – usually speaks to the reach of a particular fandom.
“There are different areas in the book world where having an activity associated with the story just makes sense. There’s an aesthetic or a universe you can dig into,” she says. “It’s an ever-expanding way for people to demonstrate how well they know a franchise.”
These titles also tend to work really well as gifts, adds Gauthier. “It’s a great way to demonstrate you know somebody well, and here’s a book that relates to their special interest.”
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Gauthier thinks the rise of fandom-adjacent objects like this also speaks to a sea change happening in how book lovers are perceived.
“There’s something cool about reading that wasn’t as cool … 10 years ago,” she says, pointing to the rise of totes or hoodies advertising allegiance to a fandom. “That’s an interesting swing away from that always-online universe. There’s something very analog, slow. You have to put in time to become a fan, to get the reference. It’s something that takes effort, and we’re proud of that.”
A pride you might demonstrate, perhaps, by mixing your book club a Nesta’s Dirty Martini from The Unofficial ACOTAR cocktail book.
“It’s such a beautiful way to show the people in your life that you’re making something really special and it’s going to be a reason to talk and connect over this story,” says Gauthier. “It’s more than a book. It’s a lifestyle.”
