Getting started on AO3

[RonsGirlFriday]

Archive of Our Own ("AO3") is, frankly, an impressive creation! It's a hosting site for all kinds of fanworks -- most of what you'll find there are fanfictions, but they also allow people to post fan art, essays and other fandom meta, and podfics. They have millions of registered users and a skilled volunteer force to keep the site operating. Their parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works, is a nonprofit whose goal is to preserve and defend fanworks and fan culture and history (they even have a legal advocacy component!)

You can read more about AO3 in their own words +here.

Creating an account:

AO3 operates on an invitation basis in order to control the pace of new users registering. But anyone can get an invitation, by requesting one +here. You go on a waiting list, which at first seems horrifically long until you see the part where they are sending out thousands of invitations each day. In all likelihood, you'll probably wait a few days to a week for your email invitation.

The Archive FAQs are well organized and provide better guidance than we ever could about their site, but here are a few highlights:

• Tags are words/phrases you can attach to your fic to help readers find it in a search, and to communicate to readers what your fic is about. When posting a new work you'll be prompted to specify a story rating, certain warnings, and any relevant ships or characters portrayed in your fic. Then there is a space for "Additional Tags," which could be just about anything under the sun. There are only a few mandatory Archive Warnings you'll be prompted for, so you can add additional content warnings under Additional Tags. You can also add tags for genre, tropes, POV, characterization... Often you'll begin typing and will see a drop-down list of existing tag options. But you can also make up your own. Just type and add it. People get really creative with their tags.
• You can bookmark your favorite fics. You can also subscribe to fics and also subscribe to authors, so that you get an email whenever they post something new.
• AO3 allows comments on fics, and you can reply to comments (and they can reply to your reply!) There is also a feature called "kudos" which is just a way to tell the author, "I liked this!"
• You can associate your own fics in a series (much like on FFT). You can also specify related works by other creators (say, if your fic was inspired by theirs).
• You can give a fic as a gift, meaning the fic will display who you gifted it to, and if that user accepts the gift it will appear on their profile in their list of gifts received.

As an example of some of these things, you can check out the AO3 profile of yours truly: +here. In the menu on the left, you can navigate to my works, my series, my publicly visible bookmarks of other fics, and gift fics I've received. You'll also notice that I have something called a "pseud" which is a secondary pen name I created (Darling_take_off_the_mask) which is connected with my main (RonsGirlFriday). People create pseuds for various reasons, often to post different fandoms under different names or the like (say you want your pen name to be related to the fandom you're posting for). In my example, I created Darling_take_off_the_mask to post any non-HP fics I write.

[KJ Cartmell]

My daughter was just coaching me on this. "Dad, you have to use tags so people can find your stories!" She even suggested some for me to help me get started. It's easy to add tags. Even if you (like me) didn't put them in at first, it's easy to go back and add them later.