Challenging readers to rethink what they read and why, the author questions the aesthetic assumptions that have led to the devaluing of fanfiction--a genre criticized as both tasteless and derivative--and other "guilty pleasure" reading (and writing), including romance and fantasy. The complicated relationship between "fanfic" and intellectual property rights is discussed in light of the millennia-old tradition of derivative literature, before modern copyright law established originality as the hallmark of great fiction.

"Absorbed reading"--the practice of immersing oneself in the narrative versus critically "reading from a distance"--is a strong motive for the appropriation by fanfiction of canon characters and worlds.