Beyond Selidor

Don't apologise! I love long comments, and I love discussing fandom and fan culture! I wasn't involved in HP fandom when the books were being written, although its massive size and influence on LJ/journal-based fandom is such that I'm fairly well aware of what it was like. I didn't even know that the Earth's Children series had a fandom until recently, but it seems similar to comparable small fandoms from what you're saying.

I think it was probably for the best that JKR wasn't very involved in fannish discussions until the end of the series, because it would have had an inhibiting effect on a lot of fannish creation and discussion. HP fandom was so huge, and so fragmented (I imagine there was enough going on that you could hang out in, say, Marauder-era slash fandom or Draco/Hermione fandom or whatever and not interact with anyone interested in other ships) that anything JKR said would've had an impact on one faction or another.

You are so right in saying that for popular works like HP in particular, casual fans are more likely to be the majority, it's just that everyone in online fandom only talks to other obsessive fans, creating an echo chamber and assuming they themselves are the majority. It's actually better to be in smaller fandoms in that regard because you harbour no illusions about your relative size or importance. (That's why my most enjoyable fannish experiences have been in small fandoms - a forum-based fandom for His Dark Materials, a forum-based fandom for the Australian fantasy series Obernewtyn, and a fandom which is literally about five people, based on LJ, for the Australian YA series Pagan Chronicles.) I've actually found that authors are more happy to get involved in those kinds of fandoms, because the fandoms are so small they don't have factions and ship-wars, and so the authors don't need to spend all their time interacting with fans fending off questions about shipping and fannish debates.

So that seems at odds with your experiences with Jean M. Auel and her son - and for what it's worth, I agree with you that the quality of the books has declined massively. The last one was almost unreadable. I think the problem is that I'm much more interested in interactions between the Clan and the Others and less so in the Ayla and Jondalar Soap Opera.

My opinion is that all creators should strive to emulate this particular attitude expressed by Philip Pullman. When asked how he felt about the filmmakers of The Golden Compass 'changing his book', he replied by pulling a copy of the book off his shelf and saying, 'My book hasn't been changed. It's right here, the same as ever.' That's an attitude that should extend to fanfiction and other types of fanwork. If fannish interpretation and criticism upsets you as an author that much, you can't have had much confidence in your creation to begin with.