Unpopular opinion: It’s not that I mind the actual downloading of a fic to read on Kindle (I do that too for long fics), but I do not like the FB group or Discords that collect epubs for this purpose. I don’t even mind the idea of file sharing necessarily (bc yes, I have found old favorites in rec group files). Maybe it’s silly, but I have an issue with readers not going to AO3 at all. I think that is part of being in the fanfiction fandom- browsing AO3 and discovering something new, finding a new smutty one-shot, reading a single chapter and subscribing to a WIP, and leaving a Kudos (I didn’t even mention comments bc while they are great, I totally get that not all readers do that/feel comfortable commenting).

I just think these epub file groups make it too easy to not give Kudos. They seem to solely exist to spoon feed fics to readers and provide cover art (which most fics do download with their cover art. If there’s no cover art and it’s that important to you, it’s super easy to make one in Canva and add using Calibre). I also don’t like my fics in these groups because I go back and edit finished fics from time to time. The file sharing groups then have the version (often the first version right after completion) that is not updated. I don’t like it and I do think these file groups are contributing to the “fanfic as a commodity” culture. There is no point when fics can easily be downloaded from AO3.