
īy 2013, the site's annual expenses were about $70,000. AO3 defines itself primarily as an archive and not an online community. The site's name was derived from a blog post by the writer Naomi Novik who, responding to FanLib's lack of interest in fostering a fannish community, called for the creation of "An Archive of One's Own." The name is inspired by the essay A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, in which Woolf said that a writer needed space, time, and resources in order to create. OTW created Archive of Our Own (abbreviated AO3) in October 2008 and established it as an open beta on November 14, 2009. This ultimately led to the creation of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) which sought to record and archive fan cultures and works.

Fanfiction was authored primarily by women, and FanLib, which was run entirely by men, drew criticism. In 2007, a site called FanLib was created with the goal of monetizing fanfiction.
