The yaoi fandom consists of the readers of yaoi, a genre of male homosexual narratives. Individuals in the yaoi fandom may attend conventions, maintain/post to fansites, create fanfiction/fanart, etc. In the mid-1990s, estimates of the size of the Japanese yaoi fandom were at 100,000–500,000 people. Despite increased knowledge of the genre among the general public, readership remained limited in 2008. English-language fan translations of From Eroica with Love circulated through the slash fiction community in the 1980s, forging a link between slash fiction fandom and yaoi fandom.

Yaoi, also known as boys' love and its abbreviation BL , is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is thus distinct from bara, a genre of homoerotic media marketed to gay men, though yaoi does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. Yaoi spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works. While "yaoi" is commonly used in the west as an umbrella term for Japanese-influenced media with male-male relationships, "boys' love" and "BL" are the generic terms for this kind of media in Japan and much of Asia.