See my reply to you below in the other conversation. :D I do think I overstated it with "might eventually" - obviously that's impossible to predict, and we shouldn't say that anything that's ever been on AO3 can never be published pro - but I do personally think that with AO3's intent to be an archive that *preserves* content, anything you are specifically thinking about making pay-only in the future doesn't belong there.

I think a lot of people would object to that, too, though.

A self-publishing setup where you retain full control of all the intellectual property rights and can choose to keep it online wouldn't fall under my "sold professionally" category - I was thinking "sold the story itself to an editor" not "sold physical copies of the books". Though of course some people might not like that distiction either.