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Was GRRM influenced by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series?


MorgulisMaximus

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2 hours ago, baxus said:

I wasn't talking about the rest of WoT. I was talking about The Eye of the World. And yes, whatever someone may think, it WAS a LotR rip-off and no, the rest of the series has absolutely no effect on that. I stopped reading WoT after Dragon Reborn so I can't and don't comment on the series as a whole. My only comment on it is to say that I lost all interest in it rather quickly.

How old were you when you started reading it? I really feel that Wheel of Time was written for much younger audience than ASOIAF and Second Apocalypse.

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5 hours ago, Werthead said:

ASoIaF has sold about 75 to 80 million copies (maybe more, by now). WoT has sold about 90 million copies. ASoIaF is very close to overtaking in terms of outright sales. However, as that's 80 million sales of just 5 books versus 90 million of 14, ASoIaF has far more actual readers than WoT does. It overtook it a few years ago.

Lord of the Rings has sold about 350 million copies, maybe 400 million, with an estimated 50 million+ sales as a result of the films, so that's way ahead (but it had a 40-year head start). Game of Thrones (the TV show) has actually pushed sales of its books a lot more.

Size of the television audience for Game of Thrones is likely several times the size of the readers. Hence, very likely that ASOIAF is already on par with Lord of the Rings in terms of cultural influence. But....Harry Potter beats Lord of the Rings 450 million in 20 years vs. than 350 million in 40 years.

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2 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

Size of the television audience for Game of Thrones is likely several times the size of the readers. Hence, very likely that ASOIAF is already on par with Lord of the Rings in terms of cultural influence. But....Harry Potter beats Lord of the Rings 450 million in 20 years vs. than 350 million in 40 years.

Not really. Lord of the Rings is one novel (or divided between people who read the one novel and the three individual volumes) and Harry Potter is seven, so more people have read The Lord of the Rings than Harry PotterHarry Potter might take over eventually, but sales of the series have slowed dramatically in recent years.

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2 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

Size of the television audience for Game of Thrones is likely several times the size of the readers. Hence, very likely that ASOIAF is already on par with Lord of the Rings in terms of cultural influence. But....Harry Potter beats Lord of the Rings 450 million in 20 years vs. than 350 million in 40 years.

Who won... you decide!

 

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15 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Not really. Lord of the Rings is one novel (or divided between people who read the one novel and the three individual volumes) and Harry Potter is seven, so more people have read The Lord of the Rings than Harry PotterHarry Potter might take over eventually, but sales of the series have slowed dramatically in recent years.

A high percentage of Harry Potter readers are young women and they are now having children. Guess what books they are going to read to their children. Bingo! Another 450 million Harry Potter books will be sold over the next 20 years.

Now what are the demographics for LOTR readers... many old men and very very few young women. LOTR has no significant female characters. Eowyn is only a minor character and definitely not enough to motivate young women to read LOTR to their children!

Potter wins, LOTR sails off to edge of the world... and drops into the abyss. 

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On 2/8/2017 at 9:48 PM, Darth Richard II said:

Eh, don't think the sales of asoiaf have even come close to WoT. *summon wert*

Last ASOIAF sale figure was 70 million copies, that was in AGOT's 20th anniversary ( last year)  

This is what Wert's updated list said about RJ: 

Quote

12) Robert Jordan (80 million+)
On the very first list, Jordan had a lower position based on the frequently-given figure of 44 million. That has since been boosted by an additional 12 million sales of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight (and possibly early sales ofA Memory of Light). However, since then it has been revealed that this 56 million figure is for the United States and Canada alone. When a series has been sold in more than 20 languages (as this has), the rule of thumb is that half of the total sales figures come from outside the USA. The UK alone has added sales of 5 million to the figure. As a result, worldwide sales of at least 80 million for Wheel of Timeare credible, and significantly more than that is likely. Since assembling the previous list the 80 million figure has been confirmed (as on the low side of things) by one of Jordan's international publishers. This figure may by now be closer to 90 million, and will likely explode upwards if the reported Wheel of Time television deal comes to pass.

Also remember that ASOIAF is only 5 volumes while WoT is much more than that.

Edit: turns out I missed a page and Wert already replied so ignore this.

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13 minutes ago, redeagl said:

Also remember that ASOIAF is only 5 volumes while WoT is much more than that.

There is also a difference between sales figures and actual readership. Not everyone who reads a book buys it first-hand. Here are some other avenues:

1.) Audiobooks

2.) Borrow it from the library

3.) Borrow it from friends

4.) Second-hand Market (eBay, Amazon, Craigslist)

The longer a series is, the more expensive it is to buy all the books. So people might be more likely to turn to secondary markets / library.

Also, clearly many readers do not read all of the books in a long series. Sales of the earlier books in the series will be much higher than the later books. So you can't just divide the sales by the number of books in the series. It won't be accurate.

 

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3 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

A high percentage of Harry Potter readers are young women and they are now having children. Guess what books they are going to read to their children. Bingo! Another 450 million Harry Potter books will be sold over the next 20 years.

Now what are the demographics for LOTR readers... many old men and very very few young women. LOTR has no significant female characters. Eowyn is only a minor character and definitely not enough to motivate young women to read LOTR to their children!

Potter wins, LOTR sails off to edge of the world... and drops into the abyss. 

What are you basing this on?

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5 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

Size of the television audience for Game of Thrones is likely several times the size of the readers. Hence, very likely that ASOIAF is already on par with Lord of the Rings in terms of cultural influence. But....Harry Potter beats Lord of the Rings 450 million in 20 years vs. than 350 million in 40 years.

As far as cultural influence goes, ASOIAF is not on a par with Tolkien. 

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4 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

Now what are the demographics for LOTR readers... many old men and very very few young women. LOTR has no significant female characters. Eowyn is only a minor character and definitely not enough to motivate young women to read LOTR to their children!

Potter wins, LOTR sails off to edge of the world... and drops into the abyss. 

Have you got a shred of evidence to support this?

(Neither Eowyn nor Galadriel are minor characters, by the way).

The Hobbit incidentally has no female characters whatsoever, apart from a reference to Bilbo's deceased mother, and presumably the Mirkwood spiders. Eighty years on, it is still selling well. 

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2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

What are you basing this on?

From Reddit:

 

[–]porcupine-freeThe Infinite Badger 8 points 4 years ago* 

You got me REALLY curious about this, so I decided to find out if the observation was true on some level. I went to meetup.com and looked at the members of big Harry Potter fan clubs around the USA. First of all, you have to know that meetup.com is a website dedicated to getting people together in real life, not virtually. It's actually in their rules that your club must meet face to face. I figured this was the best place to look rather than a virtual online club that not only is anonymous but could have some repeat listings. Also, all of this info is freely available to anyone who searches meetup.com. Also, anyone hardcore enough to join a real life fan club is probably a "fan" and not just someone playing on the internet.

I counted females/males to 100+ members in each fan club (I went over by some each time) by sorting the list by date joined so there wouldn't be repeats, clicking on random links in the member lists and then looked at the percentage I came up with in that sample. I also googled each city very quickly (didn't bother to really confirm) to see what the male/female ratio was for that population just to make sure if the results weren't too biased. Very unscientific, but this is what I came up with after about 15 minutes of doing this small project.

Fan makeup of city #1, a population with a female-heavy ratio
84.2% female
15.8% male

Fan makeup of city #2, a population with a male-heavy ratio
75% female
25% male

Fan makeup of city #3, a population with an almost even male/female ratio
85.5% female
14.5% male

average 81.5% female

There you go.

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2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

[citation needed]

Here's some data to start off, the target audience for the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King movie:

Profile: Target Audience

From my research, I have found that the ideal person to be interested in ‘The Lord of the Rings the Return of the King’ will have the following characteristics:

-Age: 11-30  

-Gender: Male

-Annual earnings: £0.00 - £30,000 (Average)

-Job: Full time education (Average)

-Life style: living with parents

-Regularity of going to the cinema: 1 - 2 times a week

-Read the book: 19 out of 30 people said they have read the book

-Favourite genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy 

-Living area: Bexley

 
 
The ideal person to see the film as according to my research the most popular genre in Bexley is fantasy and Sci-Fi and there is also a local cinema where the film was shown (Bexleyheath cineworld) and another contributing factor is that for the most part people in Bexley are somewhat well read at most of the people asked have read the book
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