Lord Patrek

For what it's worth, my review is up on the Hotlist. Pretty much agree with everything Lord Varys said. . .

At the Gates of Darkness debuted at number 21 in April 2010. See, posting a weekly roundup of SFF bestsellers for years and years can come in handy!

Just checked and every book he published by himself until 2012 (A Crown Imperiled) appeared on the hardcover bestselling list of the NYT. Not sure how many novels he released since then, but that's still quite impressive for an author whose quality and originality has dropped over the years. Then again, the same can be said of Terry Brooks and the guy still sells a lot of books with each new release.

I may be mistaken, but I think that all Riftwar books other than those few that were collaborations ended up on the NYT bestseller list in hardcover. That is impressive and means that he has a very dedicated readership.

She went entirely unnoticed on certain online venues like here on Westeros, but she got lots of coverage elsewhere. And the reviews weren't necessarily that good. This is a case in point that all publicity, even bad publicity, is good.

Kevin Hearne's Hounded is 2.99$ on Kindle (US only).

Well, Gail Z. Martin did a lot of legwork back then. She got in touch with ALL the SFF bloggers and sent them a press kit and a copy of the book. She probably invented what became blog tours. When her novel came out, pretty much all the important online venues were talking about it, positively or negatively. I guess that all that publicity, with all the reviews, interviews, giveaways, yada yada yada, turned into a lot of sales. The cover by Komarck was awesome, too. It didn't last and she was overtaken by Lynch soon afterward, but I have no problem believeing that her first year sales were that good.

Gail Z. Martin's first year sales truly did blow Scott Lynch's sales out of the water. I do remember that. But you have to keep in mind that hers was a mass market paperback release and it was hence a lot cheaper to buy. Down the line, Lynch's numbers probably crush her in such a way that it's almost laughable. Not sure what the expectations were for Tad Williams' latest Osten Ard trilogy, but conventional wisdom says that likely expected at the very least similar numbers to the Shadowmarch sales. Probably more. TWC currently stands at 2134 Goodreads ratings after two years. Not bad for a midlist SFF author, but nothing to write home about for a New York Times bestselling writer. Can't really elaborate on the Bobby Dollar books because most of my information came off the record. But yeah, it appears that little effort was made to help this series perform better. Regarding Goodreads, Reddit, etc, it can definitely help certain authors sell more books. But it usually work only with authors investing lots of time and energy on these online venues and even then it seldom translates into loads of copies sold. To get an idea of what really sells, whether or not these books/authors are widely discussed online, just check what the mega bookstores are pimping heavily. Just before Christmas, I went to my local bookstore which is part of the huge Indigo Chapters stores and stumbled upon the person in charge of the fantas/science fiction section while I was browsing. When asked what sells particularly well, other than GRRM of course, I was surprised to learn that Robert Jordan remains a top seller. Goodkind, Gaiman, Hobb, Butcher, Rothfuss, Erikson, Sanderson as well. She was saying that the bigger the series, or the more novels available by the same author, the higher the odds that it will sell well. Brooks and Modesitt, still sell well. So is GGK, but this is Canada. Lawrence, Corey, Abercrombie was barely stocked, so was Lynch. Hugo big names like Hurley were not even stocked at all. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy was stocked, but nothing else by the author. This is an enormous store with a huge SFF section, and yet old school writers like Brooks, Eddings, Donaldson, Weis and Hickman, etc, get more exposure than recent bestselling authors like Peter V. Breet and Ann Leckie. Brick and mortar stores still move thousands of copies every month and most of the time it's not necessarily books from authors that are receiving love on Goodreads, Reddit, etc. I'm willing to bet that Goodkind's back log still nets him six-figure amounts every year. And don't forget what sells in foreign markets. Tad told me that Otherland made him more money in Germany than everything else combined in the USA. It was huge there. Same with Lawrence, who was selling as much in Brazil as in the USA a few years back. There's no easy way to figure out how/why something sells and something doesn't. Even Goodreads ratings can be biased by all those inexpensive ebook deals that I post on the Hotlist. I remember Hurley's The Mirror Empire getting a shitload of ratings on Goodreads, but that was when the publisher dropped the price at 1.99$ just a few weeks following the official release. It sold thousands of copies during that span (the same has happened with lots of other titles), so it's not like it sold a lot at cover price. Lawrence's One World Kill was free for about a month if you had Amazon Prime, which netted him over a thousand ratings before the book was officially released. There are lots of examples like that of ways to influence those ratings with even "selling" a single copy. Access to NetGalley is another one of them. So your mileage will vary. . .

I agree with pretty much everything you posted earlier in the thread. Like most, what I enjoyed was finding out more information about the Norns, the Sithi, and the Tinukeda'ya. However, the way that information was conveyed, mostly through Viyeki, Nezeru, and Tzoja's plotlines, was off-putting for the most part. All three keep wondering what's going on for page after page after page. So even the good stuff must be sifted through hundreds of pages of boring narratives. Even Jarnulf's storyline, by far the most interesting in TWC, pettered out and started to suck in EoG. I wanted to throw the book at the other end of the room every time a chapter switched to Morgan, Simon, or Miri. I've mentioned this in my review of TWC, but one of the things that kills this series is the decidedly weak political intrigue that permeates all the important plotlines. Williams has never been at the politicking aspect, and to make it an integral part of most of the storylines truly hurts the plot. Plus, there is so much extraneous stuff to go through to get to the goos scenes. You could probably excise a good 100-150 pages from EoG without losing anything. The Tiamak, Binabik, his daughter, Tzoja's storylines in particular, they all act as filler 90% of the time. And do we really need the perspective of the 3-year-old princess? Unver, one of the most important characters in this new trilogy, doesn't have a POV! Overall, it's not frustration I feel. Though yes, I am frustrated. It's just an immense sense of disappointment. This was supposed to be the fantasy series of the decade, or one of the very best. After two installments, it turned out to be something so subpar that it one can scarcely believe it was written the same author who came up with MST. Still, I can't understand why so few people are reading this series. It defies comprehension given Williams' reputation.

To each his own, I guess. C'est la vie.

I finished it yesterday in the park with an iced cappuccino. No pay-off, no resolution, as all the threads end in cliffhangers. Just happy it's finally over. . .

Well, only 60 pages to go and it's been the slog of slogs. Unless a mindfuck of an ending somehow saves it, I'd say that EoG is no better than TWC. It suffers from the same shortcomings and I'd never would have gone through this ordeal if this wasn't by Tad Williams. One thing I really hate and I've only just managed to put my finer on it is the fact that all the good guys are extremely dense un purpose. I hate it when the bad guys are dumbasses, but in these books it's the good guys that are stupid and naive as a plot device. The writing is on the wall, but everyone from Simon to Tiamak can't seem to see anything. Even the Norns act like Nazi and Jeovah's Witness fuckwits. This return to Osten Ard was supposed to be one of the highlights of the decade in the fantasy genre. Not sure what went wrong. . . Keeping my fingers crossed for an ending that will make going through this 600+-page dootstopper worthwhile. . .

Kameron Hurley's excellent Apocalypse Nyx is 1.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada).

Today only: George R. R. Martin's The Ice Dragon is 2.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada). Gene Wolfe's The Knight is 2.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada). Margaret Weis' Mistress of Dragons is 2.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada).

Added another 100 pages today and it is still a slog. Morgan's a real dumbass and his storyline only gets better because we learn more about Sithi history. I wish he could just die. . . Nothing is getting much traction thus far and I'm more than halfway through.

Just skimming this thread because I want to avoid spoilers. With EoG doing nothing, I left it home and brought the new Wendig (a mistake) and the forthcoming Kameron Hurley short fiction collection with me on my hiking trip in New Hampshire. Returned home on Monday and resumed reading EoG and it's a slog. I'm about 250 pages into it and I would like to know when does it get better? So far, it suffers from absolutely everything that made TWC such a difficult and often boring read.

Josiah Bancroft's Senlin Ascends is 2.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada).

Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion is 0.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada).

Glen Cook's Port of Shadows is 2.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada).

Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem is 2.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada).

R. F. Kuang's The Poppy War is once again 2.99$ on Kindle.

Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World is 3.99$ on Kindle (USA and Canada). Heard good things about this one. . .

K. J. Parker's Colours in the Steel is 2.99$ on Kindle.

Bradley P. Beaulieu's Twelve Kings of Sharakhai is 2.99$ on Kindle. Stephen King's Carrie is 2.99$ on Kindle. George R. R. Martin's Nightflyers and Other Stories is 5.99$ on Kindle.

Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire is 2.99$ on Kindle (Canada and USA).