The next big fantasy

[red snow]

I think most Bakker fanboys and fangirls (heh) gave up on the idea of it becoming the next big thing some time ago. Bakker himself acknowledged that and whines about it constantly on his blog.

As for sockpuppets, well, he must have at least one. Who it is though is a difficult question because he's unlikely to clumsily expose himself again.

It really depends on how/if the series is ever completed. When that happens I think there's a good chance Bakker's work will stand the test of time. It may never be a BIG thing but I think it has more chance of being read by people in a century than 90% of the other work out there right now.

It seems to be universally accepted that the next big thing has to be a series of books - which is a shame as the done in one fantasy work seems to be non-existent. Except for Gaiman, of course.

[Werthead]

CS Lewis has sold many millions more copies of his books than GRRM, as Werthead's excellent list shows. Terry Pratchett, Michael Ende, and Andre Norton as well. George RR Martin has a very long way to go to catch up to any of those authors. In fact, he'd have to triple his sales to catch up to any of them. Martin is very popular right now, but setting him up as a king of fantasy in terms of popularity is somewhat short-sighted: he's been popular for a decade, and very popular for a few years. It remains to be seen if he will be as popular in ten years. (And I say that as a big fan).

True, but Martin has way more critical acclaim than any of those authors bar only Pratchett (also, Norton's 90 million sales come from over 300 novels, some of them not in the SFF genre, and only a small number from her fantasy books). That intersection of critical acclaim and sales mega-figures is not matched by any other author we are talking about, bar Pratchett and possibly Tolkien.

I disagree. Gaiman will write many more full-length novels. His novels are shorter than Martin's, of course, but he just wrote a full-length novel last year. Way too early to count him out when he's just written another full-length novel.

Ocean at the End of the Lane is short for a full-length novel. What was it, 250 pages in hardcover? That's certainly less than half the length of American Gods, and substantially shorter even than Neverwhere.

Wert- kinda suprised by the Sanderson numbers. I thought he was bigger based on the amount of conversation he generated. Your right though, his YA will most likely tell the tale.

Sanderson has sold 15 million books, but 12.5 million of them were the last three WoT novels. Those figures were only up until the end of financial year 2012/13, so are almost a year out of date. But I don't think he's doubled his sales or anything in the last year. Based on his profile, I would have put his sales figures much higher, but apparently not.

I think most Bakker fanboys and fangirls (heh) gave up on the idea of it becoming the next big thing some time ago. Bakker himself acknowledged that and whines about it constantly on his blog.

Bakker whinges about it but won't do anything to rectify the issue. Get better at PR and interviews. Use your Twitter account creatively rather than just posting a pithy saying every day. Engage and respond to the fans and critics rather than lecturing them about why you are right all the time. Set up a meeting with Orbit and Overlook and find a way of getting Orbit to publish the mmpbs of the series and get them on the shelves. Get GRRM - who is a fan - to do some cover blurbage.

It might not make much difference overall, but at least it's something.

So what do you guys think about the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher?

It's big but not colossal. The TV series was a big failure, however, which likely means we won't see another attempt at a film or TV show for years. Until that happens, the series seems to have plateaued rather than continuously growing as it was a few years ago.

[Datepalm]

ASOIAF was also universally known and largely acclaimed within the Fantasy genre, before the TV show catapulted it into the general consciousness.

[Galactus]

It really depends on how/if the series is ever completed. When that happens I think there's a good chance Bakker's work will stand the test of time. It may never be a BIG thing but I think it has more chance of being read by people in a century than 90% of the other work out there right now.

It seems to be universally accepted that the next big thing has to be a series of books - which is a shame as the done in one fantasy work seems to be non-existent. Except for Gaiman, of course.

I suspect Bakker si going to end up like Stephen Donaldson, IE: Someone that is mentioned, compared, even liked to some extent, but not a cornerstone of the genre.

[maarsen]

If you want to know who will write the next big GoT type fantasy, ready for filming and a wider audience, I think it has already been done. Think back to Roger Zelazny's Amber series. All kinds of family dynamics there with lots of monsters and magic and would serialize nicely.

[red snow]

I suspect Bakker si going to end up like Stephen Donaldson, IE: Someone that is mentioned, compared, even liked to some extent, but not a cornerstone of the genre.

I thought Donaldson was a big thing for a while? But yeah - Bakkers "2nd apocalypse" is never going to be "the next big thing".

[Jussi]

I thought Donaldson was a big thing for a while?

Yeah.

In 1983, I out sold every writer in the world except Wilbur Smith - in New Zealand. I was the best-selling author in Alice Springs, Australia, for six months, and in the U.S. my last "Covenant" novel, White Gold Wielder, was on the N. Y. Times bestseller list for 26 weeks

Also:

I think we can safely say that LFB is up around 10 million copies worldwide, with the rest of the "Covenant" books not far behind.

Bakker has never had this kind of success.

[Shinrei]

I think most Bakker fanboys and fangirls (heh) gave up on the idea of it becoming the next big thing some time ago. Bakker himself acknowledged that and whines about it constantly on his blog.

As for sockpuppets, well, he must have at least one. Who it is though is a difficult question because he's unlikely to clumsily expose himself again.

Wait what? Are you saying Bakker had a sockpuppet account and used it? I roll to disbelief.

On topic:

Wert, you throw around a lot of numbers. Is Martin already past Jordan in sales? He was the first big thing after Tolkien and made the way for the big over-three-books-series. He also had at least one PC game made out of his world and a p&p rpg...so he did branch out into other media. I think there were talks about filming rights...or maybe even some rights sold?! Not sure anymore.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh no offesnive to Bakker intended, I like them a lot, but some of the more enthusiastic fans get on my nerves some times. You have a thread called "Happy Fuflly Pictures of Cats" and somehow Bakker comes up.

As for Blood Song, I actually find it really hard to explain hy I like it so much. There was something about the pacing and the rythum of the prose that just clicked.

Honestly, I think the next "big thing", at least if you're comparing it to where ASOIAF is now, will be whatever the next sucessfull movie/tv adaptation is. Some of the others mentioned here are best sellers, but you don't see cookbooks and calendars and mugs for them(yet).

Also, sorry for the spelling, my spellcheck is borked.

[Datepalm]

If you want to know who will write the next big GoT type fantasy, ready for filming and a wider audience, I think it has already been done. Think back to Roger Zelazny's Amber series. All kinds of family dynamics there with lots of monsters and magic and would serialize nicely.

Don't know. I like Amber a lot, but even if someone makes a super successful tv show of it, I don't think Zelazny's sardonic, bare style is necessarily going to hook people on the kind of wild enthusiasm Harry Potter or ASOIAF engenders.

[David Selig]

Wait what? Are you saying Bakker had a sockpuppet account and used it? I roll to disbelief.

On topic:

Wert, you throw around a lot of numbers. Is Martin already past Jordan in sales? He was the first big thing after Tolkien and made the way for the big over-three-books-series. He also had at least one PC game made out of his world and a p&p rpg...so he did branch out into other media. I think there were talks about filming rights...or maybe even some rights sold?! Not sure anymore.

Jordan is still way ahead in total sales.

[Jiriki]

True, but Martin has way more critical acclaim than any of those authors bar only Pratchett

I think it's quite difficult to quantify 'critical acclaim': what measure can be used? Number of reviews? Number of positive reviews? And who monitors those numbers?

(also, Norton's 90 million sales come from over 300 novels, some of them not in the SFF genre, and only a small number from her fantasy books).

True, a good portion of her books were not SF/F at all. Still, 90 million is over 3 times as many as GRRM's sales.

That intersection of critical acclaim and sales mega-figures is not matched by any other author we are talking about, bar Pratchett and possibly Tolkien.

Hmmm... A simple Google search for "C.S. Lewis"+"critical acclaim" pulls up 424,000 hits on Google, while the same search for GRRM only pulls up 291,000. Google Scholar searches for C.S. Lewis pulls up over 39,000 articles, while George R. R. Martin pulls up a mere thousand. C.S. Lewis has been discussed in literary circles for far, far longer and in a much greater number of scholarly works than George R.R. Martin; not surprising, given the large number of scholarly works dedicated to study of the Inklings.

I think this board has become victim to a "GRRM is the greatest thing evar" group-think, and it has become hard to see past the TV show's glamor and PR to recognize that while ASOIAF is popular right now, neither GRRM's sales or critical reception come close to several other authors, who have been popular for many more decades. George has a lot of catching up to do to be a significant player, in the long term. And he may do so.

[Datepalm]

I think a lot of that is a function of time. GRRM has been a prominent writer (outside SFF) for...five years? And still mostly in the pop-culture sense. CS Lewis is established literary canon for fifty, sixty years.

[Jiriki]

I think a lot of that is a function of time. GRRM has been a prominent writer (outside SFF) for...five years? And still mostly in the pop-culture sense. CS Lewis is established literary canon for fifty, sixty years.

Absolutely. 100% agree.

[Faint]

I think most Bakker fanboys and fangirls (heh) gave up on the idea of it becoming the next big thing some time ago. Bakker himself acknowledged that and whines about it constantly on his blog.

Is there really such a thing?

I only started reading the series after the first trilogy was published and have never come across a female fan. I always figured they were something like the Entwives.

[Datepalm]

FWIW, a very quick google-scholar search turns up vastly more CS Lewis than GRRM, but also a lot more Lewis than Tolkien, and I don't think Lewis is the more prominent genre author there.

[Jiriki]

FWIW, a very quick google-scholar search turns up vastly more CS Lewis than GRRM, but also a lot more Lewis than Tolkien, and I don't think Lewis is the more prominent genre author there.

I get 39,300 for "CS Lewis" and 42,500 for "Tolkien".

[Werthead]

ASOIAF was also universally known and largely acclaimed within the Fantasy genre, before the TV show catapulted it into the general consciousness.

It was, especially in terms of critical acclaim, but in terms of sales dominance it was a drop in the ocean compared to a whole bunch of authors it's since overtaken (Weis & Hickman, Brooks, Feist, Donaldson, Goodkind, Eddings, Williams etc). It was the TV show that blasted it into the stratosphere.

Even so, it's worth noting that WoT and Discworld still both dwarf it in sales.

I suspect Bakker si going to end up like Stephen Donaldson, IE: Someone that is mentioned, compared, even liked to some extent, but not a cornerstone of the genre.

If Bakker were to even get to 10% of Donaldson's sales, he would very, very happy and would probably never bitch about his sales again online. He's still quite a long way off even from that level.

Wert, you throw around a lot of numbers. Is Martin already past Jordan in sales? He was the first big thing after Tolkien and made the way for the big over-three-books-series. He also had at least one PC game made out of his world and a p&p rpg...so he did branch out into other media. I think there were talks about filming rights...or maybe even some rights sold?! Not sure anymore.

No. Worldwide sales of ASoIaF are at around 28 million, possibly about 30 million by now. WoT's US sales are at 56 million alone. His worldwide sales are conservatively estimated at 80-90 million. They're not far off in terms of actual readers (30/5 vs 90/14), but WoT is still the bigger-selling series.

Pratchett is another story, as he has about 80 million books sold but his books are almost all stand-alones, so you can't divide his books up by sales up to get readers, especially given that (in the UK and Australia at least) he's also the most heavily-shoplifted, heavily-pirated and heavily-rented-from-the-library author in the market ;)

Oh no offesnive to Bakker intended, I like them a lot, but some of the more enthusiastic fans get on my nerves some times. You have a thread called "Happy Fuflly Pictures of Cats" and somehow Bakker comes up.

To be fair, I don't think it's necessarily a case of his fans charging in, more that Bakker's kind of a dominant board meme and in-joke (as Goodkind used to be) and that kind of takes over threads with no other connection.

It's worth noting that Bakker nearly got a film option of his books (by the same guy who did The Golden Compass), so clearly he does have a bit more appeal than sometimes he's given credit for. I think the chances of a faithful adaptation being made are low, but certainly not impossible.

True, a good portion of her books were not SF/F at all. Still, 90 million is over 3 times as many as GRRM's sales.

GRRM's non-ASoIaF sales are not included in that 30 million-odd figure. Clearly ASoIaF is dominant, but his other books have sold in nontrivial amounts (Wild Cards by itself is estimated at several million sales).

I did leave CS Lewis out of the discussion, though, as I wanted to focus more on the overtly secondary world fantasy authors. Lewis's work is slightly different and comes from a different angle (the religious parallel stuff, Christian organisations heavily pushing his books etc). Also, Lewis was an actual critic and scholar in a way GRRM isn't and not even Tolkien really was. Lewis was very well-known as a critic, essayist, columnist and popular writer many, many years before Narnia was even published.

[Shryke]

Don't know. I like Amber a lot, but even if someone makes a super successful tv show of it, I don't think Zelazny's sardonic, bare style is necessarily going to hook people on the kind of wild enthusiasm Harry Potter or ASOIAF engenders.

I agree but I think you could totally make a good TV show out of Amber if you ditched everything but the first book and made it more about the war between the siblings.

[Datepalm]

TV might actually be interesting for showing all the maze stuff and the world shifting. There's a very visual quality to Amber, at least that's how it's in my head right now, a decade or so after the last time I read them. All those color-coded people and different worlds...