Bonfire of the Vanities: Which Fantasies will Survive?

[Darth Richard II]

Bakker is already gone.

[maarsen]

11 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Bakker is already gone.

I have to agree with you. He tried to do something different with fantasy and could not spark much of an interest over the long run, I don't think he will die in poverty as Lovecraft did. He does live in Canada.

[Dora Vee]

17 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Bakker is already gone.

I'm sad about that too. I really loved(and still do) The Second Apocalypse. 

[Darth Richard II]

9 hours ago, maarsen said:

I have to agree with you. He tried to do something different with fantasy and could not spark much of an interest over the long run, I don't think he will die in poverty as Lovecraft did. He does live in Canada.

Well, I would argue its more to do with how the series ended plus the fact that that every interview since is him shitting all over his fans.

[kuenjato]

6 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well, I would argue its more to do with how the series ended plus the fact that that every interview since is him shitting all over his fans.

shitty self-promotion (coupled to his "rebel" persona) and being unable to escape his personal wheelhouse sure didn't boost sales. I think he had a real window around the time of PoN's completion, but he closed it with Neuropath, DotD and the increasing delays of TAE + philosophical rhetoric dominating his blog.

Erikson has lost some traction with his current trilogy, so is going back to Karsa. I think he has a pretty dedicated base but the series is so byzantine and uninviting (and, IMO, a stewpot of awesome and crap) that it'll be hard to expand beyond that.

[Darth Richard II]

Well I buy every Erikson on release, but that last book was, eh, yeah.

Apparently the recent Eselmont books are big sellers though, which si great, since they are fucking fantastic but I digress.

I do wonder, I lot of the classic stuff was written by authors who were either huge assholes or, um, did very naughty things with children so I guess Bakker still has a shot. (Not accusing him of molesting children!)

 

[Lord Patrek]

On 01/05/2018 at 9:10 PM, Darth Richard II said:

That's cause books don't sell nearly as much as they used to. You need an absurdly small amount to get on the NYT bestseller lists these days.

Although it's true that it's easier to get on the NYT bestseller list than it used to be, the weird thing is that there are not more SFF authors who actually manage to pull it off. If you follow the Hotlist, you know that I've been monitoring speculative fiction bestsellers on a weekly basis since 2006. And I can tell you that there are less SFF writers appearing on the list these days than there used to be.

In addition, absurdly is too strong a word. A few years back, you needed between 15,000 and 20,000 copies sold in a novel's first week to crack the top 30 in hardback. Nowadays, you can do it with about 10,000 copies. Takes more than that for the paperback list.

Truth is, very few SFF authors can manage to move 10,000 units in a book's first week. In the end, though it takes fewer copies to end up on the NYT list, because books are selling less than they used to, it's actually not easier for authors to become New York Times bestsellers. Probably as hard, or close to it. It's just that you can sometimes take advantage of the system if you can direct buyers towards the right venues for purchase. And if you can get the better part of your readership to pre-order or buy during the first week of publication.

For example, Mark Lawrence sold over a million copies of his novels before the release of Red Sister. Take it from me, that's more than a lot of SFF authors who have made it on the NYT list during the same span of time. And yet, Lawrence never came close to appearing on the bestseller list. It has a lot to do with timing, not just sales. 

About Bakker, being published by Overlook hurt him quite a bit. Never had a mass market paperback release in the USA, almost non-existent marketing, no push whatsoever. He'll never be more than an author with a cult following. Which isn't bad, mind you, for it means that there will always be asses in the seats. But let's be honest. Though I love Scott and his books, it's not something that will ever have mainstream appeal the way GRRM, Jordan, and even Goodkind received from readers outside of the genre.

Say what you will of Terry Brooks, he's been around for about 4 decades and has sold millions of books in a panoply of languages. Must be doing something right. . .

[kuenjato]

20 minutes ago, Lord Patrek said:

Must be doing something right. . .

He was one of the first to rip off Tolkien (literally), then kept writing and writing. Consistent publication is key for sustained audience consumption.

[Myshkin]

Lord Foul’s Bane came out 41 years ago. Shouldn’t we be considering it a “cannon classic” already?

[Darth Richard II]

1 minute ago, Myshkin said:

Lord Foul’s Bane came out 41 years ago. Shouldn’t we be considering it a “cannon classic” already?

I dunno, I _think_ we're talking about authors who have been dead and not publishing for a while, but I lost the track of the discussion a bit ago. It certinaly seems to have endured though.

[Dora Vee]

I think Terry Brooks endures because, imo, his works are generally "safe". 

 

As for Lord Foul's Bane, well, I don't see why it shouldn't be a classic. The first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is actually pretty damned good. The others? Well, not so much. :/

[Darth Richard II]

Depends what you mean by safe, cause Brooks got pretty dark in the late 90s.

[Dora Vee]

Oh, I wasn't aware of that. I guess I'm thinking of earlier stuff.

I do remember someone saying that, "The purpose of Terry Brooks was to make Stephen Donaldson look good." Yoiks.

[Darth Richard II]

Eh, I don't like Donaldson's books at all, but that seems kind of harsh.

[kuenjato]

5 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Depends what you mean by safe, cause Brooks got pretty dark in the late 90s.

Past the Scions series? That's where I tapped out. It had a lot of promise but grew pretty crappy around the 3rd book, and became cliche center by the 4th. Did Terry B actually go semi-Grimdark?

[Darth Richard II]

Haha yeah a bit past that, I;' have to go look, but yeah there's rape and gruesome death now.

[Lord Patrek]

On 04/05/2018 at 11:32 PM, Myshkin said:

Lord Foul’s Bane came out 41 years ago. Shouldn’t we be considering it a “cannon classic” already?

That's what I thought.

[unJon]

On 5/5/2018 at 4:56 PM, Darth Richard II said:

Eh, I don't like Donaldson's books at all, but that seems kind of harsh.

People exist that don’t like The Gap Cycle? Mind boggling. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

36 minutes ago, unJon said:

People exist that don’t like The Gap Cycle? Mind boggling. 

I just read book one about a month ago and really liked it but, fuck, that was difficult to read at times.  The tension and horror and slowly unfolding story was absolutely captivating.  Can't wait to read the rest of it but I needed to read something less.... dark, I guess, in between.

 

Can someone resurrect this thread in 50 years?  We can get some betting lines going for what survives the slings and arrows.

 

 

 

[unJon]

44 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I just read book one about a month ago and really liked it but, fuck, that was difficult to read at times.  The tension and horror and slowly unfolding story was absolutely captivating.  Can't wait to read the rest of it but I needed to read something less.... dark, I guess, in between.

 

Can someone resurrect this thread in 50 years?  We can get some betting lines going for what survives the slings and arrows.

 

 

 

The next four books are not as dark and are in fact really different than the first book. It’s a bit jarring when you start the second book but well worth getting past that.