Bakker LVII

[Lord Patrek]

48 minutes ago, Durckad said:

Honestly, I have no doubt that Bakker could and would write the sequel follow-up at a fairly reasonable pace should he choose to do so, BUT I have not seen nor heard any indication that he is planning to. If he has, then mea culpa, I'm wrong etc, etc.

Also, didn't he have trouble getting the last series (The Aspect Emperor) published due to relatively low sales? I can't imagine that getting a sequel published to an arguably divisive series that ended even more divisively would be a done deal at this point.

So basically, I'll believe it when I see otherwise. Until then, it's just supposition.

The fact that he was published by Overlook Press didn't help matters in the least.

Though sales might have been underwhelming and that major imprints would likely have little interest in releasing whatever comes next, I'm sure that smaller publishers like Angry Robot or Tachyon would be willing to publish his new series.

There are plenty of authors with relatively low sales that keep releasing works. No reason why Bakker couldn't be one of them.

[All Cats Are Bad]

1 hour ago, Durckad said:

Honestly, I have no doubt that Bakker could and would write the sequel follow-up at a fairly reasonable pace should he choose to do so, BUT I have not seen nor heard any indication that he is planning to. If he has, then mea culpa, I'm wrong etc, etc.

Also, didn't he have trouble getting the last series (The Aspect Emperor) published due to relatively low sales? I can't imagine that getting a sequel published to an arguably divisive series that ended even more divisively would be a done deal at this point.

So basically, I'll believe it when I see otherwise. Until then, it's just supposition.

As far as I know there has been no indication whatsoever that he had or is having any issues continuing with the series. His plan has always been to write three installments, his publisher has known this, and if for whatever reason they failed to reach an agreement it is ridiculous that a writer like him with a built-in fanbase would be unable to find a publisher with similar (or greater) distribution capabilities than Orbit.

As far as I can tell this is what happened:

TUC came out to mixed reviews, and there were a few shifty things in the last two books, words dropped, etc. that made people think there may have been editing issues. A few people who happen to spend most of their online time talking about the problems they see in Bakker's work started fantasizing about his publisher dropping him (and I guess blackballing him to every other small press? idk tbh), and others have since synced up with that "vibe" without really putting unnecessary thought into it.

Maybe I'm wrong, and Bakker or his publisher actually have said even a single word that would indicate trouble going forward with the series, but if so I haven't seen it.

[Lord Patrek]

Scott was adamant about the glossary, which was why TUC ended up being split into two installments. That didn't sit well with his publishers as it wasn't part of his contract. He probably burned a few bridges with that move.

But given that he has a fan base, even if he is a midlist author, I'm sure a smaller imprint would be happy to sign him.

Question is: Does Scott want to be published by a smaller imprint. Orbit was great, but having to work with Overlook likely left a very bad taste in his mouth. That said, Overlook didn't know shit about the SFF market. Angry Robot, Pyr, Tachyon, or other more modest publishing houses wouldn't have that problem.

[Kalbear]

I'm not sure how much of a fan base he has any more. A lot of his fans seemed to be pretty bothered by the ending of TUC. What rep he has online is almost entirely toxic. He has made enemies of a lot of other well known authors and reviewers. What he does have is a decent backlogs of books and decent sales that apparently dwindled in the last two books. 

The publishing industry isn't exactly awesome either right now, but my impression is that Bakker just doesn't really care that much. 

[The Twink in the North]

8 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

I guard them! I hold the Gates!

So you've mentioned... 

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, The Twink in the North said:

So you've mentioned... 

To paraphrase, your boos mean nothing, I've see what makes you cheer.

[All Cats Are Bad]

I've decided that Christopher Paolini doesn't exist anymore. I've never liked him very much, and he hasn't posted on social media in several months so that means he's dead. It was very tragic, I feel deeply for his loved ones.

[Werthead]

The Prince of Nothing sold very well for a debut epic fantasy series, especially for Overlook who sold around 125,000 copies of the trilogy by the time The Judging Eye came out. I believe his international sales, mostly via Orbit, were also very healthy. Orbit thought he did well enough to bring him over to the UK in 2006 for a signing, for example.

However, there was a steep sales drop to The Judging Eye and The White-Luck Warrior. The feeling was that his initial momentum had stalled with the four-year wait between series and he was just starting to get into the online toxic battles. Those things started coming up when you googled his name rather than the books.

Then, in the five-year gap between The White-Luck Warrior and The Great Ordeal, it seems his sales fell off sharply, his editor at Overlook moved on and Orbit began to treat him as just any other low-to-mid-selling author they had outstanding contractual agreements with. Sales of The Great Ordeal and The Unholy Consult were even lower than for the first two books in the series. To some extent that's on Overlook and Orbit - I'm still baffled why they didn't use any of GRRM's recommendations of the first trilogy as cover quotes - but a lot of it is on Bakker.

Bakker doesn't have a deal for the third series and it's unclear if another publisher would be willing to take him on. He has a small but fervent online fanbase and that can be an asset, but if the fanbase is not large enough to justify the deal, that's just the way it goes. It really doesn't help that Bakker's online persona is now considered unhelpful to publicising the series - compare to when PoN was coming out and he was schmoozing with other authors at cons, engaging in online banter about looking like a member of Air Supply etc - and publishers now expect authors to do a lot more of their own publicity, which Bakker is either adverse to or would actually make into a detriment.

The final issue is that the online SFF fanbase has become a lot more dominated by women, particularly reviewers, bloggers and YouTube vloggers, and very few of them (although not all) who've tried the series have bounced hard off it, for reasons we have gone into a lot. That is also a problem.

Oddly, I believe that back-list sales for Prince of Nothing have remained okay (it's still in print, any way), but it's just the sales for the later series which have dropped off a cliff. I wonder if the fact that PoN presents itself as a stand-alone trilogy with no mention of a sequel trilogy to come is also part of the problem. Shades of Erikson selling okay with Malazan but sales of his spin-off books have become very low (again, not helped by long gaps between publication).

[.H.]

19 hours ago, Durckad said:

So basically, I'll believe it when I see otherwise. Until then, it's just supposition.

Well, read this as you like then.

[Lord Patrek]

TAE was never released in mass market paperback books, which usually amount to the bulk of any author's sales. That certainly didn't help matters.

I'm not sure that Bakker's attitude is scaring potential publishers away. There are countless writers that are worse and their publishing houses couldn't care less. As long as they sell them books.

Given the current state of affairs, Bakker's value has dwindled and a future book deal wouldn't fetch him a big advance. Add that to the fact that he does have a following, I don't see why smaller imprints like Tachyon, Pyr, Angry Robots, etc, wouldn't want to take a chance on him. I mean, coming from Overlook, it would still be an improvement for Scott.

[sologdin]

bothered by the ending of TUC.

this is totally bewildering to me.  the series is literally the second apocalypse; the third set is precisely the no-god.  the second set had to end generally the way it did?

[Lord Patrek]

I personally don't have a problem with the way TUC ended.

Of course, with such a MAJOR cliffhanger, if nothing else gets published to follow up with the tale of what comes next, then it is annoying.

But unlike Robert Jordan, whose Last Battle managed to kill only one main character, I loved the audacity shown by Scott in having everything go down the crapper.

I want to know what happens next!

[Caligula_K3]

Speaking for myself, it's not the actual ending that bothers me; hell, I was hoping that the No God would return a few books earlier. It's 80-90% of what came before in The Great Ordeal and The Unholy Consult.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

bothered by the ending of TUC.

this is totally bewildering to me.  the series is literally the second apocalypse; the third set is precisely the no-god.  the second set had to end generally the way it did?

No resolution on Mimara, Kelmomas almost miraculously showing up, Serwa and the MRA dragon, the 4 chapters of shitty cannibal rape, the weird Sorweel resolution...there was a lot of unsatisfying parts to the ending beyond the 'ending on giant cliffhanger' bit. 

1 hour ago, Lord Patrek said:

I'm not sure that Bakker's attitude is scaring potential publishers away. There are countless writers that are worse and their publishing houses couldn't care less. As long as they sell them books.

I think that's the rub - from @Werthead's comment, it looks like they aren't selling them books. 

 

[Lord Patrek]

But without a mass market paperback edition, sales can't really improve.

[All Cats Are Bad]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

it's unclear if another publisher would be willing to take him on.

Unclear to whom?

Anyway, back on planet Earth, I saw this at /r/Bakker:

Quote

I mean we still don't really know for sure what the gods are and how much direct agency or will they may or may not have, but here's how I read that.

Ajokli began communicating with Kellhus during the circumfixion. While he was exploring the Daimos with Iyokus during the unification wars, he made some kind of a direct pact with Ajokli, and was planning on using the Daimos to overcome the Consult. The Head on a Pole thing was referencing Ajokli. His idol depicts him having a giant penis that goes up to his chin, and if you read the scene where Kellhus rapes Proyas...it just is, okay? I don't wanna hear that deliberately vague bullshit Bakker said about a street lamp in a cafe, the Head on a Pole thing was Ajokli. It's very clear.

So since Kelmomas was destined to become the No-God, the Gods are blind to him since they cannot see their own end (and they exist across all of time). So when Kellokli saw Kellmomas it broke the possession and booted Ajokli from the Golden Room.

Now I'm less sure about what happens with Cnaiur at the end because, again, we don't really know what the Gods are. But my impression is that they are maybe either combinations of souls, or parts of souls that share comment aspects through the ages. War, the "Fertility Principle", etc.

In the Kellhus POV where he goes to the Outside in TGO he starts off in Ajokli's realm (I think) and talks to what I assume are Ciphrang, then he rips the entire setting "about the head on a pole" and speaks to larger entities that I assume are Gods. I think at some point Bakker calls them the Greater Shards and Ciphrang the Lesser.

So Cnaiur, when Mimara looks at him with the Eye, has both a very impressive and a very damned soul. She refers to him as a Prince of Hell and says he would have had the soul of a Hero had he never met Moe. Recalling the scene from TTT where Cnaiur seems to become possessed by Gigaol, I think Cnaiur's soul is either a part of Gigoal or Ajokli, or it's destined to become a Ciphrang under one of their domains (or inside them or whatever, again not clear how it works).

When Cnaiur kills the Thing That Was Serwa smoke comes out of the scars on his arms. My thinking is that all the murders he's committed, all the suffering he's caused, combined with the fact that he's nearing the time of his death at this point, is causing his Soul in the Outside to leak through the meat. We know that he's not just possessed by Ajokli because he's able to look at the No-God without the possession breaking (as it did with Kellhus). It's not until his human eyes are sheared away by the Whirlwind that he looks "with Hell's own eyes" and sees nothing.

I took the final speech he screams at the Whirlwind to mean that either Ajokli, or Cnaiur (or both) were going to hunt his soul through the Outside.

 

 

[Kalbear]

24 minutes ago, SaltyGnosis said:

Unclear to whom?

The book industry at large? 

24 minutes ago, SaltyGnosis said:

Anyway, back on planet Earth, I saw this at /r/Bakker:

Cnaiur is also possessed by Ajokli. He, like Kellhus, is being ridden by him, so that when he seeks Kellhus he starts that way. Ajokli is absolutely pissed off that Kellhus somehow reneged his deal, and somehow turned his granary into an invisible whirlwind. He thinks Kellhus has betrayed him, and because Kellhus cannot be found in the Outside he must be...somewhere else. While  he's not on Ark and thus isn't in the absolute pit of hell, he's close enough that he can manifest fairly strongly. Of course, when Cnaiur finally is wiped away there is nothing to anchor him to the world, and he goes back to gibbering at the edge of madness and time. 

But like all gods he cannot comprehend more than his own end, and cannot see Kelmomas at all, though he assumes Kellhus must be the No-God. Ajokli can't even conceive of Kelmomas being the No-God any more than you can conceive of the tooth fairy stealing your socks at night. You might know of the idea of the tooth fairy and think it's just a silly tale, and you know your socks are stolen, but the notion that a mythical creature could be doing something is ludicrous.

But yes, he's just possessed by Ajokli at the end of the book. I'm pretty sure Bakker even confirmed that at one point.

[All Cats Are Bad]

15 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

Cnaiur is also possessed by Ajokli. 

No, he was able to look at the No-God, if he were possessed (like Kellhus) that would have broken it. It wasn't until his  mortal eyes were sheared away that it became invisible to him.

[Lord Patrek]

31 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Huh, are mass market paperbacks still that big a thing? Here in the states you barely see them anymore, at least at my B&N. There's usually a tiny rack of new releases and that's it. Everything is trade paperbacks here. Heck, I don't even see MMP in Walmart or Target anymore. And I don't mean just SFF. 

They still make up for about 60% of shelf space both in Canada and the USA and amount for a huge chunk of sales for any publishers. Pretty much the same for all the bookstores I've visited in Europe and elsewhere during my travels.

Trade paperbacks are a thing now because they offer a better mark-up and it's easier to achieve bestseller status (they have their own list for that format which sells a lot less) with them. But they tend to be used for authors that move lots of units. Midlist authors can get their initial release in trade paperback if they don't move enough copies to warrant a hardcover, but it's the mass market paperbacks and the ebooks that still drive sales.

[Kalbear]

13 minutes ago, SaltyGnosis said:

No, he was able to look at the No-God, if he were possessed (like Kellhus) that would have broken it. It wasn't until his  mortal eyes were sheared away that it became invisible to him.

He was able to look at the whirlwind and shout. He didn't see the carapace, and the last result is him seeing...nothing at all. There's no indication that he can see anything at that point of the carapace. It also appears to be something of a continuum instead of a discrete item. Cnaiur starts as Cnaiur at the start of that scene, and as his physical body is assaulted and he charges towards the whirlwind he becomes less Cnaiur and more Ajokli.