You Miss the Point Completely; I Get the Point Exactly

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist had a post this week about "the changing of the guard" in fantasy that I found interesting, in that "heading down the completely wrong road at high speed" kind of way.

(I'm not blaming Patrick for this; this looks like an ongoing conversation that I think is just wrong-headed to begin with, on the order of trying to determine the precise chemical composition of phlogiston.)

First of all, Patrick talks about the idea that there will be a new "changing of the guard," in the sense that

Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind relegated David Eddings and Terry Brooks to the backseat more than a decade past, thus establishing Tor Books as the SFF powerhouse it became in the mid-90s.

Eddings is an interesting case, since it seems that his largest audience really only wanted the Belgariad/Malloreon storyline, and wasn't as interested in following him into other areas. (This effect happens with a lot of series writers, and is particularly noticeable in fantasy and mystery: a writer's major series novels can outsell other books by several hundred percent.) But Brooks, as far as I can tell, is selling about as many copies of a new Shannara book now as he did in the '80s and '90s -- and that's a lot of copies. Jordan and Goodkind move more units per book now, but it took them each a number of books to reach that level.

And the idea that Jordan and Goodkind "replaced" Brooks and Eddings is a fallacy -- Brooks and Eddings are still here, still selling very strongly (Eddings's last four-book series, for Warner, was rumored to have a jaw-dropping advance), and hadn't lost their audience.

What Jordan and Goodkind did was show that the top end potential of epic fantasy was higher than the publishing world previously thought -- that this genre could have legitimate #1 New York Times bestsellers, with all of the attendant money and importance. (The field had already had serious bestsellers, but not consistent #1 Times bestsellers.) And that only happened at about the turn of the century -- when the two writers were solidly in the middle of long, complicated, very popular series.

(Parenthetically, it's my understanding that Jordan is still the very top end of the fantasy field, and that Goodkind's sales are somewhat below him. With an exception that Patrick -- and, I think, everyone else involved in this discussion -- has forgotten, everyone else, including Martin, Brooks, Eddings, Feist, Salvatore, and so on, sells at a level below that.)

I'll also note that no writer who can consistently hit the bestseller lists is in the "backseat." If such a writer's current publisher treats him that way, he'll quickly find a new home.

Then we move on to a discussion of what comes next. Patrick, I think, is assuming that the biggest bestsellers are innovative and new, which is very much not my experience. I may be a cynic, but, to my eye, what hits big in epic fantasy is a solidly-constructed series by a great storyteller (not necessarily a great writer, and definitely not someone who's trying something all-new) that is similar to older, well-loved works in the field but has a new spin. That series needs to have significant marketing support to reach that level, but good marketing won't sell what the audience isn't already looking for.

Patrick thinks the next Jordan and Goodkind are Steve Erikson and Scott Lynch, but...

Unfortunately, the way Erikson is being marketed in the States precludes his rise to stardom. By promoting Jordan and Goodkind so heavily, Tor Books are forgetting about a bunch of gifted writers that are under contract with them. And that's a shame. . . Although not for everyone, I feel that Steven Erikson was never really been given a chance in the USA. With the appropriate marketing, I think that Erikson could sell as many books as authors such as Tad Williams and Robin Hobb. Alas, it's not to be. Those Godawful covers are a disgrace, no question. For Toll the Hounds next year, they should simply forgo the cover art. Instead, just put "WE REFUSE TO PUT ANY THOUGHT WHATSOEVER IN THIS NOVEL'S COVER."It can't be worst than the US cover art for The Bonehunters. . . Little by little, Steven Erikson is becoming more and more popular with each new Malazan installment. Yet by the time it will matter in the USA, the entire series will be out in paperback, thus missing the more lucrative hardcover market.

I am not Tor Books; I can't speak for Tor in any sense. But I expect their reaction to his paragraph would be a large groan of frustration. Tor has spent quite a lot of time and money promoting Erikson's books, and the cover question...well, bloggers are never satisfied with fantasy covers. I'll leave it at that.

Erikson is writing decadent epic fantasy -- books for people who have been reading big fat series for a couple of decades, are familiar with all of the tropes and ideas, and are ready to see everything they're familiar with twisted into new shapes. You can't start with Erikson; you need to work up to him. Sure, his books could sell better than they do -- nearly anyone's could -- but he'll never be at the level of a Goodkind, and it's foolish to expect that. Goodkind readers may become Erikson readers, over time, but Erikson demands a level of knowledge of and involvement with epic fantasy tropes from the first page that no other epic fantasy writer comes close to.

(Also, the idea that Tor is ignoring everyone else to promote Jordan and Goodkind is simply untrue. No one else gets promoted at that level, because no one else is capable of selling at that level right now.)

Then Patrick moves on to Scott Lynch:

Scott Lynch appears to be in a very good position to "make it big." Imagination, action, good characterization -- The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas under Red Skies have all that. All we need is a more ambitious overall story arc, and Lynch could be on the cusp of stardom. Anne Groell assured me that The Republic of Thieves should demonstrate that The Gentleman Bastard sequence is not just another caper in every volume. And yet, for Scott Lynch to take that step, Bantam Dell will have to market him much more aggressively. Gollancz bent over backward to make TLOLL a hit in the UK, but we haven't seen that kind of push in North America. Scott Lynch is a very popular figure online, but the average fantasy reader is unaware of the author's existence. So I believe that Bantam must put his name out there. . .

Someone from the UK recently posted a comparison of Lynch's sales with those of someone getting much less respect and blogger love (I want to say Brian Ruckley, but I could be mistaken)...and I can't find that right now. But the numbers were not strongly for Lynch.

I like Lynch's books a lot, but, again, I think Patrick is assuming that, since he likes something a lot, it should be hugely successful. This is a trap editors occasionally fall into, but we generally get slapped about by reality soon afterward. Reviewers, luckily or unluckily, never get proven wrong so directly. There also has been quite a lot of promotion for Lynch in the US; commentators often seem to assume that if marketing was not as successful as they wanted it to be, then that marketing must have been non-existent, but that is not the case here.

So, in my possibly-biased opinion, Erikson and Lynch are exciting writers doing good books that could sell better than they do...but I don't think they'd ever sell at Terry Brooks levels, let alone dethrone Robert Jordan. And the idea that there is going to be some "changing of the guard" along those lines is unrealistic.

However, there has been a changing of guard over the past decade, and the folks obsessed with epic fantasy have missed it. Who's the new breed? Laurell K. Hamilton and the several dozen writers following in her footsteps.

She has two bestselling series running now, and has hit #1 on the Times list. Her backlist is already deeper than Jordan's, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's selling more units annually than he is. She also has created a new, very popular subgenre in her wake: the contemporary or urban fantasy. Many of the first-wave writers in that subgenre (Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher) are bestsellers as well, and even some second-wave writers (Patricia Briggs, Rachel Caine) are hitting the lists.

Epic fantasy isn't quite a backwater, but it's not the only game in town anymore, and it's not where the real excitement and splashy successes are happening, either. But urban/contemporary fantasy is mostly written by women, mostly about women main characters, and (presumably) mostly read by women, so it's obviously not important...

Update, two hours later: One of my Confidential Sources, who has access to Bookscan, slipped me the following -- Jordan's books outsold Hamilton's about 2-to-1 in 2003, but, by 2006, the ratio was 1.5-to-1 in Hamilton's favor. And Hamilton is publishing books much more quickly than Jordan is -- make of that what you will.