[Scott Bakker]

I have to say, Gary, I checked out those covers of yours and I think they're fantastic.

What chance do you think this cover will have of selling books?

Le Prince (http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/226507943X/qid%3D1105637968/171-9760455-8081066)

WTF?

[JRMurdock]

I agree with WTF. Who designed/picked the cover?

[Gary Wassner]

Actually, Scott, I think it's very erotic. It should do quite well. Maybe some of those people were right when they thought fantasy meant 'fantasies'.

Really, I think it's excellent. Who was your artist? What input did you have?

[Gary Wassner]

Why don't the US versions get these hot covers?

[Radthorne]

I find it interesting that you 'fight the good fight' yet seek no benifit from it. I'm impressed. Not at all what I had expected from an author. I can understand most of what you're saying and appreciate it.
I think Gary and I are quite on the same page on this. I work in a technical field, and my compensation there is considerably more than what I ever expect to derive from my writing. Nor do I seek noteriety. This little question, of course, goes right to the heart of why people do write. I would be quite happy to attain mid-list status as my goal (should that category still survive the coming years), not really from any desire for recognition but simply because that typically means a certain number of people are probably reading your books. And that's really want I want: I'd just like to have people read the books and enjoy them, and know that at a minimum I provided some good entertainment, and if I'm lucky some good food for thought for some.

Seems a reasonable enough goal...

[Gary Wassner]

I won't deny the fact that I absolutely, 100 %, totally and unconditionally love it when someone reads my books and enjoys them enough to tell me or to tell someone else. The real question I might ask myself is whether or not I would continue to write if I could no longer get my books published. I know that the answer is yes. But I am not now confronted with that problem, so it's easy to say that. The mental and artistic committment that I make to my series is total. After 3000 pages of text and countless characters, plots and subplots, I am not stopping. My life would never be complete.

So I write Epic Fantasy, right? So I now have a fully developed world that I am responsible for. It lives whether I write or not, and I couldn't bear to leave my characters problems and the world's problems unresolved. The issues that I write about are my issues, my concerns; my intellectual and emotional integrity is on the line. When you write Epic Fantasy and you committ yourself to a series, it becomes a part of your life.

[KatG]

Again, I'd bring up that adult genre fantasy is an artificially constructed market category, created not for a mainstream audience but for a much smaller fan audience. In the 1970's, the sf publishers -- realizing that a good portion of their fan base was interested in stories like Tolkein, White's "Once and Future King," D&D and other fantasy games, and fantasy and horror stories by sf authors (which had been going on for awhile, especially in the magazines) -- started putting out fantasy titles specifically labelled fantasy and began marketing this "new" category to booksellers and magazine subscribers. (Tolkein had nothing to do with it beyond licensing his work to the sf publishers for paperback editions and probably would be bemused at what that helped start.) New fans were attracted to fantasy, increasing sf imprints' share of the fiction market, and the two genres were put out as twin stars, with the sf authors grumbling that they really would prefer the fantasy titles to stay out of their shelf space.

The cover art came from sf illustrators, was deliberately romantic to identify works as fantasy, particularly epic fantasy, and has been so successful that it's spawned a lucrative supplementary market of such things as calendars and illustrative guides. (And possibly helped the launch of graphic novels in the 1980's.) When George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" came out, the publisher wanted to take advantage of his screenwriting career to get a crossover audience and gave it a non-traditional, historical-style cover. Fans hated it, it cost them initial sales and did not attract mainstream readers (plus it was ugly,) and so when the second book came out, the fantasy art was returned to the cover. Now, non-traditional cover designs are more common and publishers are experimenting, using "chick lit" designs for comic romantic fantasies and other devices for some titles to draw readers' attention. But they have no reason to abandon traditional fantasy covers, especially for epic fantasy, when fans like it and it has not impeded the growth of the genre.

It's also relevant that in the beginning, most of the fan base was male. Even now, a significant percentage of the fan audience remains young males, age 15-30 years, the same males who play fantasy games on their X-Boxes. SF and Fantasy are one of the few areas of fiction in which males out-buy females. In other areas of fiction, women buy more novels than men do.

If the goal is purely to get mainstream interest and respect, there are several ways to go about it. Individually, you can not publish in genre fantasy, but instead seek to publish with a non-sf publisher as non-genre fantasy in contemporary fiction. Market-wide, the fantasy genre could simply be dissolved as a category. This may have been in part the strategy behind S&S UK dissolving their British sf & f imprint. But if that were to happen across the board, the number of fantasy titles published would drop dramatically and the chances of getting published with a fantasy story would go with it, even though non-genre fantasies are often popular.

Because genre fantasy was published by the sf publishers for a fan audience of mostly young males in paperback editions, genre fantasy was disregarded by the mainstream in the same way they disregarded sf. (The paperback part was one of the biggest causes -- only hardcovers were reviewed, which is one reason the genres have adopted a hardcover printing strategy to get mainstream reviews and media attention.) Fantasy and sf have increased their fan base and mainstream awareness and have become successful "hot" genres thanks to Harry Potter and a number of hit movies, t.v. shows -- Tolkein, Potter, "Minority Report" and Phillip K. Dick stories, etc. With success has come more mainstream acceptance and respect, fueling more growth, but also with success comes contempt by those who regard popular art as no art. If other publishers follow S&S UK's suit and dump the genre audience and genre organization, there may be more mainstream acceptance, but it will only be for a few authors and they will no longer have the support and income from the fan audience.

I would rather see the gradual solid establishment of genre fantasy and sf along the lines of the mystery genre, than to see them wiped out because genre authors suddenly decide they are too good to be genre authors. I would also hope that somehow sf and fantasy can avoid the erosion of the fan audience and the collapse of their market, as happened with westerns, has happened several times with horror, has now happened with mysteries and is rapidly occuring in romance. Right now sf is facing the possibility that its fan base is dying, but I'm betting, as many publishers seem to be, that it's simply a lull. Either way, if the sf & fantasy genres are discarded as markets, the chances of you building up your own fan following decrease considerably. Whereas the success of the genres as distinct markets improves the chances for mainstream respect and interest and general audience growth for all. Which is why genre fantasy was created in the first place -- growth of a market which still has lots of room to develop.

[Gary Wassner]

I don't have a problem with the category. The problem I have is the perception that this genre has in the public's mind. It is nice, in a way, to have a clearly defined section in the book stores. I only wish that it was not a section rife with covers that make the books seem trite and comic bookish.

Has the fantasy readership been mostly males, KatG? I know that was the case for the sci/fi reader for a long time, and that reader has moved on, which partially accounts for the scant number of titles being published today in sci/fi. Science itself is ahead of the author, so it is difficult to write anything truly imaginative in that field. But fantasy is timeless in that sense.

What about wonderful books like The Mists of Avalon? Where does that belong in the heirarchy?


I purposefully designed covers that would not have warriors on them, no shields and swords, no monsters and dragons. I wanted the covers for my books to make whoever looks at them, question the content, not assume the content. The assumptions are a large part of the problem, and the assumptions are often internally generated.

[Radthorne]

Although I created the covers for my books using the tools I had to hand (and the limited artistic ability that came with those hands), the end result, like Gary's, are not like the conventional "fantasy" covers. (Given that this is Gary's thread, I won't post a direct link [that would be rude!] but if you want to see them they are over in my sub-forum in their own thread). What's interesting to me is that those covers are what typically really draws peoples attention to the books. While it would be nice to think that the attention is just because they look good, I certainly think a part of it is because they don't fit the mold of standard fantasy cover art.

Personally, I'm quite happy remaining a genre writer. I think KatG is correct, in that regardless of the (most likely fleeting) current popularity of Potter, LotR, et al, if SF throughout its rich history could not "break into" the mainstream mindset, fantasy is not going to either. And I don't have a problem with that. It's what I like to read; it's what I like to write; and those who don't care for it just don't know what they're missing! :)

[Gary Wassner]

I would like to be able to be as nonchalant as you are about it, Kevin. But I just can't be. It frustrates me terribly when people do not understand what Epic Fantasy is. I even stopped saying that I am a Fantasy author and I now say that I am and Epic Fantasy author instead. That at least helps to bypass the initial repsonse that I write pornography or titilating novels. But even then I have to qualify my response by saying, "You know, like Tolkien."

I crave the time when in response to the question, "Oh, so what type of books do you write?" I can simply say Epic Fantasy and have the questioner say, "Ah, how nice," instead of look at me cross-eyed.

It is also amazing that so many people think that fantasy and sci/fi are the same thing. In my mind they are so totally and thoroughly different - as different as a classic mystery is to a thriller.