So you write Epic Fantasy, do you?

[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

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.

 

[KatG]

I have to disagree with you both on most of your points. (I feel that I'm being utterly obnoxious here, but bear with me while I multi post.)

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.

Again, if the science fiction publishers had not branched out into fantasy and given it distinctive cover art and developed the fan audience for it, genre fantasy would not exist. There would be no section in the bookstore for it, and only a handful of authors would be getting their non-genre adult fantasy published. There would certainly now not be the massive market for adult fantasy fiction that exists today. What you're complaining about is a very small slice of the public which does not like fantasy stories, whether they are genre or non-genre, and changing cover art won't help with that. The request that genre fantasy shrug off its sf genre origins to get in good with literary criticism is a little ungrateful, don't you think? And won't work either because you can dress the story up in any packaging you like, get it reviewed everywhere and there will still be people who think stories with magic in them are silly. You just have to live with it, Gary. When a genre author gets nominated for a major literary award (something with good odds of occurring,) and later on, when one wins the award, you can throw that author's name around if you're feeling disparaged. Or you can leave the genre altogether and publish your work as non-genre general fiction. It worked for Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Has the fantasy readership been mostly males, KatG?

The fan readership is predominantly male still, but draws in lots of females, more successfully than sf probably, cause girls think they're bad at science.

I know that was the case for the sci/fi reader for a long time,

It still is the case for the sf fan audience.

and that reader has moved on, which partially accounts for the scant number of titles being published today in sci/fi.

No they haven't moved on and it is not a scant number of titles being published in sf. SF had a massive surge of growth in titles and fan audience along with fantasy in the 1980's. What then happened was that sf couldn't sustain and continue that growth at that rate. Fantasy could only because it got another wave of new fans in the nineties for epic fantasy and for children's fantasy (Harry Potter) which spilled over into the adult genre. In the nineties, sf saw the beginning of a correction, which is not the same thing as a decline. Its fan audience stopped rapid expansion, but the genre is in many ways healthy with a number of authors having great sales numbers. Fantasy, after expanding and expanding, is now starting to see a correction/collapse in epic fantasy because it can't sustain that rate of expansion. Which way sf is going to go -- erosion of fan audience, renewed growth, absorption into the mainstream -- is up in the air right now. Erosion is feared. A financial depression in fantasy is also feared. But the fan audience for sf is still there. It's just compared to the fantasy hoopla, it looks tinier than it really is.

Science itself is ahead of the author, so it is difficult to write anything truly imaginative in that field.

I know this is a popular tune in the media right now, but that's because the media don't actually read sf. The idea that sf is dying because technology has somehow outstripped imagination comes up every couple of decades and has no basis in fact. SF is not reliant on coming up with new predictive scientific ideas. A lot of sf is sociological and has little to do with technological developments. But a lot of people are scared of science and feel they don't understand it, and that's been more of a deterrent to getting new sf fans than the rate of technological change. To say there are no sf ideas left just because we have cell phones? C'mon. Isaac Asimov would laugh at such an over-inflated sense of self-importance.

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

Don't understand the question -- it's considered genre epic fantasy, one of the earliest. Of course, she was better known for historical romance so you could argue it, but genre fantasy took in everybody when they were getting started as a category. There've essentially been two major generations of genre epic fantasy -- the first waves in the seventies and eighties like Salvatore, Brooks, Feist, Eddings, Bradley, Le Guin, McKillip, de Lint and so on; and the second generation in the nineties to today -- Jordan, Martin (though he wrote very early in the genre too,) Goodkind, Hobb, and so on.

 

[KatG]

I think KatG is correct, in that regardless of the (most likely fleeting) current popularity of Potter, LotR, et al,

I don't agree that the popularity of Harry Potter and the LOTR will be fleeting. LOTR has been popular for over fifty years. And Potter isn't going away probably forever, thank goodness.

if SF throughout its rich history could not "break into" the mainstream mindset,

SF is breaking into the mainstream. It started doing it in the 1950's and has been slowly working on it ever since. It is occasionally hampered by having authors who build up some literary SF credibility, then desert genre sf publishing for non-genre publishing, such as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Jonathan Lethem and Neal Stephenson. The genre itself had its biggest mainstream success in the 1980's due to the interest in cyberpunk sf. That's when it had that surge of growth. Now, the older iconic authors of genre sf are being studied in universities and getting new respect as writers. The surge of growth in genre fantasy has also dragged sf along with it, increasing sf's mainstream profile. And Hollywood loves sf -- it's a staple that cyclically reappears in film and does well on t.v.

fantasy is not going to either.

Non-genre fantasy is very much accepted by the mainstream and quite popular. And genre fantasy titles are knocking down acceptance walls. But the more successful at getting mainstream acceptance genre fantasy is, the more grumbling there will be about it doing so.

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!

Agreed.

 

[Gary Wassner]

You misunderstand me, KatG. i am grateful for the shelf space and I am grateful that fantasy is a category at all. I am just disappointed that it is percieved to be escapist and trite, even childish, as opposed to provocative and literary. DISAPPOINTED, not angry. I feel that many brilliant authors are consequently misunderstood and therefor passed over. That to me is sad. This is not about me.

My comments about sci/fi actually came from the last convention I attended where the publishers were lamenting the fact that they cannot purchase any good science fiction any longer because no one can compete with the evening news. I don't read sci/fi and I am not terribly interested in it. But I do know that the readership was primarily male oriented and quite young, relatively speaking.

I brought up the Mists because it left such a mark on me personally. It was so literary and so moody, still fantastic, and yet it was almost historical fiction. My question is where do book stores place it? Is it considered genre fiction or literature?

 

[KatG]

It is also amazing that so many people think that fantasy and sci/fi are the same thing.

When there are fans and writers of sf and fantasy who insist that there is no difference between the two, why would you find it surprising that non-fans are confused?

In my mind they are so totally and thoroughly different - as different as a classic mystery is to a thriller.

There actually isn't much difference between mysteries and thrillers. The label is often applied arbitrarily, depending on the author's sales profile. But I won't take you through the thickets of suspense fiction, because I think I've jawed on long enough.

If you really can't stand the reaction you get from non-genre fans, stop saying you write Epic Fantasy like Tolkein. Tell them you write literary fiction like Alice Sebold and the magic realists. They still may not know what you are talking about, but will be less derisive about it.

 

[Gary Wassner]

I am mystified by that actually. I have never thought sci/fi and fantasy to be even similar. The very fact that the word 'science' is in the title of one seems to distinguish it fundamentally from fantasy, which is often thought of as being diametrically opposed to science. My opinion.

I am very proud to say I write Epic Fantasy because I love it and love to write it. But, I can still be saddened by the fact that it is often misunderstood.

I said, classic mysteries - Christie and Doyle - not Patterson or Harris. Personally, I think the differences are massive.

 

[KatG]

You misunderstand me, KatG. i am grateful for the shelf space and I am grateful that fantasy is a category at all. I am just disappointed that it is percieved to be escapist and trite, even childish, as opposed to provocative and literary. DISAPPOINTED, not angry. I feel that many brilliant authors are consequently misunderstood and therefor passed over. That to me is sad. This is not about me.

I understand, and the feeling is shared by many. But ignoring genre fantasy's history and taking no pride in it because it's not considered worthy enough by others will not lead to the mainstream success you seek for the genre. What will, IMO -- time, familiarity, bestseller success, academic and literary recognition -- is already happening. It's just really slow. The more genre writers embrace and celebrate genre fantasy's commercial past, the faster mainstream acceptance and respect is likely to occur. And don't dis comic books.

My comments about sci/fi actually came from the last convention I attended where the publishers were lamenting the fact that they cannot purchase any good science fiction any longer because no one can compete with the evening news.

Oh great. That's going to be their lame excuse for cutting their sf lists. Drat. I was hoping that wasn't happening. That means they're also dumping their classic backlists and cutting lose the veteran writers. This is bad. And it's going to have bad repercussions for fantasy too. You think they'd have come up with something more original. Oh well, so I'm coming into the market at a really bad time. I'll just have to cross my fingers tighter.

I brought up the Mists because it left such a mark on me personally. It was so literary and so moody, still fantastic, and yet it was almost historical fiction. My question is where do book stores place it? Is it considered genre fiction or literature?

It depends on what the bookseller feels like (assuming any booksellers are still keeping Mists in stock.) They might put it in genre fantasy or general fiction. It was published at the beginning, when the genre was first being formed. They just adopted the series to attract the new fan audience they wanted, just as they put Tolkein out in paperback.

 

[Gary Wassner]

I think you are correct about that. All of the things you mentioned will help the genre, and they are happening. I think it is an incredibly saleable genre IF people understand that it can also be literary and intelligent. People who never had any contact with fantasy saw LOTR, and many were surprised at just how much they loved it. In fact, strangely enough, my sister who is a brilliant woman and an avid reader, never read fantasy until she read the pre-pub proofs to my books as a favor to me, so that she could spot any last minute errors that everyone else missed. She loved them too, and she is now even logging on to some of the boards to silently read more about the genre.

Sadly, YA sci/fi, which in a sense is the market it was always geared to, is fading. Yes, the publishers and editors complained that they cannot find enough that is ahead of the imaginations of today's readers and today's scientific possibilities. But, I think it is just a matter of time until the imagination once again starts to think outside of the box here and begins to come up with unexpected possibilities. Science has just made so many astounding and frightening leaps in the past decade, that people's minds need to catch up.


I went to a Barnes and Noble in NYC, a very large one, and they did not carry The Mists of Avalon! How tragic.

 

[alison]

Phillip Pulman won a mainstream literary award (the Whitbread, if I remember correctly) for the last book of His Dark Materials.

It seems to me that a lot of girls are getting heavily into fantasy, and not because they think they're bad at science. My readers seem to be 50/50. That question has a lot more to do with whether fantasy has interesting and strong female characters: the trad genre stuff is very often extremely weak in that area. I was quite envious of my daughter, who when she was six was addicted to Xena: Warrior Princess: how I wished that Xena had been around when I was a girl! I had to imagine myself into all those stories. Mists of Avalon was a welcome exception.

Personally, I want my books to sell. Writing is my source of income, and I can be quite hard nosed about that - I don't much like being broke and believe me, I've been broke a lot. But I won't let my books be simplified or dumbed down to satisfy what I consider cod expectations of the genre or to please some imaginary "market" (I had a big battle with my editor on those questions over my last book).

 

[Gary Wassner]

My editor was great. All that she required is that there were no homophobic or racist references in my books. That was never a problem, so it was very easy for me.

I write exactly what I want to. But I do not depend upon my sales to earn a living. When you do, it has to have an influence at some point or another. I don't mean that you have to compromise your ideals and values, but you do you compromise to some extent on other issues? On the covers, perhaps? Do you have control of your artwork, Alison? Do you choose the artists?

What if your publisher said to you that they cannot sell a book longer than 500 pages? What would you do?

I wonder to what effectxt these kinds of publisher/editor issues really do have upon what is written and what ultimately reaches the shelves.

Pulman writes YA fantasy, right? When you are writing for the YA market, fantasy seems to garner much better reviews. For some reason, it is more acceptable to write 'this kind of stuff' for kids.

 

[alison]

I guess I compare writing the fantasy novels with writing poems. The print runs on an average book of poems are modest, to say the least: 1000 is a huge one. Usually it's 300 to 500. So with my poetry, or when I've written for theatre, the last thing I'm thinking about is sales. My main - in fact, my only - ambition is to write a beautiful aesthetic object of some kind.

So writing these novels is, for a start, a bit different, because I do want them to sell. My idea of that is that I write them in good, clear English, with characters that a reader can empathise with, and with a story that makes people want to read the next page (these are things that I don't worry about in my other work). I'm incapable of working for that long on something that doesn't please or excite me: it has to please me first. If I was writing just for money, I'd still be a journalist (and no doubt considerably richer). But I do write them with an audient (ideal reader: me at 17, or 42) in mind. That means, I guess, that there are certain places I don't go, not in these books: sexuality exists in this world, but by no means explicit, and although parts are pretty violent, I'm not going to do the splatter thing. But these are things I decide, not my editors.

I won't compromise on my writing, and I'll not change anything if I can't see any good reason. I've been pressured to at times, and resisted. But I'm smart enough to pick up any suggestions that improve the book. And that's what a good editor does. I've learned a great deal about writing through working with editors. As for the rest - the question of length hasn't arisen, and I doubt it will. So far they're all around the same size, and I don't plan on making the final one any longer. And no, I don't have any control on what the books look like. That's wholly up to the publishers, though the nice ones always involve me in a dialogue, and send me early proofs for comments, &c. But in the end, and this is clear, it's up to them. When it's a gorgeous book, as I think The Naming will be, and the UK edition of The Gift is, it's not a problem at all. But I really like all that collaborative stuff (though like all collaborations, things can go wrong - people are people, after all).

I'm sure experiences vary from writer to writer; relationships are such personal things, and publishing a book is, among other things, about forming relationships. And I don't know a single writer without a horror story to tell .

You're probably right on the YA thing.