Genre fiction marketing follow-up - Lou Anders and Mark Chadbourn

Sorry folks, another long, train-of-thought essay of exactly the sort I promised myself I wasn't going to get overly involved in any more. But then, there have been a couple of very interesting follow-up posts to my last post on George Mann's original thoughts about the apparently essential dilemma of marketing genre fiction to either the masses or the hardcore fans, which I felt I had to add to.

Firstly, 'The Big Book Cover Post: Wizards and Spaceships' from Lou Anders of Pyr Books; another specialist genre imprint that I have a huge amount of respect for.

Lou makes a number of good points, a couple of which I'd particularly like to comment on:

"Personally, I do not like the move away from illustration to design that I see coming out from a lot of houses (though it has its place for individual books - I'm talking about a general trend). I think to forgo illustration is to sacrifice one of the core strengths of SF&F and one of its unique selling points."

Generally, I prefer well-illustrated genre fiction book covers to ones that are produced with a strictly 'graphic design' aesthetic in mind. But that's just a personal preference, and doesn't hold true 100% of the time; I've seen some striking and well-designed 'graphic' covers as well. And as fantasy author Joe Abercrombie points out in the comments section of Lou's post: "I don't know that the wider audience ... are necessarily put off by genre covers, but they certainly are put off by REALLY BAD covers."

Absolutely right. It applies to hardcore genre fans and probably tenfold to the general reader. Genre fiction book covers ought to be a demonstration of self-confidence and celebration, yes. They should unashamedly wear their genre hearts on their sleeves, absolutely. If you're selling a book about dragons and want to attract the attention dragon-fans, then a dragon on the cover is a good idea? Just make sure it's a stylish, well-illustrated dragon that has a measure of genuine artistic merit in its own right, not some cartoonish, lumpen sketch, or even the dragon-fans might say no.

And what if the book has some genre elements, but has the potential to appeal to a wider audience - through the exceptional quality of the prose, or the range of themes, concepts and sub-texts the author explores, or the incredible catharsis inherent in the principle character's life story or situation, etc. - what if it's a whole lot more than a simple scion quest / space war adventure story? How do you strike the balance; ensure you don't cross that oh, so tricky invisible line? Lou Anders has an answer:

"...you do so neither by hiding / omitting your genre elements nor presenting them in an off-putting, garish manor, but by presenting them in a mature, intriguing, attractive, inclusive, compelling 21st century light."

Which, by the way, I think applies equally to everything from the cover blurb to the author photo on the inside sleeve to the content of the accompanying press release that's sent out with review copies, as much as it does to the cover art itself.

Returning to cover art, specifically, Lou also quotes from an off-thread conversation with illustrator / artist / designer John Picacio who sums up the reason why the genre really does need to give itself a shot in the arm when it comes to self-confidence and belief:

"The field must visually celebrate itself, rather than run away from itself ... When sf/fantasy publishing shows an insecurity about its visual strengths, that insecurity rubs off negatively not only on our audiences, but in the broader media, and we push ourselves backwards every time we do that."

If we, as genre readers and genre fans, stopped worrying so much about what the wider mainstream media thought about our books - taking it to the extreme: ignoring the mainstream media completely and focusing almost entirely on the specialist genre presses, blogs, webzines, print 'zines - then the mainstream media will soon get bored and leave us the hell alone to enjoy ourselves in peace, right?

Well, fantasy / horror author Mark Chadbourn thinks this could be a dangerous road to go down, and says so in 'Selling Fantasy by the Pound' on his JackofRavens.com blog.

Mark was a journalist for many years before he became a full-time fiction writer and also writes for TV here in the UK, so he's seen the impact of the aforementioned Long Tail economics on three media channels: music, print and television.

Mark's main argument against a policy of appealing to the core genre fiction fans centres on his experience of the music industry:

"...if it [the fan-focused approach] was applied to the whole industry I would have real problems. In the music industry, where I worked for a while, the marketeers have struggled. By focusing on the tribalist music fan that has emerged over the last twenty years, they have had trouble gaining breakout hits from genres. Attention shifted to marketing bland fare that would appeal to all tastes to gain those mainstream hits, and sales have fallen dramatically (yes, I know there are many other factors, but this is a core concern)."

Which brings in an earlier discussion on 'quality fantasy', which was actually sparked by another Chadbourn post, 'Are RPGs killing fantasy?', in which he called for fantasy writers to embrace their weird side and distance themselves from the clichés and standardised fantasy tropes made overly familiar by a plethora of fantasy-themed computer games.

Can you achieve all those aims at once? Can you write high-quality, literary genre fiction that's successfully marketed to a core audience of fans, yet still has enough break-out potential to escape the genre-ghetto and achieve mass-market sales?

Mark thinks you can:

"I love fantasy, science fiction and horror. I believe these three genres are appealing to mainstream tastes, if some way can be found to communicate their values to the casual browser. I'm afraid that an across-the-board retreat to the 'core fan model' will ghettoize them even further and lead to a long-term decline. The best way for the industry, I think is - to use music industry analogy - hardcore labels for the purist, and general labels to attract new users."

Well, surely this model already exists within the publishing industry, and has for years? If you'll excuse the lengthy aside and apologies to anyone not specifically mentioned by name:

At one extreme you have the very definite 'hardcore' independent presses - such as the UK's Tartarus Press, who cater for very specialist niches. Moving up the scale you find successful niche-indies like Pendragon (horror fiction in all its guises), Telos (TV guides and genre novellas) and Elastic (genre short fiction collections and anthologies). Then there are larger indies - PS Publishing in the UK, Subterranean Press, Cemetery Dance et. al. in the US - who produce a wider range of authors and formats across the whole spectrum of genres, and also larger specialists such as Titan (UK graphic novels).

Crossing to the 'corporate' ladder we start with smaller imprints, whose publication range may actually be narrower than the larger indies, but whose financial backing means they can usually spend more on advertising, marketing and online promotion and so reach a wider audience. Solaris are one such: self-declared as a midlist imprint, still relatively small but growing strongly and with the financial muscle of Games Workshop and the Black Library publishing operation behind them, backing up their online know-how.

Around about the same level are the genre titles that are published by major corporates who don't have a specific genre imprint - Penguin, Transworld, Hodder, Headline and co. all put out titles with varying degrees of blatant genre-ness as part of their overall fiction lists.

Finally, we get to the larger, longer-established, specific genre imprints of major corporate publishing houses, including HarperCollins' Voyager, Orion's Gollancz Books and Little Brown's Orbit. The latter, with the recent launch of Orbit US and Orbit Australia, now serves the three major English-speaking markets (four, including Canada via the US), giving it immense reach and influence. And they all bring a highly effective mix of established bestsellers and innovative new talent to the market.

Thanks to Gollancz and Orbit in particular, a number of new genre authors have been published for the first time in the past couple of years, and others who have established themselves in their local markets (Australian author Margo Lanagan) or via the independent presses (Joe Hill with his debut collection 20th Century Ghosts from PS, now a Gollancz author) have subsequently been introduced to a much wider audience; some of those authors even making national bestseller lists in the process (Trudi Canavan, for instance).

So surely, with that sort of established mix of 'hardcore' and 'general' labels, it's just a question of the writer deciding which audience their work is most likely to appeal to and then approaching a publisher who is geared towards publishing for that audience?

Well, of course it's nowhere near as simple as that, and Mark Chadbourn has a few further words of warning for the genre writer:

"But that is a fiendish and crippling trap for the writer. Once you establish yourself in one pool or the other it will be very hard to crossover and gain, on the one hand, the new readers and wider sales that sustain your career, and, on the other, credibility that is just as valuable a commodity in the internet-empowered world."

So it sounds like you can either - as a genre author - choose to write specialised, credibility-rich, literary fiction, knowing full well that you'll probably end up appealing to a much smaller pool of potential readers (writing for the Long Tail audience), or narrow your horizons; dumbing-down in the process, in order to appeal to the RPG-influenced, bland-fare consuming mass market and (hopefully) laugh all the way to the bank (moving your work away from the 'long tail' and into the 'short head', where the bestsellers feed).

Of course, you could try do both at the same time. Many authors do, either openly or - I'm sure - pseudonymously.

Or you could try to find another way: by helping the readership to raise its standards; to expect, to want, to demand much more from their genre fiction, and thereby move the mainstream audience closer to the credible, literary end of the spectrum. In other words, expanding the middle ground between 'long tail' and 'short head' (it would help if I had time to draw the graph, I'll try to add one at a later date) and creating greater potential for higher quality fiction to thrive.

If the readership demands richer, better quality genre fiction, and the readership then votes with its credit cards and buys more of it, then the publishers of the world will respond by publishing more of it. And I know for a fact that this would make a lot of genre fiction publishers immensely happy.

Anyhow, I'm going to go away and ruminate some more, see if I can pull a few thoughts together into something resembling a reasonably coherent framework. Or a polemic. Or another rambling essay (most likely). Won't happen for a while yet though... far too much interesting work happening right now, and an imminent and much-needed holiday to enjoy as well.

Feel free to comment away if the urge takes you. I'll try to keep track, but can't promise anything like a coherent response for a couple of weeks or so...

October 24, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Publishing, Work, Writing | 4 Comments

Essential reading: George Mann on packaging the SF & Fantasy genres

George Mann of Solaris Books has posted an insightful piece on the Solaris approach towards the design, packaging and presentation of their genre fiction book covers, in a feature called 'Marrying Authors to their Market: a Genre Perspective', over on the Solaris Books main website.

He opens with a couple of paragraphs that neatly explain the two principle strategies that are open to genre publishers when it comes to choosing a cover design, along with the primary risks associated with each:

1) Attempt to reach as wide an audience as theoretically possible - primarily by 'neutralising' the cover in order to avoid scaring away potential mainstream book-buyers - which runs the risk that the book might get lost in a no-mans'-land somewhere between the two.

2) Target the 'core' genre fiction audience - by making it blatantly obvious through the design of the book cover that this is a genre title with little or no pretensions to mainstream appeal whatsoever - which runs the risk of limiting the sales potential to a relatively small segment of the overall market.

Solaris Books, since their inception and launch earlier this year, have stuck determinedly to option 2) and it's an approach which has paid handsome dividends, as George tells us:

"For Solaris, this approach has so far served us proud. The list is defiantly midlist, aimed at a core readership, and as both individuals and publishers we revel in the genre, in all its aspects and forms – novels, movies, manga, comics. We celebrate our inner geeks. Although we recognise there are other successful ways to package books and appeal to readers, we've chosen to go in this direction. Our books look like science fiction and fantasy novels, with all the stereotypical trappings, and we've received a great deal of praise from both critics and readers for our celebration and support of the genre. Our lists – both Solaris and The Black Library – go from strength-to-strength, and for now, our strategy remains steadfast: we publish books for SF/F fans, for the SF/F section of the bookshop."

Of course, just sticking any old space ship or dragon on a book cover won't guarantee success. You still have to come up with a design that's striking, appeals to the right audience, and yet isn't so crushingly, embarrassingly awful that even the most die-hard genre fiction fan will be too embarrassed to be seen reading the book on public transport. Which is something else that Solaris have managed quite brilliantly to-date, with a selection of (imho) extremely good covers, like these:

Solaris book of New Science Fiction ed. by George Mann

Solaris book of New Fantasy ed. by George Mann

I think this is absolutely the right approach to take, and the roaring success of Solaris is something that every genre publisher should be paying attention to. But the 'packaging and cover design' riff only tells half the story.

We live in an age of increasingly influential Long Tail economics (see Wikipedia for a useful summary: "products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough"), and genre fiction is a product area that's massively impacted by the principles of the theory.

As students of the Long Tail know and as Chris Anderson makes clear in his book of the same title (which, incidentally, every publisher and author working in genre fiction needs to read): in this Internet-enabled information age, data on the variety and wide availability of a range of products in a given product area is - for practical purposes - both limitless and free.

From the point of view of the Long Tail audience for a particular product, the most pressing task is therefore to filter that vast flood of data in order to select the products that offer the best fit for the customer's needs. In short: they need to boost the signal-to-noise ratio to the point where they can reach an informed purchasing decision. Similarly, from the point of view of the producer, the trick is to somehow rise above the vast sea of info-noise; to make their product stand out and be noticed, yet to do so in a manner that emphasises its authentic appeal to the potential customer.

One of the best ways to accomplish both these tasks is via the medium of key, relevant information aggregators; those processes and processors who cut through the noise, pick out the best products on offer and then tell other people about them. Customers need to find trusted aggregators whose taste coincides with their own and who can be relied upon to tell it to them straight. Producers need to develop strong relationships with those same aggregators, in order to keep their products in focus and secure as much quality, targeted coverage as possible.

In the case of genre fiction, the aggregators take the shape of genre news websites, regular bloggers, knowledgeable booksellers, reputable critics and reviewers. Publishers and authors who understand the theories and forces involved are already tapping the ability of these aggregators to filter, disseminate and broadcast their knowledge-backed recommendations to a targeted, relevant, interested audience, and as a result they are driving forward sales of their titles.

George and the Solaris crew understand the Long Tail principle (along with a whole bunch of others to do with permission-based marketing, inherent remarkability and concepts like the ideavirus) which is why you'll always see them at genre conventions and gatherings of fans, why they maintain a regularly-updated and interesting blog (When Gravity Fails) and why if you're a reviewer, or a blogger, or a web 'zine editor, and you drop them a line, there's a good chance - if your site is professionally presented, or well enough regarded in terms of its Technorati authority, or if your enthusiasm is just incredibly obvious and obviously genuine - that they'll get right back to you with whatever information you need, perhaps a review copy of the book you're interested in, maybe even a promise to pass on your questions to one of their authors for an email interview.

All this is because at Solaris they know that by reaching out to those key aggregators they're potentially talking to many more (two, or three, or a dozen, or a few thousand) interested, enthusiastic, switched-on potential book-buyers. As a result, you'll find reviews and general coverage of Solaris titles all over the blogosphere and wider genre-flavoured corners of the Internet: 40,600+ hits on Google for "Solaris Books", and counting...

The Solaris crew aren't alone out there, either: there are publishers and business managers and publicists at many other independent presses - and even some of the larger genre imprints - who have an equal eye for and appreciation of the possibilities on offer. But alas, some of those guys are hamstrung by the corporate rule-book; locked into dictated, old-school ways of doing business which haven't changed much since Amazon appeared on the scene; which is why they might not seem quite so active (although dammit, they're doing their best).

And then there are those guys who, for whatever reason - sheer disinterest, the corporate grind, a genuine lack of time to read and re-train, higher-ups who don't give a shit about genre fiction and don't care who knows it, whatever - just don't seem to get it. If you're a genre author who's stuck with one of those guys as your publisher / editor / publicist, then all is not lost; but you probably are going to have to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in yourself. But then, that's no bad thing either, providing you do it well and do it with enthusiasm and genuine interest.

Anyhow, to return (at last) to the original topic of cover-design and offer a quick summary:

As a matter of policy, Solaris Books have declared that they're very firmly targeted at the 'core' genre market, and the 'core' genre market has responsed well, by buying Solaris titles. But I think the essential 'genre-ness' - and high quality - of their cover design is just one key ingredient of their overall recipe for success; their aesthetic excellence is backed up by the whole gestalt attitude of everyone at Solaris Books, one that says: "We're genre fiction fans, and we're publishing for genre fiction fans, which is why we want to talk to them and find out about the sort of books they want to read; so we can make sure that those are the books we publish..."

I think it's a great policy, indeed quite possibly the only one that really makes any sort of Long Tail sense. After all, why waste money, effort and a book's increasingly limited and precious exposure-time (one senior genre fiction editor revealed at a panel at this year's Fantasycon that most UK bookstores now only give titles a six week lead-time before they insist on returning them to the publisher for full credit) on a scatter-shot approach that you hope will result in increased sales and market-share, when instead you could focus all your energy on a key segment of the overall audience; one that's that's already receptive and ready to hear what you have to say?

In short: until you know you've talked to as many fans and regular readers of a given book's relevant genre(s) as you can possibly reach - as many interested, excited, purchase-pre-disposed, potential book-buyers as you can find - then why on Earth would you want to take the gamble of trying to talk to just anyone? Especially when it ought to be painfully obvious by now that most non genre-fiction readers and fans just aren't listening...

So, yes, I look forward to seeing many more fine and very definite genre fiction titles with well-designed, eye-catching genre-fiction artwork on their covers, from Solaris and all the other publishers with a similarly switched-on outlook. I hope those same books will continue to fly off the bookstore shelves and online catalogues. And, speaking as one of those aforementioned information aggregators, I hope to continue to play my own small part in that process...

October 18, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing, Publishing, Work, Writing | 2 Comments

A short pause to reflect and reorganise

With the launch of the long-awaited PS Publishing webstore this week I ought to be able to find a bit more room in my head for other things (although there's still plenty of work to be done for PS and I certainly won't be slacking). As a result, I think the time has come for me to put a long-pondered blog reorganisation into effect.

Here's the plan:

The Genre Files from now on will be all about the books [resists the urge to add 'baby!'] and the graphic novels, and the authors, and anything interesting that that's going on in the world of genre publishing and book marketing that particularly grabs my attention. I might even hold forth on the subject of effective book marketing from time to time and, who knows, maybe even post a link round-up or two... oh, and what do you think of the new decor? Stylish, no?

www.DarrenTurpin.co.uk is my recently set-up (but not yet fully functional) work-related blogfolio (if I can get away with that) and that's where I'll be talking about the work I'm doing with all my clients: authors, publishers, SMEs, the lot. I'll be adding a number of short case studies as I go along as well.

UK SF Book News is just over a year old and is ticking over nicely at the moment, with what seems to be a pretty good mix of shorter news-bite length announcement / press release / what's on items interspersed with longer mini-interview and featurette pieces, and I hope the situation will be able to continue pretty much indefinitely.

And finally... at some point I'll be setting up a new blog at www.darrenturpin.me.uk (unless I can think of a more interesting - and available - domain name in the meantime; one that isn't quite so narcissistic and navel-gazey, perhaps). But anyhow, that's where I'll be talking about all the other stuff I find interesting: music, food & drink, football, photography, art, gardening, nature... ah, hell, whatever I feel like. I'll be thinking of it more as an aide-memoire and extended memo-to-self than any sort of broadcast piece and if nobody else ends up reading it then I really won't mind.

So that's the plan. Still very busy at the moment though, and with a week's holiday coming up fast, so it might be a month or so before all the pieces are in place. But so be it.

October 17, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging | 2 Comments

More follow-ups and reaction to the current 'quality fantasy' debate

UK fantasy author Joe Abercrombie has added his own thoughts on the topic, highlighting George R.R. Martin's ongoing Song of Ice and Fire series as a good example of how a concentrated, focused dose of innovation within a narrative that's structured on familiar fantasy themes and tropes can produce impressive results. As Joe says: "Epic fantasy is, in book terms, extremely successful and so it tends also to be conservative. But that doesn't mean you can't offer something new while still working within the form," and adds a few pithy thoughts on the non-desirability of too much innovation, which will do nothing to diminish his burgeoning reputation as a notorious potty-mouth...

Meanwhile, in the comments on my previous post, Mark Newton - of the UK's Solaris Books - points out the hard commercial realities afflicting the publishing industry at the moment, due to the mergers of various conglomerates into even larger super-conglomerates and the internal pressures that this generates, which he hopes will allow mid-list publishers - like, say, the UK's Solaris Books - to step in and offer a wider range of material to exactly those readers who are crying out for more than just the same-old, same-old.

And in the same thread, David Hebblethwaite wonders: "...how many writers of unchallenging fantasy actually do make a comfortable living from their writing? Are there any writers of good quality material who make a living; and, if so, what differentiates them from writers of similar stuff who do not?" Good questions. Any writers out there care to comment?

Also, SF Diplomat, pondering the issue further, asks whether the problem only applies to fantasy and why, indeed, that should be the case: "...why is it fantasy's job to be weird and different? Isn't the problem, from Harrison's perspective, that there aren't enough genre publications in general that are all that interested in The Other?" And he's rewarded in the comments on that piece with a visit from the man himself, who elucidates further on his original polemic: "To me, the very word 'fantasy' is what's at issue here, & my rant really asks the question, 'How do we bring the fantastic back to fantasy?' ... It's my contention that, by normalising and rationalising 'myth' and 'magic' the sub-genre you call 'non-weird populist' fantasy has become actually anti-fantastic. As a result, the appetite for the genuinely fantastic is less well served."

And finally, a certain Mr GBH Hornswoggler, Gent. is terribly, terribly bored by yet another debate on the death of quality genre fiction. Well dammit Mr Hornswoggler, but if we all spent as much time reading and writing blogs as you do then we'd all be just as well-informed and just as adroitly cynical about the whole jejune mess, I'm sure. But until that happy day, you'll just have to excuse some of us for being shallow... ;)

Mind you, our Mr H also makes a rather important point, opening with: "Insert my standard rant about the world primarily needing books that real readers will want to spend their own money on." Yes, this is exactly what we do need. As I posted in the comments thread back on Mr Chadbourn's original piece this morning: 'Without a receptive audience, any brave pioneers leaving the beaten track will run the risk of ending up in the literary wilderness - legends in their own literary lifetime, perhaps, but more than likely unable to sustain a decent income.'

So what we need to do is prime the readers to be more receptive to the sort of quality work that we're all pretty much in agreement here about wanting to see.

Again, more on that later in the week. Hopefully.

October 9, 2007 | Filed Under Publishing, Writing | 5 Comments

M. John Harrison on his preferred flavours of fantasy

Just spotted - via Mark Newton of Solaris Books, writing on When Gravity Fails - that M. John Harrison has also been expressing his views on fantasy fiction recently. He's very clear on the subject of why he reads fantasy fiction, and what he wants - and definitely doesn't want - to experience when he does:

"When I read fantasy, I read for the bizarre, the wrenched, the undertone of difference & weirdness that defamiliarises the world I know. I want the taste of the writer’s mind, I want to feel I'm walking about in the edges of the individual personality."

I agree wholeheartedly; in fact, the article as a whole neatly sums up the thoughts I was groping my way towards a while back (albeit far more eloquently, naturally).

Of course, being an immensely skilled wordsmith in his own right, M. John Harrison also writes for that same effect and as a result his work is incredibly intricate, and beautiful, and disquieting, and very weird, and sometimes just a little impenetrable and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone looking to push those aforementioned boundaries of their reading experience.

And yet - if I remember correctly from my bookselling days - I'm afraid his books just don't sell particularly well... which is a crying shame and exactly the sort of situation that needs to be turned on its head. But it does rather neatly illustrate SF Diplomat Jonathan McCalmont's point about the inherent problems with Mark Chadbourn's call to action.

Yes, if more writers moved towards writing the sort of fantasy that M. John Harrison both produces and appreciates, then we'd have a much richer and much more interesting literary landscape to explore, and this is altogether a good thing.

But given the currently prevailing business model in publishing, we'd also have a great many more writers who weren't able to earn an independent living from their work (that isn't meant as an inference or speculation on the state of M. John Harrison's finances or situation, I hasten to point out) or whose only outlet was the independent presses.

There would then be a great many more gaps in the mainstream market being filled by even more supermarket-fodder pap and the mainstream readers would still be sticking to what they know and still reading the same-old, same-old because that's all they have access to. After all, those big publishers aren't going to stop putting something out there, are they?

So, while I wholeheartedly agree with both Chadbourn and Harrison, I think McCalmont's argument is currently carrying the day: audience education is the key. More on that subject in a future post (time permitting).

October 6, 2007 | Filed Under Writing | 5 Comments

SF Diplomat responds to Mark Chadbourn

SF Diplomat Jonathan McCalmont posits an interesting twist on the point raised by Mark Chadbourn yesterday, by pointing out that the rot goes both ways: the tropes and stock characters of the fantasy genre are actually poisoning the well of wider-interest RPGs. It's difficult, he argues by way of example, to find a historical RPG that doesn't have some element of fantasy thrown in for good measure.

And in direct response to Mark's suggestion that fantasy authors need to innovate, Jonathan points out that there's an economic danger inherent in adopting too radical a stance: it's usually the readers themselves who demand stock fantasy and vote for it by way of their purchasing decision, so moving away from providing content for this market could prove financially damaging for the author:

"The problem here is that the vast majority of fantasy fans simply have no interest in innovation. If fantasy authors were to hear Chadbourn's rallying cry I suspect that the result would be a decrease in sales across the genre. The problem is not with the world of RPGs or lazy authors, it is the audience and until someone finds a way of evolving the tastes of that audience, the market will reward the writers who are able to pleasingly re-arrange old ideas and not those who present us with new ones."

Very good point, well made. Interesting to see how this one is developing. And I do have the inkling of an answer to his second point about how best to evolve the taste of the audience, but I'll need to work on it some more, I think...

October 6, 2007 | Filed Under Writing | Leave a Comment

Mark Chadbourn's call-to-action for fantasy writers

Just a quick note (as I'm still up to my eyeballs in work-related stuff) to flag up a very interesting post over on Mark Chadbourn's Jack of Ravens blog. It's about the changing landscape of the imagination, the changing role of fantasy fiction writers, and the challenge that fantasy writers face: of stepping out of the shadow of the RPG industry in all its multi-faceted forms and really pushing the boundaries:

"Fantasy authors need to find a new unique selling point. If they want to maintain their reputation as the elite of this field, they need to work their imaginations harder, start defining new territories, go to places that the gamers wouldn't (yet) dare to go.

"Who is up for that challenge?"

Damn good question. One I wish I had more time than I do right now to have a go at answering... anyone else want to chip in?

October 5, 2007 | Filed Under Writing | 1 Comment