Seriously, the paranormal romance thing is a trap. Romance is a larger market. You bring in readers from there by selling things they like. Sales go up. But at the same time, the fiction a lot of traditional fans were reading gets pushed out. What happens to those sales over the course of time? My theory is that it moves ever more toward World of Warcraft as they try to capture another larger audience.

Maybe I’m just being negative… I’m not against paranormal romance. I think it’s a good thing actually. I’m just seeing so much push for those books while other types of books that I like seem to be diminishing.

David, your note that fantasy publishing is being driven by the paranormal romance sub-genre is certainly true of the US, but not so much of the UK and the rest of the world (though it is moving that way).

Certainly, some US publishers have noticed – or perhaps, believe in – a crossover between the fantasy readership and that for romance, believing that both want a certain kind of aspirational, wish-fulfilment experience that is very comforting. And in my experience, a lot of readers are drawn to fantasy for those things.

Very good games can be really emotionally evocative for some aswell. I know people who have cried at the end of RPGs!

As a kid I did find RPGs like Zelda to leave a lot of room for interpretation so books and games were always very similar experiences for me. That might be because I was so young and, for example, I’d imagine at length what the defiled “Hyrule Temple” would look like on the inside once I could get in, just the same as I’d picture a place in LOTR my Dad was reading to me.

Age is probably quite relevant to this discussion.

And there you have the problem that we’ve been discussing over on http://www.thegenrefiles.com in a nutshell – many fantasy writers have been doing ‘different’ things – writing challenging, interesting, event literary fiction that goes well beyond the traditional quest tropes of the standard fat fantasy – for just as long as science fiction writers have – Moorcock, Bradbury, Harrison, Mieville, Shepard, Lethem, Powers, Swanwick, Gaiman, Gentle, Whitbourn, Cook, Erikson, Holdstock – these are just a few names off the top of my head and there must be dozens more.

And yet (no offence to Infernal Teddy) here we have a comment assuming that writing well and writing fantasy at the same time is somehow a new phenomenon… exactly why audience education is so important. 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.

Besides, I don’t think most of fantasy is as Tolkien as most people claim. Someone I met at a library asked me for some good books with elves in them. I was stunned because I could only give them two good titles, despite the cliches. I suggested WotC books but they thought them too commerical. Outside of Terry Brooks and a couple of others, I don’t see that much Tolkien. More Arthurian. A lot of Sir Walter Scott with a bit of magic thrown in.

And a lot of the fantasy movement these days is based on luring in the romance market with paranormal romance and contemporary fantasy bordering on paranormal romance. The feminine aesthetic is energizing book publishing, the masculine is driving games.

I do think overdeveloped worlds and detailed, scientific magic systems are a problem. Look at the Harry Potter books. No defined magic or detailed world, except in terms of atmosphere. Magic is relegated to plot, as it should be.

That is certainly the case when viewed against MMORPGs or other electronic media, but falls down when placed against Tabletop Games. Tabletop RPGs and Story Games can easily match any novel for character background and development, and since each player is given authorship over their character it hits the themes and ideas that those participants are looking for.

However, I think it’s important to note that traditional high fantasy tropes are only a very small portion of the RPG industry, and while Fantasy games like D&D continue to beat Mr. Tolkein’s Dead Horse with regard to races and faux-medieval settings, both games and books that have a unique and well considered perspective on fantasy make their mark. Obviously there is a certain resistance to originality and innovation in printed media – as in any industry where the product is vetted by others, be it movies, music, etc. – which has the potential to keep authors “behind the innovation curve” as it were, but that’s just an unfortunate weakness of the industry. With self-publishing becoming more prevalent and easy to accomplish, I imagine we will see an even greater tide of innovation in written fiction before too long.

The problem is, there is no one reader. Opinions and tastes are extremely complex and diverse. You can lump them into groups, if you really try, though. There is certainly a very large number of conservative readers who like what they like and don’t want anything new – the chips-with-everything group. There is a much smaller avant garde readership who want to be challenged. And there is a broad group of readers who are open to new experiences, if they can stumble across them. Here, it’s the stumbling across which is the problem, when many large chains only carry a narrow range of books.

One of the key issues seems to be what the reader wants, and they theory that if authors become too innovative or push the boundaries too far, that the genre reader won’t like it because they like to stay in their comfort zone.

It’s hard not to feel a bit offended by this. I feel like this is undervaluing the reader (as in me). I don’t want to read the same stuff re-hashed. I want fresh ideas and stories. I want fantasy that makes me think and laugh and is unpredictable.

The boundaries need to be pushed, else I for one will feel fantasied out……

http://www.joeabercrombie.com/.....-bile.html

In short, I don’t think we should be too worried. The spreading of fantasy into the mainstream only broadens the market, if we can find ways to take advantage…