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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JLowder" data-source="post: 9785274" data-attributes="member: 28003">Absolutely. All important points. And before the TSR purchase, WotC had tried fiction both internally and as a license, with results that were not, in the end, satisfactory. So they were justifiably wary of fiction. This on top of the seismic changes to book sales occuring via Amazon in the late 1990s/early 2000s and the changes to the overall hobby entertainment market.With the TSR purchase, WotC bought a group of talented book channel experts such as Jim Fallone, though, and Peter brought Mary Kirchoff back to run the overall fiction program. She had run the Book Department at TSR at its height of commercial and, I would argue, widespread, deliberate creative success. In the years immediately after the buyout, WotC had the staff (in sales/marketing and in editorial) to make it work. But internal issues caused problems from the start, most notably the (misguided) push within the company to make D&D/d20 the "Windows of gaming" while moving away from building worlds and characters and stories.The problems transplanting the fiction program were obvious right from the start, too. Shortly after the buyout I was offered a job running what was going to be a new Magic fiction line, to be tightly coordinated with the CCG team and the newly planned Magic TTRPG, which would have had, as I recall, my old friend John Rateliff as lead editor. They were putting together a good team. They wanted me there because of my experience with heavy fiction–game project coordination. I ended up turning the job down, though it was certainly appealing, because I was concerned about the overall stability of the project and the commitment to fiction. Good thing, too, as the plans for the Magic TTRPG and fiction line were all burned to the ground before they went anywhere.When Hasbro came in, there was a window when the company could have shored up the fiction program and made it an important part of the Hasbro corporate octopus. Instead, they decided, no, they were not really fiction publishers. It made some sense, but was a missed opportunity. From there, it took more than a decade for the withering to occur, but they gradually lost most of the experts in sales and editorial who knew fiction and the book trade.It makes sense for them to license fiction now, but I hope they also will find ways to do more fiction published directly by the company, potentially bringing in both new, diverse voices and welcoming back some of the folks who have been away from the lines for a while.</blockquote>

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