Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="afreed" data-source="post: 1538034" data-attributes="member: 2281">I know this is just a minor point, but this being the Internet, I'm obliged to nitpick. You can argue that the chain bookstores have done a lot of damage in certain ways, but I strongly dispute that they've harmed the small press. You're much more likely to find books from a small press in a big chain bookstore than in a small shop, simply because they can afford it; a small shop can't afford to buy something from every small press out there, because they have much less shelf space and much less cash. They have to stock primarily what sells simply to stay solvent. The big chains can have shelves and shelves of bestsellers, but they also draw an audience by stocking a little of everything. I've found plenty of small press books at my local Borders.(It's probably worth pointing out that you don't have to be a big chain to make this work; you can be a gigantic independant, like Powell's in Portland, OR.)To stay on topic, my thoughts on fantasy: Nah, it's not changing much. It's got a bigger audience than ever--not just in prose (though I'd bet sales of fantasy novels are higher than they've ever been), but in video games, RPGs, movies, and so on. Off the top of my head, I'd say the two major fantasy trends over the last few decades have been the growth of slipstream / magical realism / whatever you want to call it, and inbreeding--that is, fantasy derived from fantasy, rather than from real world sources.</blockquote>

Verification