D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

[Bedrockgames]

Small mindedness is a common emotional response if the real target of the anger is inaccessible.

I'm honestly not even sure what this is supposed to mean

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm honestly not even sure what this is supposed to mean

It’s not possible to attack the existence or racism and sexism, so people lash out at peripheral targets. It’s futile, but its human nature.

 

[overgeeked]

I think this is a great point.

It’s really not. Because…

Larry came into the industry as a self-published author, and even though he's been picked up and sells tons of books

Of this fact right here. There is self-publishing, vanity press, and also right-wing publishers like Baen that will print things just because the author is in lock step with with the editor’s or owner’s politics.

he is very much on the outside of mainstream Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror publishing.

Might be all the alt-Reich hate.

The whole point of Sad Puppies, which was over 10 years ago, was to highlight these differences.

No, it really wasn’t. It was a bunch of white men whining about women and people of color getting awards that “belonged” to white men.

I'm an English major, and I try to stay in touch with the book world, but what's awarded in the Hugo's is not what I'm interested in reading.

Not enough to recognize what Sad Puppies really was, apparently.

 

[nyvinter]

And I feel it's important to say this: that's fine. I'm 100% not trying to yuck anyone's yums here. The problem I see is that new authors getting into writing have problems getting noticed.

I'd say the big issue there is probably that people don't seek them out then. Because if we continue to look at the Hugo's, there were fix nominees and three were pretty famous (Leckie, Scalzi and Wells) and three were not so much (Chakraborty, Chandrasekera, and Tesh) and out of those Emily Tesh won. She has three books published. The other two had two and four.

And the Scalzi book was the one I didn't care for but he's popular and read, so I really don't feel the awarded vs read is an issue in speculative fiction as much as it is in movies. By miles and miles.

Good stuff is being published, a lot of good stuff. Some gets noticed, some don't and that you have to dig a little because it's no longer 1970 with (roughly) 150 fantasy/sf books published in a year. There's a tonne of speculative fiction published yearly in all shapes and subgenres.

 

[J-H]

I'm a bit surprised to see the OP saying Lord of the Rings isn't as relevant. It's the one that everyone I've played with is familiar with.
Is He-Man the new Conan? I know very little about either. I grew up reading science fiction from used book stores, so a lot of it was Golden Age work (40s-50s-60s)... never ran across much Conan.

I'd like to see a D&D take on the Berserkers (Saberhagen) but I'm concerned it would be hard to do since they are fairly monolithic. Most Berserker stories were about the people and situations rather than the enemies.

Sigh. Publishers picking which books they want to risk gobs of money on is not discrimination, nor is it censorship, nor is it a structural barrier. Publishers chase sales. They’re in the business of printing books that sell, if the books don’t sell well enough they go out of business. So yes, they chase trends, prefer authors with a platform, prefer authors with a good track record, etc. If they don’t they close. It’s simple as that. Markets and audiences change. No matter how much you love a given genre it will not stay popular forever. Sword & sorcery hasn’t been widely popular in decades. That’s not the fault of the publishers. Tastes change. We also have indie authors on platforms like Amazon self-publishing their work. If there’s a niche genre you like, you can find it there. Big publishing house not risking money on genres that don’t sell isn’t some kind of conspiracy.

I read Sarah Hoyt's blog (she's a f/sf author, successful enough to be full-time), and she very much felt like the publishing houses were filtering works by political affiliation rather than "what would sell." I've seen similar from other authors, as well.
These days it's wide open with self-publishing, and being tied to a publishing house may even be a net negative since paper books are out of style.

We don't see many Westerns these days either - at least compared to the 50s/60s. I think the superhero movie trend is about over. Tastes shift from generation to generation and decade to decade.

I wonder what's next?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Do they also not know about Cthulhu mythos and HP Lovecraft

In theory. And they know, in theory, about REH too. But theoretical knowledge does not produce the same emotional response as direct experience.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It’s not possible to attack the existence or racism and sexism, so people lash out at peripheral targets. It’s futile, but its human nature.

But if that is what someone is trying to fight there are much more effective things to focus on. Going after media people likes, doesn't help that cause. This has long been my argument here. I am no fan of racism. But you aren't going to beat it telling people their media is problematic and needs to change. That is their escape. That is how they take a break from the world and their problems

 

[overgeeked]

I read Sarah Hoyt's blog (she's a f/sf author, successful enough to be full-time), and she very much felt like the publishing houses were filtering works by political affiliation rather than "what would sell." I've seen similar from other authors, as well.

I’d never heard of her so just looked her up, found her blog, and cannot post about anything I saw there because it would violate the “no politics” rule. Suffice it to say, she’s definitely on side with the Sad Puppies. It’s weird how people with regressive and hateful views always think they’re persecuted. Maybe try not being regressive and hateful. Might help.

These days it's wide open with self-publishing, and being tied to a publishing house may even be a net negative since paper books are out of style.

Traditional book publishing lives in very thin margins. Indie publishing can exist on anything, even a loss if the author is willing to keep going no matter what. There are a lot of indie authors doing way better than mid-list trad authors. But even that is still a business. If a series stops selling, most will pivot to something that sells better. Again, there are some super dedicated indie authors who will publish their darlings regardless of sales.

We don't see many Westerns these days either - at least compared to the 50s/60s. I think the superhero movie trend is about over. Tastes shift from generation to generation and decade to decade.

That was the height of the Western in pop culture. Of course we don’t see as many now. But you can still find Westerns, you just have to look at indie authors because Westerns don’t make enough to justify printing them unless the author has a great track record or a huge platform.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

doesn't help that cause

Sure. Lots of things people do don’t help their cause. Usually there is nothing that can be done that would. but this is the UK, you can’t really say it’s “liked” here. Go after Dickens for antisemitism (true) and people would care. But Conan? Conan who? Doyle?

 

[Umbran]

I didn't say it was about comparing overall sales.

I know. You were opaque about what you meant, so I had to guess.

In general, if you're looking for evidence of discrimination, a good bet is to see if a particular kind of author is overperforming relative to expectations.

Ah, but there's a rub - How are the expectations determined? Who has unbiased expectations about book performance?

So the question becomes, who are the publishers taking risks on? Are they accepting every middling sword and sorcery plot that hits their desk while rejecting all but the most popular romantasy books? Or vice versa?

Does that make sense to you?

I understand, but this also depends on how we measure "risk" (like "expectations" above).

For a genre that is known and demonstrated to be popular, there's not much risk in taking even middling-quality stories, for example.

You might find a better measure in how well books move. If the publisher finds it is overprinting (so books get remaindered) or underprinting (so they have to unexpectedly do more printings as demand shows up) one entire genre more than another, then we know the publisher doesn't understand the market.

Personally, I think the contention that publishers in general are so ideologically driven that they won't follow the demand is pretty ludicrous. As if an entire industry of large corporations are going to knowingly leave money on the table... for shared principle? Really? Since when does that happen? Doesn't his notion fail a basic sniff test?