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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5098974" data-attributes="member: 177">Note that "poor" has two meanings.  One is "low quality" the other is "without much money".If an author is really good right out of the gate, he or she can likely write their own story, in their own world, and get it sold.  If an author is perhaps not so good out of the gate, selling them might require a bit of a boost - say, from a known brand identity?  I don't have the data, but I wouldn't be surprised if writing in some of the shared worlds (where the world is also a recognizable brand to the target audience) pays less than non-shared world writing.  Simply put, if you're cheap, you'll tend to get lesser writing.---There are several shared worlds that hold up well, at least for a while.  The first few "Thieves' World" books are good.  The first few "Wild Cards" books are solid.  Both of those series took a downward turn after a few volumes, however.It would be interesting to know if in these cases some of the latter books were driven by contractual obligation - if you are required to print something, you sometimes can't be so picky as to what you print.I'll note that, for most intents and purposes, the original Dragonlance trilogy is not really shared-world writing. It is more like original world writing, as Weis and Hickman were the originators - setting up the scene, on which others had to follow.  Things after the original trilogy are shared-world, and are of scattered quality.I have not re-read them in years, so my thoughts on this are suspect, but some of the first Forgotten Realms books aren't craptastic.  I recall a pattern - the better ones are where the author is the first to work in that region of the world (the original Moonshae Trilogy, f'rex) - they are meshing with less established continuity, and probably have to worry less about cramming their works into the formula. Then, you have things like the Man-Kzin Wars - which to my mind remain good through something like 10 or more volumes!  Here, the cause seems pretty obvious - Larry Niven opened the world to sharing because he doesn't consider himself qualified to write war stories.  But, he does have a sense for what makes good work.  As I understand it he's kept a tight control over who and what gets published in the series.  So, here's a case where solid editorial control (and choosing good authors - Niven has the clout to ask for stories from some quality people) has created a shared-world series that maintains quality.---So, all in all, I am not surprised that many shared worlds books are crap.  But then, as Sturgeon's Law says - 90% of everything is crap.  Here's a thought - when you pick up a book to read, frequently you are doing so on a recommendation, or because you already know the author.  There's a selection process prior to the purchase.  But, if you are following a shared world, you pick up the next book regardless of who wrote it.  You are thus getting exposure to a wider selection of authors - 90% of whom are crap.The question is this: compare picking up the next book in a shared world with picking a non-shared-world book at random from the same genre section of the bookstore.  Which do you expect is more likely to get you a quality read?</blockquote>

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