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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1340921" data-attributes="member: 5171">Okay, in no particular order:Objective versus Subjective: If we try really hard, we can prove that it's impossible to know anything for certain, at which point the best thing for you to do is to bang your head against the wall a few times to make sure it's solid and not just a construct of your imagination.  Failing that, you can reword your arguments to say that your objective judgment of a book's merits is based on an agreed-upon system, and that's about as objective as one can be within that system, and people are still gonna argue, but at least the argument is about specific aspects of a book as opposed to whether or not a tree makes a noise if it falls in the forest while we're out complaining about objectivity being impossible and secretly trying to figure out how to work our Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance quote in.High art versus Low art: In some recent high-falootin' critics' circle thing, Ulysses was the number-one English-language novel of all time. The best part about it was that most of the critics voted it into that spot without having read it.  It's a classic in the modern cynical sense -- a book that it's more fun to say you have read than it is to actually read.  I've read it, and I loved it, but that was because I got to spend an entire college quarter going through it with a fine-toothed, comb, figuring out all the cool things Joyce did.In another thread, somebody mentioned that Ulysses was a turning point in literature, the point where high art separated from low art -- where something became only critically good if it was hard to read and generally unenjoyable for the common folks, such that only the cultural elite could understand it.  Before that, there was little or no distinction made along those lines, and books could be accepted as literary classics and as good entertainment.  Which I, as a writer, find annoying, because I try to write stuff that, you know, has a point, but is also entertaining as heck.The Fantasy Market:  Sure, it's more complex than it was portrayed in that post, but as somebody submitting to it and trying to figure out how to make my splash, I can say that it's most definitely geared toward series right now.  Whereas before, you had standalones and trilogies, new writers today are being explicitly told that trilogies (or, you know, heptologies, or duodecologies) are what the market wants, so that is, by and large, what's going to get accepted.  This is bad for the writers, who find themselves limited in scope to ideas that can be done for eight or nine books; for readers, who don't get to read good tight novels very often anymore because of what the publishers have decided we want; and for the publishers themselves, who are going to beat the horse until it stops moving and a "market correction" sends things into a tailspin.Exceptions exist, as always.  There are good single-book stories out there.  There are authors who have become powerful enough to do what they want and know that it will sell.  There are always folks who beat the odds.  I'm not saying that any of that isn't true.  What I am saying is that the message is being clearly delivered to new authors, implicitly through the shelves at Borders and explicitly on author's contracts -- "Do not write about new things each book.  Stick with what worked in the last book.  Keep the series going for as long as possible."My plan as a writer is to try and play it both ways.  If I write eight books that are all in one series, I can only try and sell the first one, because few people buy the fourth book in a series (Star Wars being the exception that proves the rule).  But if I write eight books, each in their own world, then I can try and sell all eight -- and if I leave each book open-ended enough to give me possible sequels, I've got a possible series to sell, even if I have to make a deal with the editors: every even-numbered book will be a book in the popular series, and every odd-numbered book will be a book in an original world that might possibly be popular to spin off a series of its own (like Modessit seems to do).</blockquote>

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