Quote:
Originally Posted by Megari  We're more fussy nowadays. Consumer sovereignty and all that you know. |
Sorry to disagree, but I think we (as in the book-buying public) are actually
less fussy these days.
When
LotR was published, Fantasy (and note that I am careful not to include Science Fiction here) was a very small market...the author and the publishers had no great expectations of any kind of volume sales, and there was really no competition on the shelves. Now there's many, many writers, the market is huge, and the demand for it is enormous. If you told a publisher these days that a book would take 20 years to complete, they'd be most unlikely to take you on - but that demand has got to be met.
Nowadays, most people (not Chronners, obviously!) accept storylines that are weak, timelines that don't hang together, and characters that are derivetive, to put it mildly. It's more down to the publicity than the quality of the writing, IMHO - how else can you explain the success of Mr Paolini, to pluck an example from the air...?