[knivesout]

I really don't give two hoots for the financial-marketing-business-most readers-yada yada. I'm a reader, my money's as good as anyone else's and I'm not wasting any of it on anyone who plays it safe and merely gives me more of the same.

And for all that the obese fantasy stuff still dominates the market, there is a shift - just a shift, a broadening of the landscape, not a revolution, to be sure - taking place. I doubt that China Mieville's Perdido Street Station or Jeff VanderMeer's Veniss Underground would have found big-name publishers or notched up the solid sales they have about ten years back.

The faux-mediaeval doorstop stuff will never die for the same reason bublegum pop songs about adolescent infatuation will never die, but let's not restrict the genre and its readers to just that. I've almost stopped buying OCDs because shops here rarely stock the bands I want to hear. So I'm forced into being a criminal by taking part in piracy. If the influx of fantasy fiction was similarly dominated by pabulum, well, I wouldn't be reading so much and saying so much about it, would I?

Also, do the marketing mavens know that their bloody 'safe' marketing of trad fantasy attributes may actually be limitng the genre? I know several voracious readers who have an appreciation for the fantastic side of things, but stay away from most fantasy because:

a. It has such cheesy cover art - swords, knights, terrible gold-embossed fonts. Sheesh.

b. Everything is like Volume 76 of the 100-book Swords of Avallonia Series. Come on - either tell me one story in one book once in a while or leave me alone!

c. They didn't even like Tolkien that much in the first place and it all looks like more Tolkien.

I suppose the market surveys never really get to this particular focus group. Typical.