About the part where you say the series won't challenge the genre bestsellers or be as popular as Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time, I wonder why you didn't put A Song of Ice and Fire there, but then I guess that would have opened a whole different and horrible can of worms
Anyway, the challenge to the bestsellers and to the canons of the genre is undeniable on the conceptual level. It's not there on the level of popularity, but is this even desirable? Economic gratification I guess is nice for everyone, for a writer "reaching" more readers is also another undeniable aspiration, but does this come without costs? Let's assume it's a choice, how much you are willingly to sacrifice of your own integrity and the integrity of your work?
I was recently at a local festival about independent and experimental movies from around the world and it *pained* me how many voices are out there that will never be able to reach a broader public. One of these festivals is like a very narrow windows that opens on something huge and immensely beautiful. So few opportunities to reach for it. All of them struggle to find enough money to make a small movie but the gratification from the public is not what drives them. I think very few of them wish for Hollywood or to become widely recognized names. Often they struggle against Hollywood canonized language and conventions, fight to carve their own space. Their journey is troubled and personal, and often the scarcity of resources is what fuels creativity and originality.
If we take some recent big successes and names in the publishing industry, say the Twilight saga or Stieg Larsson books or Dan Brown, I don't think we can say they were intended to be so hugely popular. While in Hollywood the mass cultural products are carefully assembled and planned to be huge, in literature it's much harder to anticipate trends before they surface spontaneously. So I doubt Stephanie Mayer expected her books would become so popular. Yet we can take this success after the fact and deconstruct it to see from where it originated. There's always some lever that lifts the potential and triggers the process. Mass culture does the rest.
But then again, this always requires compromises as ambition can't be easily reconciled with breadth of appeal.
A recent quote from China Mieville:
Quote
“Above all, genres are marketing categories. Even what’s described as literary fiction is a genre; in Britain, it’s just the result of a very successful marketing campaign to persuade readers that it’s not a genre. But even if you think genre is a marketing idea, that isn’t to say it doesn’t have its own integrity and protocol. If you set really stupid, rigid rules for yourself, you can rise to the occasion.”
But then this is actually used in reverse, marketing categories are needed to SELL books. Build canons, and so channel reading habits. Literature is an industry, and so follows its rules. Meaning that it's not hypocritical to say that popular success does require e certain level of contamination and compromise.
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About the conversation with readers I actually have a different opinion and approach. I think nothing can be taken out of its context. It's not a case that in school one studies the works of classic writers, but also their lives. I'm the type of reader that would besiege a writer with questions while reading a book, so I also desperately hunt for all kinds of tangential infos in the form of other people's opinions, interviews and whatnot. I actually despair on the idea I could not fully understand what a writer wanted to say. I'm interested first and foremost in the writer's original intent, then, much later, I would elaborate things in my own way. Nor I would attribute any significant authority to other readers, whether celebrating or damning. So you may imagine I'd love if you actually opened more "cracks in the smoking glass" and came out more than you've done till this point, whether to discuss things or deal with criticism openly. But then it's just my own undeserved wish
The process of communication is always flawed and somewhat tragic. It never quite works as it should, but every little thing that comes through is already immensely valuable.
This post has been edited by Abalieno: 31 July 2010 - 07:35 AM