McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Are Readers Growing Tired of New Urban Fantasy?
Spot:
--- Quote from: Shecky on April 20, 2012, 06:38:32 PM ---Since my wife is a Jim fan and her birthday fell very close to the GS release date, I got her a Jim-signed copy of the book PLUS a full-sized print of the GS cover signed by both Jim and Chris. It's freaking GORGEOUS. It's up on the wall next to our print of Priscellie's Alera map.
--- End quote ---
*sigh* I have yet to find a spot for Priscellie's Alera map. I wish our apartment came with more walls.
Nickeris86:
--- Quote from: Dresdenus Prime on April 20, 2012, 04:00:52 PM ---So here's a question, in a story I'm working up, which I think is pretty cool so far, I'm in need of a couple vampires. I can't help it. They have the whole fangs and suck blood thing. Now I do intend on making them the bad guys, and menacing and sneaky, no sparkles here. But I can't help but wonder if I try to sell this to a publisher or an agent or even to readers will they see vampire and say "oh God not more of them..."
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I also have that concern but since my story is not urban fantasy and my "vampires" are a race with a culture I can make them very different from the current generation of blood suckers.
I agree with Snow-leopard look into other myths. Nearly every culture in the world has some sort of vampire like creature in them. A lot of the Asian vampires are messed up, Think floating heads with entrails hanging from them that they choke you to death with then feed.
Or you can go the old European style vamps where they were hideous walking corpses that slaughtered people. There was zero sexy vampires until Stoker.
Dresdenus Prime:
My vampires definately don't have to be sexy. I need them to be humanoid to a point, but mostly I really need them because I need their blood drinking ability for the plot of the book. I'll look up other cultures and see what I can find too.
Nickeris86:
the entrails flying head ones look humanoid until they feed then they get icky.
synthesis:
I don't see urban fantasy going away. Like any other genre, it has a large audience base. Like any other genre, a work's success is going to be based on the story and characters--does the book draw the audience in? But because the market is so flooded, word of mouth is probably incredibly important as well. But that's the case with any book anyone writes.
I think what might be more detrimental and beneficial (yes, contradiction there) is the e-reader market. The problem is that now the market is even more flooded with books, short stories, etc. and a lot of them make you wonder who told the person they could write (okay, that was very snobby, but most of you have probably read those e-books that have literally no editing whatsoever, no character development, bland story, etc.). These factors are the downside--a flooded book market overall, with much crap to wade through.
The plus side? It's probably easier than ever to get published since there isn't a lot of revenue involved in publishing an e-book. I also noticed that many authors offer their first books at a much discounted price in order to build up an audience--then the books get progressively more expensive as they build that audience base. It's also very much looking like if you want a physical, print copy of the book published, you're going to need to achieve a certain amount of success digitally (sorta the same way paperback to hardback always worked).
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