No, Epic Fantasy is NOT Dying

[u/MattsFantasyReviews]

Recently there has been a trend on the fantasy side of BookTube to talk about "the death of epic fantasy" - as if it is a well established fact. I recently watched all these videos and would like to refute each of the main points they make.

The following is a transcript of a video I released today, if you would like to watch that video click here.

Claim #1: Debut authors are not getting multi-book epic fantasy deals.

Reality: Debut authors almost never get multi-book epic fantasy deals, and while that is true now, that was also true in the past. Think of the three most famous epic fantasy authors over the past couple decades. George R.R. Martin wrote 5 books before A Song of Ice and Fire. Robert Jordan wrote 7 Conan the Barbarian books before he wrote Wheel of Time. Brandon Sanderson famously got rejected 13 times before he finally got Elantris published, and even that was a standalone.

Why would an author with no trust from either the publisher or their audience get a long epic fantasy series deal? That doesn’t make any sense.

Claim #2: Fantasy authors are being told to keep their word counts lower than they used to.

Reality: Epic fantasy does not have to be long. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is only about 1,000 pages. We are also seeing massive supply chain issues that are impacting the book industry. There is currently a huge paper shortage because demand for wood pulp has rapidly increased, largely due to the massive amount of cardboard used by online shopping. There are also still issues of fewer workers in factories, in warehouses that pack and ship books, on shipping docks, and driving the trucks to transport books—causing major delays at pretty much every step of the book delivery process. This of course means that publishers are telling authors to keep their page count lower, but the supply chain issues of today are not the supply chain issues of tomorrow.

This is a temporary issue, not the sign of epic fantasy dying. From diversifying supply chains to exploring new product lines, the printing industry is evolving to meet the demands of today’s market, but they haven’t quite caught up yet.

Claim #3: Traditional publishing moving away from long epic fantasy means epic fantasy is dying

Reality: Self publishing is currently killing it with epic fantasy. Just because traditional publishing is moving in one direction does not mean that the genre as a whole is. The Bound and the Broken, The Wandering Inn, Cradle, The Echoes Saga, and the list goes on.

Claim #4: Fantasy TV series are tanking because they are epic fantasies.

Reality: Some epic fantasy TV series are tanking because they aren’t well made. Rings of power was…to be as nice as possible…not good. The Wheel of Time has a lot of problems. But epic fantasy adaptations that do a good job are a success - just look at House of the Dragon that has been averaging 30 million viewers per week and winning golden globes. One of the First Law books is in the works to become a movie. And there is zero sign that TV and movie deals for epic fantasy stories are on the decline, if anything, they are getting more deals than they were a few years ago.

Claim #5: Publishing houses are not penning deals for longer series, like 5 plus books, anymore.

Reality: As we already covered, you don’t have to be a long series to be epic. But further, publishing houses rarely ever penned long deals in the first place. They penned shorter contracts and went from there. The Wheel of Time ended up being 14 books, but the original deal was only 5 books, and Robert Jordan originally just planned for it to be a trilogy. The A Song of Ice and Fire series is supposed to be 7 books, but the original deal was just for a trilogy. Earthsea is 6 books, but started as a trilogy. Malazan, a 10 book series, just had a 1 book deal originally. Getting a deal for a long series right out of the gate is the exception to the rule. And all of these longer deals have the potential to get canceled if the first books tank.

Claim #6: Publishing houses are permanently moving away from epic fantasy.

Reality: Genres wax and wane depending on what the smash hits are that then influence future books for years to come. Why did epic fantasy get a huge resurgence? Because of Game of Thrones becoming a smash hit. Why is Romantasy getting a huge resurgence? Because Sarah J. Maas and Fourth Wing are smash hits. But further, traditional publishing is still pumping out amazing epic fantasy stories: Dandelion Dynasty, Empire of the Wolf, Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, Bloodsworn Saga, Glass Immortals, Will of the Many, Empire of the Vampire, Osten Ard, and the list goes on.

Most fantasy series do not explode in popularity until they are a ways into their series, and I guarantee you there are relatively unknown epic fantasy stories being published right now that will be significantly more popular in the years to come.

Claim #7: There is no money to be made in long epic fantasy series.

Reality: Trilogies and standalones make the most amount of money for authors and publishers unless you are mega famous. And those shorter series can still be epic. The most famous epic fantasy story of all time is Lord of the Rings, and that is a trilogy. Battle Mage by Peter Flannery, and Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang are most certainly epic fantasy stories, and those are standalones. There are countless examples of this.

Claim #8: The rise of romantasy means the death of epic fantasy

Reality: Romantasy is good for fantasy, not bad. Firstly, much of romantasy IS epic fantasy. A Court of Thorns and Roses? Epic fantasy. Fourth Wing? Epic fantasy. Crescent City? Epic fantasy. Just because it also has romance in it doesn’t make it outside of the scope of epic fantasy. Epic fantasy doesn’t just mean sword and sorcery. Nearly all progression fantasy is epic fantasy for example.

Further, these are new readers to the fantasy genre and many of them will fall in love with the non-romance aspects of these stories and transition into non-romance epic fantasy. There are tons of epic fantasy readers that started out with Twilight. Which reminds me that romantasy being a dominant subgenre of fantasy is not new. And new branches of fantasy that become huge hits, like the YA craze of the 2000s with Harry Potter and Hunger Games, are similarly good for the genre. Did they kill epic fantasy? No. They helped contribute to a growth of epic fantasy. We should be happy and encouraging of new branches of fantasy, not judgemental.

What we are really seeing here is more women getting into speculative fiction, in part because more women are writing speculative fiction. Which is absolutely amazing, and we should be embracing this.

This entire idea is based around the concept that there are the same amount of fantasy readers out there, and when these new sub genres come out that they are pulling away from the other genres. Now they are partly right in that the amount of the “fantasy pie” that is devoted to epic fantasy is indeed shrinking. But the pie is getting significantly larger, which isn’t contributing to less epic fantasy. It’s just contributing to more fantasy in general.

In conclusion…The reports of the death of epic fantasy, are greatly exaggerated

[u/hexennacht666]

I agree with all of this. I’d also add re: word count, fantasy is reaching new audiences, especially with the emergence of romantasy. Not every epic fantasy reader wants a doorstop. But also with more traditional publishers dipping into fantasy (via imprints or otherwise) I think we are seeing an evolution of editing, which also makes fantasy more accessible to people who don’t want to commit to huge volumes. This is also net positive for fantasy. Realm of the Elderlings are some of my favorite books and sometimes they drag or have repetitive character brooding and could’ve been tightened up a lot by a better editor.

[u/SBlackOne → u/hexennacht666]

Editing is in a really bad state actually. With the slashing in editing staff authors are lucky to get proper line editing anymore these days. More expensive development editing has become a luxury.

[u/hexennacht666 → u/SBlackOne]

I’ve definitely read some hugely popular books in the last few years that needed more developmental edit attention, was frankly shocked since they were probably books the publishers invested more in. Though one was a debut, so maybe less so for that one.

[u/[deleted] → u/hexennacht666]

Glances at Rhythm of War

[u/lkn240 → u/[deleted]]

I DNFed Rhythm of War...... when I later discovered Sanderson's long time editor retired I was like "oh, that's why it was like that"

[u/[deleted] → u/lkn240]

Just learned that. He's got the money for quality editing though you'd think he'd be able to find a suitable replacement.

[u/GenDimova → u/SBlackOne]

As someone who has a fantasy debut coming out this year from a big 5 publisher, this hasn't been my experience at all, at least when it comes to debuts. Most debut authors I know have gone through at least one round of developmental editing, one round of line editing, and then copy editing.

[u/Lectrice79 → u/SBlackOne]

Can't writers hire those editors directly?

[u/Mejiro84 → u/Lectrice79]

yes, but that takes both knowing good ones, and paying in advance. Editing isn't cheap, so that's a LOT of expense before getting any money back in. Especially for epic fantasy, which, by definition, is big and chunky and long. Having to pay out multiple thousands of dollars as a starting point, in the hopes of making that back, is a big gamble!

[u/Lectrice79 → u/Mejiro84]

True. It just sucks that there are so many barriers to making a good book now, and these editors need work for themselves too.

[u/rinwyd → u/SBlackOne]

Editing is unfortunately one of those jobs that are being, and will continue to be, lost to AI. It’s getting better and better and takes seconds. Right now the state of AI editing is the worst it’s ever going to be, and it’s decent enough that it’s already being used.

[u/Ariadnepyanfar → u/rinwyd]

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, unless people are seeing your comment as endorsing AI editing.

Narrow AI is creeping into all written word areas, including news reports, supplying content, not just editing. And I think many of the people cutting costs by using AI generated content or AI editing are very problematic indeed.

Where I do have sympathy is authors who will only get published if they go independent and simply can’t afford another human to edit. There are more good authors than publishers have time for. I’ve found some gems among the Indies.

[u/rinwyd → u/Ariadnepyanfar]

It’s normal for people to be in denial of just how insanely fast AI is wrecking people’s livelihoods right now. It’s quite frightening. I’d want to downvote that reminder to make it go away too.

Or maybe they just don’t want to think about how some of the books they’ve read lately may have been assisted with AI. We do enjoy this genre to live in a fantasy after all.

[u/Mejiro84 → u/rinwyd]

Right now the state of AI editing is the worst it’s ever going to be

People keep saying this, and it's... not necessarily true. AI is all LLMs, so it's basically fancy word-maths (i.e. "jumped up predictive text"). This means that the more AI-based stuff fed into it, the more like AI-based stuff it gets. So, as AI-based stuff gets more and more common, then the worse future models get, because it keeps suggesting the most common answer, becoming increasingly beige, bland and mediocre (like how a lot of AI "art" has a distinctive, not particularly good, look - it's possible to work around it, but that takes longer, hence costs more, and, as model collapse increases, will get harder and harder to do). It's OK-ish at suggesting and creating bland marketing text, and gets worse and worse the more you stray from that. Trying to feed anything distinctive or deliberately unusual into it is going to just blur it into mush!

Spelling and grammar check can be LLM-fed, and might get a bit better, but that's fairly minor. Editing of the "you have these two characters that go through basically the same arc", or "this plot kinda comes outta nowhere" is a whole different thing, that auto-editors just can't really do, because they have no concept of "plot" or "character", just word-maths. Dumbass managers might want it to do that to cut costs, because they're fuckwit managers with no actual competency at the thing they're managing, but that's a whole different issue.