Larry Correia@monsterhunter45
I’ve been telling people this for years.
GRRM pissed off millions of customers but he don’t give a shit. He got his bag. But his legacy is being such an epic bum ass bum that he crippled an entire genre, ruined consumer sentiment, and killed off an entire generation of epic fantasy authors.
Romantasy and LitRPG grew as a direct result of filling the smoking crater George left in the industry. New writers could no longer get deals to write epic fantasy unless the entire series was in the bag, and nobody can afford to gamble that much time to write that many books they may never sell.
Publishers no longer took chances on new series because customers had got burned by lazy shirkers like George and Pat. Agents wouldn’t represent new epic fantasy unless the whole thing was done. It hurt Indy because dudes had to convince customers that they weren’t bums too. Except when book one makes $50 total, because customers said Im not starting a new series until it’s done! they sure as shit ain’t writing book two. So it’s a self fulfilling prophesy of suck.
In the comments Dunning-Krugerands are saying this isn’t true. Look at guys like Brandon Sanderson. Wrong. Guys like him, or me, who already had established names, reputations, and fan bases were fine. We had enough customers who trusted us we could still do new things and people would come along to make it economically viable.
For example, the only reason my epic fantasy series got picked up is because I was already successful and could guarantee a viable level of sales off my existing fans. Newbs don’t have that. And over the ten years it took for me to write the six books to finish it, the entire time I heard from potential customers, nope, not gonna start a new series that might not finish because of George.
I am fine during this because I’m still gonna make a couple hundred grand off each of those just off my existing fans. Newbs make two bucks an hour, say to hell with being a writer I’m going back to my day job, and you all missed out on the next great author and his absolutely brilliant series, because you were too mad at billionaire George shoving twinkies in his mouth instead of writing.
Nope. Guys like me and Brandon are fine. George’s profound laziness screwed over the new guys. Customers and the industry quit taking chances on new guys. We will never know how many excellent fantasy series we missed out on, robbed by George’s laziness burning so many customers.
Some writers gave up, but others moved into different genres. Which is good. But it sure does suck if epic fantasy is your jam. LitRPG is close but different enough it blew up during this time frame because that’s where the talented went.
Being such a pretentious, bloviating bum that you damage an entire industry and strangle a generation of aspiring artists is quite the legacy.
Kal (who is a good writer btw, check out his books) asks what can we do about this? For me personally I’m just gonna continue mocking George’s work ethic in the hopes more normies realize what an outlier he is, and how they should expand their horizons to read other authors who aren’t stuck up, know it all, dickheads.
And before anybody starts barking at me that I’m such a hypocrite because I’ve not finished all my series, sorry I’ve only finished three of eight so far, and have only written THIRTY books since George’s last one, the next MHI comes out in December, and the last two books are next year, and I’m not planning on retiring anytime soon (if ever).