NEW POST
You don't want to bother with any of the 100s of other posts on this blog, they're old, what possible interest could they have?
"Out with the old, in with the new." is a line revitalised in the 70s film Logan's Run, but which possibly originated with a Scots clan leader kicking his mother out of the house and moving his mistress in.
I'm motivated to write this post after seeing a struggling author post:
"I sorely wish I could figure out the secret behind this book business. I have five. Yes, they're older; no, they're not widely read, for the most part (IMO, the first two were more widely read than the last three). But, no one NOW wants to read them because they're old, even though they've not read them? "New stuff! New stuff!" is the mantra most gurus chant . . . but if the old stuff is new to multitudes, why not promote that?"
One of my newer acquisitions & one of my older ones.
On the face of it his bewilderment at the obsession with the new is reasonable. There are more than enough fantasy books out there to keep a fantasy fan happy for the rest of their life if publication of new ones stopped today. A hundred times more.
Here's a thing that basically never happens: A book that only managed to reach a small readership is rediscovered years later and takes off. We do have sleeper hits where a book will build momentum, but they are rare. We don't have resurrections where a book that stalled then bursts into life years later.
The only counter example in fantasy I can think of is Senlin Ascends, and there were special circumstances around that. Basically, the only chance for a book to break big is when it's first published.
This obsession with the new is actually great news for new authors. Without it, becoming a (temporarily) successful author would instead of being really really really hard would be struck-by-lightning-seven-times hard. But why is the obsession there? Couldn't we all live happily off the fantasy already published?
The answer (my answer anyway) is several-fold.
1. Reading is a social activity. When you read new books you can be sure that there will be a rush of other readers who have just read that book and have it fresh in their mind. You can share your excitement of discovering new characters and story with others in the same position. When you broach the subject of the book with new people they will either have just read it - leading to good discussion - or you can introduce them to something they don't know about. You are the explorer on the cutting edge, finding the good stuff to shout about to those following on.
2. Publishers put their marketing effort behind new books - they generate buzz and excitement around the latest titles, sucking readers in. The new books replace the old on the bookshop shelves.
3. Fantasy does change. Some books are timeless or almost timeless. People will continue to read Lord of the Rings for many decades. Maybe people will be reading it a hundred years from now or in the year 2200. But fantasy as a whole changes as the society whose interests are reflected in it changes. Readers today may be looking for the social issues of the day to be echoed in the fiction they consume. There has been a substantial move towards diversity and representation in fantasy. An LGBTQ reader or reader of colour wanting to see themselves echoed in their favourite genre would have to work much harder to find a fantasy book from the 80s that met their requirements than from the more recently published examples.
So, as much as it pains me to know that the books I've written which are now out of nappies, and may even be eyeing secondary school, are, by the nature of the beast, of slowly waning interest to readers, I can't rail against the system or its logic. The world rolls on and almost nothing leaves a mark. Popular books become less popular and are forgotten. It takes a truly extraordinary book to hold the public's attention for generations. The fact that there's so much interest in the 10th anniversary edition of Prince of Thorns is of great comfort to me, but I have no illusions that my (hypothetical) grandchildren's generation will be reading about Jorg, or even have heard of him.
Tempus fugit.
