Sword & Sorcery Roundtable #3

5 Comments Posted

1. Who buys S&S? Marketing of my book ‘Revenge of the Night Wolf’ (Which is more Sorcery & Sword since the MC begins as a mystic and becomes a warrior) has proven that it is most effective when I tune it into the: male, 30-55 range. No purchases when I’ve aimed ADs at women of any age. None from younger men. I’ve made sales personally to young men and women, but never from ADs.

2. In getting children to read, Actually, I found that REH has been one of the most memorable authors I read to my children. At first there was a lot of them glazing over at the big words, but by making a ‘reading time’ before they went to bed, they got into it. All of them are readers now. They’ve even searched out REH stories and read them to my grandchildren.

3. Rob–somewhere about the mid-80s, “sword-and-sorcery” as a genre descriptive lost its value. In the 60s and 70s you could label something as “Sword-and-Sorcery” and guarantee a certain amount of sales–because the genre itself was in vogue (so to speak). Until about ’83 “sword-and-sorcery” was something that publishers would put on certain products to help sell them–one example of this is the legendary CREEPY #106 from 1979–the cover proudly announced “SWORDS AND SORCERY SPECIAL!” to let the mag’s readers know that this issue was heavy on S&S. The core of this boom–as has been mentioned elsewhere–was the 60s Lancer paperbacks with million-selling Frazetta covers, followed by the sensational success of Marvel’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic book in the early 70s. Somewhere between ’83 and ’85 the term “sword-and-sorcery” lost its gleam for publishers–probably because it stopped selling, or probably because of other reasons–but it then became a sort of “that’s so yesterday.” AS G.W. Thomas points out in his SWORDS OF FIRE introduction, by the time the 90s hit the only sword-and-sorcery left on bookstore shelves was the TOR CONAN pastiche novels. (Some of which were more pastiche-y than others–some were quite good novels regardless.) Today the term “sword-and-sorcery” is experiencing a resurgence mainly because of “underground” (indie) publishers and writers putting out new and old material (such as DMR Books–check ’em out!). It’s become a sub-genre that is self-sustaining without the need for big-budget corporations to back it. If it does build up a big enough audience again, you can bet the Big Guys will swoop in and start filling the shelves with it again–but that’s highly unlikely. The term has gone from being an accurate description of Howardian-style weird fiction to being a marketing buzz-word, and back again to being an accurate description of the fiction it refers to (which we might still call Howardian). This is why you can get a sword-and-sorcery novel published today, but you can’t call it “sword-and-sorcery”–you have to call it heroic fantasy, or grimdark or dark fantasy or something else. Because the mainstream publishing world only wants labels that are useful marketing tools–and “sword-and-sorcery” lost its usefulness to them a long time ago. Which is kinda like saying “Corporate Rock is Dead”–and that’s a good thing if you hated corporate rock. Only the real believers in the music are left making it because the gravy train moved on to something else. Same with S&S–only the real believers are still making it. For me, it’s in the blood–when I write any kind of fantasy, it has some of my S&S roots in it. Probably had a Cimmerian ancestor at some point. 🙂

4. Addedum: HE-MAN was the final death of the sword-and-sorcery genre when it comes to popular culture.

5. (Oops–that should say “addendum” not “addedum”….damn typos!)