Entrepreneurial Idea

[Diamond]

I think one of the problems lies in the marketing. People have always seen scifi/fantasy as a brand of geekitude. Well, fair enough. I'll admit to being a part-time geek. But the problem with that is, it's not going to draw in a huge general audience. Things are starting to shift a little, with Peter Jackson's LotR movies and now the increasing popularity of superhero movies, drawing in folks who otherwise would've just sneered at actually reading LotR or a comic book. But it's still not enough to push the genre into full-spectrum acceptance.

So... maybe something with a marketing angle? Something designed to make scifi and fantasy appeal to a broader spectrum of folks?

[Greason Wolfe]

In all honesty, I'd have to mimic what I've read in several of the writing workshop type books for sci-fi and fantasy in that there is a lot of stuff published in the genre that doesn't exactly fit. For me, it's become really bad as of late. Every time I walk into my local Borders or Barnes and Noble, half of what I see in the sci-fi/fantasy sections are pesudo-vampire/romance novels. Not that there's anything wrong with such novels, but, IMHO, they just don't fit in the sci-fi/fantasy category. I mean, seeing something like The Vampire Kama-Sutra on the shelf next to LoTR causes my eyes to bug out and such. So maybe something along the lines of an independent book store chain that has tighter categories . . . I dunno, maybe that wouldn't work.

GW

[Karro]

I think one of the problems lies in the marketing. People have always seen scifi/fantasy as a brand of geekitude. Well, fair enough. I'll admit to being a part-time geek. But the problem with that is, it's not going to draw in a huge general audience. Things are starting to shift a little, with Peter Jackson's LotR movies and now the increasing popularity of superhero movies, drawing in folks who otherwise would've just sneered at actually reading LotR or a comic book. But it's still not enough to push the genre into full-spectrum acceptance.

So... maybe something with a marketing angle? Something designed to make scifi and fantasy appeal to a broader spectrum of folks?

Yeah, I agree fantasy & sci-fi have gotten short-shrift, culturally and in the marketing universe. But as you say, with the immense popularity on a global scale of the LotR movies, the Harry Potter books, and Superhero movies... the landscape is starting to shift on this one. Could do a marketing firm devoted exclusively to sci-fi and fantasy IP, though... Not a bad idea, and in the changing cultural context, might even be feasible.

In all honesty, I'd have to mimic what I've read in several of the writing workshop type books for sci-fi and fantasy in that there is a lot of stuff published in the genre that doesn't exactly fit. For me, it's become really bad as of late. Every time I walk into my local Borders or Barnes and Noble, half of what I see in the sci-fi/fantasy sections are pesudo-vampire/romance novels. Not that there's anything wrong with such novels, but, IMHO, they just don't fit in the sci-fi/fantasy category. I mean, seeing something like The Vampire Kama-Sutra on the shelf next to LoTR causes my eyes to bug out and such. So maybe something along the lines of an independent book store chain that has tighter categories . . . I dunno, maybe that wouldn't work.

GW

See... I kind of think of it the other way, where Vampire Romance serves as a kind of trojan horse for acceptance of "speculative fiction" as a whole. I see it as one more example of something from the fantasy/sci-fi world catching hold in the general public and making our stuff that much more credible.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, guys!