Well if there is such a covenant, doesn’t that mean that the readers are committed to buying any future work by the author in that series?
So I’ll echo others, I don’t think there is no covenant and neither side really owes anything to the other side. Every book is its own bargain - the author decides how and when to offer it and the reader decides if they wish to purchase it.
Well, you don’t always know if the book is “good” before you send the author your money. With a stand-alone book, it’s a case of “you pays your money and you takes your chances.” But in a series the author owes something. Consistency.
The author should be obligated to do the best job at writing what he or she wants. If the author wants a book series to go in a certain direction, it should, whether or not the fans like that direction. But the author shouldn’t pad the series for more money. No “house payment” books. Everything the author writes should be something that “needs” to be told, not filler. But, the author doesn’t owe the readers some absolute value of “good”, just his best effort.
I feel as if I owe my readers (and myself BTW) a good, complete story that comes to some sort of conclusion. That’s it.
Yes, fans are allowed to express their opinions. Just as I can generally ignore crap books, writers may ignore opinions they regard as crap.
I only read ASOIF as news of the TV series got out; I’d thought it was one of those endless Tolkien ripoffs. Then I realized he was the guy who wrote Fevre Dream–so I devoured the books published to date. I’ve got the latest one–unread. Too bad he didn’t make an outline…
If I’d been a fan from the time the first book came out, I might feel frustrated. As it is, I’ll gladly let the TV show tell the rest of the story. Hope GRRM has a nice life. And* Fevre Dream *would make a fine movie–or miniseries.
I guess this is more of a book series topic.
I understand Owe may not have been the best word, but it’s close enough. I don’t think any writer should take a story in any direction just to please the readers. That’s not what I meant. The story itself should go however the writer needs, but the writer isn’t writing just for themselves. Usually. This is where my disconnect comes in, I DON’T want to be in charge of the story, I just want a good story.
I don’t think it’s Entitlement to want a writer to complete a series, if a writer isn’t working for the readers then who are they working for? IMO, if your work is only for yourself you lose the right to complain if it doesn’t sell. If your work is for public consumption then you need to take the public into consideration. I’m not a fanboy, I’ll complain on the dope about something I don’t like mainly because it isn’t an echo chamber and someone will make a point I haven’t considered, but I’m not stalking any writers to harass them about anything. (Anyone wanting to say Terry Goodkind sucks, however, has my blessings.)
I absolutely think writers should hold themselves accountable to getting work done. Like Little Nemo said, GRRM is not our bitch, but we aren’t his either. It’s a symbiosis.
The ethical obligation of a writer is to attempt to return the reader’s investment (in coin and more importantly in time) with something that makes that investment worth it.
If Gaiman (and others) thinks that such is thinking of the writer as “your bitch” then he and those others are wrong.
Is “ethical obligation” the same as “owe”? I’m no wordsmith but to me not quite. That said willfully failing to meet that ethical obligation is … wrong.
I go into a cheese shop I expect they will sell me some cheese; I expect a pet store to sell me a living parrot.
No idea about the specifics here. But with a series the investment made by the reader is higher so the good faith effort obligation of the writer to not disappoint is also higher. By starting a series and then not delivering it in what is typically considered a reasonable time frame you have become one of those Pythonesque purveyors, claiming to sell cheese when you have none, claiming to sell live parrots when they are well, at least, resting.
Then there is informed self interest. The readers are the hand that feeds you writers and we have other things we could be investing our interest in. Lose our investing in the world you have created and you also likely lose us ever investing in any other world you choose to create.
These.
I feel that all a writer (and any other kind of artist) owes his audience is his best effort. If he can’t give that and is just half-assing things, then he’s falling short of his duty and deserves to get called out for expecting his audience to pay him money and time /effort spent reading his half-assed work.
Am I the first in this thread to mention Patrick Rothfuss?
I think in a market where the authors rely on people buying the first book in a series or trilogy, there is a covenant that the author will make a good faith effort to complete the product that the readers have invested their time and money in. The less the individual books stand on their own, the more the author owes to the readers. So when an author says, either directly or through the structure of the narrative “This is a single story that I’m presenting in X volumes” there’s a clear deal in place. The author could have finished all the volumes before asking for money, but instead they asked the readers to trust them and provide support part way. Making that request was also making a promise.
The Dresden Files and the Laundry books are examples that don’t fit this pattern. They are a series of sequels, each a stand-alone project, with no promise that there is an end. (Compare with Codex Alera which was a single project, and was finished).
I think readers get a lot more upset when the authors have a public profile, where they are communicating on blogs or social media, engaging in conventions and other events, and even publishing other projects. The readers don’t have a right to the next book, or a say in what it looks like, but they do have a reasonable expectation that the author will make a good faith effort.
Of course, the messy thing is that from the outside you never know what a good faith effort looks like. Did Robert Jordan really string out the Wheel of Time, or was he just not a good long-game writer? Looking back, I think despite the number of characters and sub-plots, WoT was never going anywhere good. We got sucked in by the short game characterisation and world building.
Is Patrick Rothfuss ignoring Doors of Stone, or wrestling with the problem of finishing it in the best way he knows, which happens to involve community interaction and side-projects?
Is George RR. Martin … actually, after getting burned by Wheel of Time I’ve avoided that one all together. If it ever gets finished I might engage.
Read this yesterday, I am positive there was at least one superfluous apostrophe in the OP header. Can this disappear with no one being noted for an edit?
Entertainment. Completion. Correct spelling and grammar.
I’ll tackle this from the premise of a series first. Charlaine Harris is a recent example of someone who created memorable characters, a novel setting and world, hauled her readers along with her willingly and enthusiastically for a dozen plus books with the Southern Vampire books and then it went wrong. Oh so wrong.
Why?
One reason clearly was that she was stretching it out. She had been contracted for the tv series by then (True Blood). The writing began to seem rote and uninspired. The characters began to do things that were completely against the nature of the “people” the author had spent years creating. The fans began to notice and complain.
Another reason was that the books weren’t matching expectations. If you spend 12-15 years leading your readers in one direction - be it the marriage of two characters (or the destruction of the big bad mentioned up thread) - then by Og, you, the author, don’t get to change the rules in the last book (or two). If someone has spent that type of time and money (I think it was 18 books by the end, many of them hardback), you, the author, had better expect some blow back when you don’t give your loyal readers EXACTLY what every fan page and convention has been asking for.
So, if you’re writing a series, keep the writing fresh. You can’t get bored. Butcher does that well. Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs do that well. And keep in mind that the longer it goes on, the more canon there is, the more invested your readers are, and the more expectations you need to meet. (Butcher gets around expectations about “happy endings” by just kicking the shit out of his character all day long.)
The notion that the author doesn’t “owe” his or her readers anything is foolish. At least if you want to build a loyal base and, you know, sell more books. Think of it like marketing. Who is your audience? What are they looking for? Writing well is not enough. Being an Artist is not enough (unless you can live on Art).
We owe them nothing. That’s why I’ve never written anything.