Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I was trolling reddit nd came across this thread it begins with Ilona Andrews and this post from twitter where she is commenting on where did UF go


This person who I think was named Keki from Reddit wrote thsi fabulous response and I really wanted to share it.

The genre isn't gone, but it certainly is past its heyday. Perhaps no genre disappears completely (though I suspect it can be consumed by another one). They can get smaller and smaller, though.

For a lot of people, such as myself, they see the genre slowly fading away in the past few years. You can say "perhaps you aren't looking hard enough", which one could rightfully say, I suppose. But, how hard is one supposed to look to find these "talent writers continuing to write or enter the genre"? I spend hours every month looking for new stuff to read in this genre. These are the observations I have found over the past year and a half to two years:

Probably over half of the new stuff I come across nowadays in the genre is indie series. Now, I read plenty of indie works, and a lot of them are good. There are some really talented indie authors out there, I've recommended plenty on the sub. But, indie series aren't advertised as much or as well, or even recommended as much as traditionally published works, so it can be difficult to see these books. Also, a lot of these talented indie authors are not what I'm seeing the most of nowadays. The ones I see a lot lately are the ones trying to cash in a quick buck on amazon by writing the same stories you have seen 100 times over.

Another 40 percent of what I see nowadays are spinoffs or authors trying (and frankly mostly failing) to resurrect their finished series. Again, not a bad thing, there are plenty of good spinoffs out there, such as the Alpha and Omega series by Patricia Briggs. I just see so many spinoffs that appear to be written just for the author to continue on an idea they already know pays off well, not because it has any merit on its own.

Lastly are the traditionally published authors that are now turning indie or just aren't getting new series deals. Some of them by choice, like Ilona Andrews, indie publish some of their works now. Some not by choice, like Yasmine Galenorn and Jennifer Estep who have been dropped by their publishers. Urban fantasy isn't selling well right now, and even long established authors are having troubles getting publishers to pick up new works by them, and the ones that have had their sales decline the most are the ones getting dropped entirely. Others still find that they aren't really able to turn indie easily, such as Harry Connolly after he got abruptly dropped from his publisher. More and more I'm finding some authors just drop off the face of the planet and decide to not tell their fans where they went and why they aren't going to get any more books, too. This is the most frustrating one of them all.

A number of fairly popular series have ended over the past four years: Kate Daniels (Aug 2018), The Hollows (2014), Iron Druid (Apr 2018), All Souls Trilogy (2014), Walker Papers (2014), Chicagoland Vampires (2017), Greywalker (2014), Kara Gillian (suspected late 2018), Kitty Norville (2015).

From what I have kept up with personally, even more less unpopular series have ended in the past four years: The Changeling Chronicles (2017), Cainsville (2017), Dark Angels (2014), Arcadia Bell (2014), Agent of Hel (2014), Half-Breed (2017), Northern Wolves (2017), Mythos Academy (2014), Mystwalker (2015), Night Huntress (2014), Night Prince (2017), Broken Destiny (2017), Indigo Court (2014), Half Bad (2016), Black Wings (2014), Elemental Mysteries (2014), Elemental World (2017), Hunter Kiss (2014), Rylee Adamson (2017) The Elemental (2017), Dark Swan (2015), Grimm Agency (2015), Scarlett Bernard (2014), Boundary Magic (2016), Disrupted Magic (2018), Guardian Witch (2015), Jesse Sullivan (2017), Psy/Changeling (2017)

What have I read that has started since 2014? The Changeling Chronicles (indie), Innkeeper (indie), Hidden Legacy, Souls of Fire (only read book one), Twenty-Sided Sorceress (indie), Cassidy Edwards (only read book one, indie), Oracle (spinoff), Half-Breed (spinoff), Northern Wolves (spinoff), Broken Destiny, The Night Rebel (2018 start, spinoff), Half Bad, All Souls Universe (2018 start, spinoff), Elemental Legacy (spinoff), Summoned (read book one, author disappeared), Wayward Children, Grimm Agency, Jesse Sullivan (indie), Psy/Changeling Trinity (spinoff), Wildcats (indie spinoff), Black Dagger Legacy (spinoff). 6 indie series, 9 spinoffs, 5 not indie or spinoff. In four years.

Basically, not everything that has ended has necessarily been replaced by something new. Again, you can say this is just a personal failing of mine. There is plenty to read out there. You don't have to read only perfect series. I'd be curious to see if others are noticing the same patterns with what they are reading, even.

I do have some stats on this. This database was created by me and basically filled out with every single urban fantasy book I could readily find, ending around August or September of last year, and the release dates should be good through about October of 2017. Therefore, this has not been kept up to date. However, November-January are always low release producers, anyway.

Here are the total number of releases per year, from 1976 to 2018 (verified releases). There is also the number of indie releases per year from 2015 through what I could find in 2017. We peaked in 2012, and have been steadily losing ground since. The number of indie books has gone up over time but the last two years are harder to fill in for me. There are a number of problems with this data set that I have been able to identify:

this data is all from Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ
I had to write the data in myself, personally
Indie series are much harder to track down than traditionally published works, so they are under represented in this data set
there are plenty of urban fantasy series out there that I have no way of knowing about because they aren't exactly advertised as urban fantasy on goodreads in a way I can find
it is harder to find newer works than older works because they haven't been around long enough to gain a lot of ratings making it difficult to find
However, I also spent at least 100 hours on this project inputting data from goodreads into this database. I was working on this for like a month. At a certain point one has to stop looking because all the low hanging fruit is gone. We started this post with the question "how long are you supposed to look?", and I'm ending it on that as well.

Well, no wonder its hard to find good new uf to read. :(

At least some of the authors who've been dropped are turning indie.

wow! really disheartening to read that. i guess I'm lucky that i still have plenty of reading since I'm new to the genre. But it would explain why so many authors are kind of "disappearing".

Very interesting and really sad. Agreed Sandra good that some of them are trying indy!

It is concerning how much publishers of both tv and apparently books are interested only in being safe and generating the same kind of content.

Yes so true Dawn :(

Gotta remember how many Twilight knockoffs there were, then all the knockoff 50 Shades books.

I was following the Andrews conversation as it was happening. What made it more interesting was all the other authors replying with their own stories.

Darcy wrote: "I was following the Andrews conversation as it was happening. What made it more interesting was all the other authors replying with their own stories."

Care to share anything interesting that comes to mind?

I will say I thought it was interesting how some of the authors think epic fantasy is going to be the next big thing because I keep wondering like did it go anywhere?

I will say what I miss is a good witch series...like Mists of Avalon or A Discovery of Witches...was the Historian about witches or vampires??

Sandra wrote: "Yes so true Dawn :(

Gotta remember how many Twilight knockoffs there were, then all the knockoff 50 Shades books."

I really hated 50 shades ...that was about the time I noticed that in regency romance everyone man was a duke and in contemporary romance, most of the heros are billionaires in PNR every hero is like the alpha. Seems like I further supporting the argument :-)

Dawn wrote: "Care to share anything interesting that comes to mind?"

I remember CE Murphy talking about the Walker Papers series, and how when she sold that they told her UF was dying.

Thea Harrison agreed about going independent as did Bree of Kit Roacha.

A lot of it was authors agreeing what Andrews was saying.

Darcy wrote: "
I remember CE Murphy talking about the Walker Papers series, and how when she sold that they told her UF was dying.

Thea Harrison agreed about going independent as did Bree of Kit Roacha.

A lot of it was authors agreeing what Andrews was saying. "

Wow that blows

:(

I'm new here and an Indie author and I think UF is not really dying out, its just that people are categorising their books in alternative genres since many of these genres overlap. When I wrote my book, all I knew was it was fantasy. Then I looked around to find out which other categories I could include it in and paranormal seemed a good idea as well as epic fantasy. UF didn't even come up on my search results (on Google with key words) although my book has a contemporary setting. So I guess there are probably still a lot of UF novels or series out there going under other genres!!

That could certainly be true for readers, but you would hope that the publishers would know better.

True...they probably want to keep up with the trends.

Well that sounds like even more of a cluster.
Thanks for sharing Amrita