Arthurian Fantasy?
I had a reader ask why FROSTBORN, SEVENFOLD SWORD, and DRAGONTIARNA all show up as Arthurian Fantasy on Amazon and some other stores.
That is a good story.
First, a definition. “Arthurian Fantasy”, also known as the “Matter of Britain”, refers to tales about King Arthur, his knights, his downfall, and the various myths and legends associated with him.
Way back in 2012, when I was first thinking about what I would write once DEMONSOULED was done, I wanted to decide what category to put my new series into on Amazon. The idea is that if you pick a less competitive category, it’s easier for your book to get into the Top 20 in that category and is therefore easier for readers to find. For example, getting to #1 in Contemporary Romance takes thousands of sales every single day. Getting to #1 in a smaller category, like Industrial Solution Manuals, takes far fewer sales.
The trick, of course, is to pick an appropriate category for your book, because otherwise this will annoy readers. You can see writers who try to game the system. Like, if you look at the top 20 Linux books on Amazon, you will see a list of computer books, but sometimes you will see a romance book with a shirtless dude on the cover, because some writer had the bright idea of putting his or her book into a completely inappropriate category in hopes of getting higher visibility. It’s best not to do that because it generates reader ill-will and once enough people complain (and they will) Amazon will force the book out of the category or maybe delist it.
Anyway, back to Arthurian fantasy. Back in 2012, before Kindle Unlimited, there wasn’t much competition in the Arthurian category. I decided that FROSTBORN would contain Arthurian elements, and that the human kingdom in the book would have been founded by survivors of King Arthur’s realm fleeing to a world where magic existed. So that way I could legitimately claim that I was writing Arthurian fantasy. In fact, several of the major POV characters in FROSTBORN, SEVENFOLD SWORD, and DRAGONTIARNA – Arandar, Accolon, and Kalussa – are descendants of Arthur Pendragon.
So I can claim that FROSTBORN is part of a storytelling tradition that extends all the way back to Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Middle Ages and even earlier, but the real reason is that I wanted the books to have easier visibility. 🙂
It worked pretty well, too. For a big chunk of 2016, the FROSTBORN books sat in the top 20 of Arthurian Fantasy for several months, which was nice.
-JM
Hey JM. Have you had any plans to write books / series on the Elves 100,000 year war? It would be really great to know more about Ardrhythain and Warden. It would be great to know more about the elves and their culture and world. How their division begins and how wars begin and new races enter the world.That would be literally 100,000 years of stories😁 Ps I would think that many fans would be really interested in these events.
I don’t think I would do an entire book about it, but it might make for a bonus short story at some point.
The only way to cover a hundred thousand year war would be in bite sized pieces covering the key events. The beginning with the discovery of the shadow, the opening of world gates for slave kindreds, the evacuation through the eye, the coming of the spiders and finally the arrival of humans. Put them out as novellas and at a later date make an omnibus. Personally however I don’t usually like prequels as I already know the outcome which removes suspense and the mystery of it all.
If I was to do a prequel series in the Frostborn/Sevenfold Sword/Dragontiarna timeline, it would be far enough back that the outcome wouldn’t be known, which would preserve the dramatic tension. But I STILL haven’t decided what I’m doing after DRAGONTIARNA is done.
Ridmark/Mazel crossover lol. Though you’ve already stated non-canon crossovers confused the heck out of some people, I for one quite enjoyed Caina and Nadia’s crossover.
not a big fan of prequels , but looking forward to whatever you do in the future 🙂
How’s about Ridmark helping to get rid of the seven goddesses of the Heptarchy? That would be an awesome series, especially as he has already dealt a blow to the Visionary.