The thing is, a lot of those books that are backlisted don’t necessarily *need* a lot of publicity because of the way they endure due to their association with the author.

It’s been years since their debut, but how often do people still recommend NAME OF THE WIND, THE FIRST LAW trilogy and A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series? What’s more, how often are they called that and not simply referred to as: “The new Rothfuss/Abercrombie/Martin?”

Meanwhile, you have authors coming out today that are brand new. Some of them have only obscure short stories to go off of, some of them have unrelated or non-fantasy works to be recognized by and some of them have nothing at all.

Speaking as one of these latter, I’m immensely grateful for the fact that I’m being discussed on blogs because, seriously, how else am I supposed to get out there?

I agree with the idea of keeping interest in classics alive and I think there’s no harm in bloggers occasionally revisiting classics, but there’s also the danger of falling into that unfair stereotype that plagues fantasy that the genre is stagnant and everyone is out to copy Tolkien. If we were to rave about the old-school classics more than we discussed new blood, that would cease to be a stereotype.

I suppose next time you see such an article, it might be worth wondering what kind of new author we’re missing out on by talking about a book that we just reread for the six hundredth time.

Hello Mark.

Firstly let me just say that it’s unfair of you to put up a blogpost this good on Monday morning. Some of us want to make intelligent comments (,or at least try,) and have not had time to get enough coffee this week yet.

I have to agree with Sam Sykes on a couple of points.

Firstly that bloggers covering authors that have just been or are about to published is a good thing.
If it hadn’t been for bookbloggers and Twitter I would not have a clue that you two were authors (,or that you existed at all). And from what I’ve been hearing, that’s a welcome discovery.

Secondly I think mr. Sykes is correct in that talking to much about the classics of the genre is wrong. In fact I’m a bit tired of every Fantasy trilogy being compared to the Lord of the Rings.

That said, I’m interested in history. Both in general and when it comes to books, and I think we should not forget the history of the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres. Or any other genres for that matter.

Although I must say it can be quite funny, in a slightly tragic way, when people have got no clue about the history of Speculative Fiction.
Like the reviewer who described Terry Pratchett as “Following in the tradition of J.K. Rowling.”
Or all the Twilight fans who were pissed that the Wolfman Movie ripped off Twilight.

So basically I agree with both Mark and Sam. Bookbloggers should definately push the new authors who needs help getting out to the public. But in my opinion they also will do the genre service if they point people to the books and authors that came before them. Books and authors that will be unknown to those who discovered Speculative Fiction through Harry Potter and Twilight.

So a couple of reviews of the classics to go with all the new books would be a perfect mix in my opinion.

I think I am going to sit firmly on the fence and agree with both sides here.

Mark – you’ve seen by bookshelves. I have brought a whole lot of fantasy books and have every intention of reading and reviewing older titles by the more obscure fantasy authors that I like.

But I also am buying newer books as well (yes, that is me buying them as well as being sent them – I can’t resist the new shiny books) because I WANT to read/review them and I know other people will too, which means I want to get my opinion on them out there and start discussions.

I also want to support newer authors – if you like their books but you don’t write about it or publicise them, then they might be dropped rapidly because sales are low.

It’s a balancing act between the two.

I’ve noticed no discernable affect on my number of website hits whether I review old or new books – although this might be down to the fact I’m still getting a small number of visitors.

I think bloggers need to decide why they’re doing this (almost the same way as authors: do you write to get published, or do you write because you can’t not write?) Are bloggers doing this for the visitors or are they doing this because they want to put their opinion out on the books they’ve read?

For this year, I want to do two challenges: reading the complete works of David Gemmell and Charles de Lint. I suspect they’ll both garner a fair amount of interest and hopefully introduce some newer spec fiction readers to these two giants of the genre.

Good point about backlist vs classics.

Maybe the publicists could slip a book or two from the publisher’s warehouse into the packages they send to the bloggers.

It may be that a book that wasn’t that big a hit two, three, or five years ago could be given a new chance with som fresh reviews.

By “post”, I obviously mean pre, bloody monday mornings.

I try and do both – frontlist titles if I get hold of a copy (which in practice means it has to be something I’m particularly keen on anyway, since I buy nearly all mine) and anything else I’m reading or re-reading about which I can find something interesting to say.

I tend to focus on interesting books rather than necessarily good books, so thankfully that’s not usually difficult.

So far this year, I’ve been doing about equal proportions just-published, recently-published, and could-be-anywhen books, and the two posts that have got the most attention have both been on books from the 1980s.

Granted, they were being reprinted, but I didn’t know that when I wrote the posts!

I particularly love it when I bring neglected classics to peoples’ attention, or point out an if-you-liked-X-try-Y they won’t have heard of. Of course, there’s then the problem of where they can get hold of them…

I used to review books for “The Seattle Times” where each book has to appear in the paper the same month it’s released. This is part of why I stopped. It was great to get an early crack at books like “Perdido Street Station” and “The Scar,” but so many other months there were awful books I had to not only read, but then write something sensible about. This model was controlled and fed by the flood of advance reader copies from publishers, and author tours. It seems most review blogs have just adopted it.

On my blog, I’d love to rediscover some obscure, or even better out of print, author. Lord Dunsany definitely merits a gander (thought you were making him up at first). I recently gave Fannie Hurst a try. She’s not a genre author, but was hugely popular before WWII and reportedly sold one of her novels to Hollywood for $1 million in the 1930s, yet today is almost entirely out of print. It turned out her writing is horrendous, just awful. But I loved thumbing through her mildewy books, trying to understand what made her so popular in her time.

I hear Sam’s point though. Fannie and Dunsany are dead, and wouldn’t need the money anyway. Finding new authors is a thrill too. It was beyond cool to get a chance to gush about Mieville’s “Perdido” when no one had heard about it.

I like to think that MFB straddles the new / not so new and old pretty well. Personally, I review a lot of brand new books for other sites and keep the less new for MFB.

It does almost feel like there’s a competition sometimes, to be the first to review something, but to be honest, I am honestly beyond caring. Unless a publicist has asked me personally to review something to accompany the release, I’ll try to do it, otherwise, I’ll read it when I get to it and the majority of publishers love it, because they get to spread the coverage for their author across a wider time-period.

As a reviewer I get very antsy about reading the same book as others and I purposefully try not to, but sometimes there are some people you just gotta read as soon as you get it through the post – be it from the publisher or Amazon / Waterstone’s – because you are a fan of the writer / genre.

I also think that between the various blogs that I follow online, the amount of writers and books that get covered, readers will find something that suits them. Be it old or new.

I will always champion new writers because these are the guys who probably don’t have a marketing budget allocated to them. So if I can stand on my soapbox and give them a shout-out, I will. And if people think it’s frontlist fetish, then so be it. MFB’s motto is, after all: reviewing books indiscriminately.

Wow, are you all bloggers? By the time we finish reading blogs about what to read we won’t have time to read the books recommended:)

As the blogosphere grows, more and more people will look to blog reviewers to inform their buying choices.

But as reader if that your only source what to read is a blog that would be worrying right? Bloggers are probably more sensitive to new books than general readers.

We’re also passionate readers on the whole and older books are not that exciting as we’ve been there and done that.

As for the classics or older books well I guess that will the hundreds of books you could be reading you just have to set a limit somewhere or you might go mad!

I think short fiction is so spread out these days that it’s hard to say what the aggregate readership is. Yes, the print publishers are in decline, but there has been a relatively explosive growth in the visibility (and presumably, readership) of online ezines like Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Chi-Zine, and others over the year. Yes, there’s a high failure rate as well, but there also seems to be a more concerted effort by some publishers (Tor.com in particular) to promote the short fiction standard by having an online wing devoted to it that pays extremely well compared to the competition.

I think this is starting to be reflected in the number of online stories that made the Nebula ballot and might soon takeover the Hugo ballots as well, as the membership there shifts more to the Gens X/Y/etc. This is not arguing that as a percentage that short fiction is comparable to bestselling novels, but rather that it is still a viable segment, one that is neglected by a few segments of the SF blogosphere. I would cover more of it, myself, but I have to maintain at least a semi-veil of secrecy over what stories I’m submitting for the guest editors to consider for the BAF series. But it is nice knowing that I literally have close to 100 magazines and journals to read through for this, including the ezines. Some of the better stories this year have come from those smaller parts of the overall lit circles.

I can only speak for myself, so I’m not saying this is how it should be for everyone, but I try to find a balance in my reading in general across the genres. I have gaps in my reading knowledge (I blame my English Lit. teacher at high school for putting me off people like Shakespeare for fifteen years) and now at a slightly more senior age, I’m going back and plugging the holes with a book club. So whilst trying to keep up with the new kids, I’m currently enjoying the pleasure of rediscovering classics that I knew about but never read, like Slaughterhouse 5, The Caves of Steel, The Handmaid’s Tale etc.

The other point is I’m also making connections, joining the dots and seeing how new authors were influenced by the Great Ones, be it fantasy, sci-fi or other genres. It’s giving me a deeper understanding of modern fiction and I can enjoy the stories on more levels than previously. So in terms of relevance which someone mentioned earlier, the older books are still definitely worth it. And if I post a review of a modern novel, I can mention who I think it is influenced by and if people enjoyed the new, they might go out and see where it came from. That’s my hope anyway.

I grew up prior to the internet in a city without a bookshop, only a WH Smith’s. In one way this helpful because its limited and eclectic selection of SF ensured I took a catholic approach to the genre. At the same time, I wouldn’t wish this situation on anyone.

Mark – I’m not sure “luxury of choice” is the best way to put it. I’m not going to stop buying the books I really want to read (and I can’t afford to buy others, at least not new) if I do start getting sent a pile more. I read faster than almost anyone else I know, so my reading time is not nearly as much of a constraint on what I review as the supply of books is.

Worse: Mission Earth.

I think the speed of the internet only encourages the latent cultural drive towards the newest & shiniest. And the way the industry (publishers, awards, booksellers) are set up, there’s very little reward for bloggers to talk about books from several years ago.

From personal experience – if I can review something that hasn’t been released yet, my traffic spikes. That spike is far lower if review something at the on-sale date. And continues to flatten out until 3-6 months after launch.

At that point, I might as well review a pulp paperback from the 1950s – from a quantitative point of view, I’ll get substantially more visitors from the long tail of niche fan-groups than from reviewing a best-seller in 2008.

I’ve actually started doing this (covering older stuff). Granted, my older stuff isn’t all that old (mostly in the last decade), but so be it.

Musing aloud, it may just come down to content. It is easier to add “new news” to the collective interwebberbastorium if you’re writing about something that’s… new.

The long tail is good for keeping things ticking over, but it is much harder work to add something new to a debate that’s been going on for years (or decades).

Less theoretically, I started blogging to talk about hidden treasures and the vast majority of our reviews are still of older books. BUT, I can guarantee at least 10x the visits if I’m reviewing something that’s not yet on the shelf.

Practically speaking, there’s a magical balance out there. If someone finds it, please let me know.

Millenium / Gollancz deserve some credit for trying to encourage readers to sample older material through their Fantasy and Science Fiction Masterworks series. These series began in 1999 and have re-released a good number of “classic” titles. I think they are a good way to try something different and high street bookshops generally carry a few titles.