Terry Goodkind in the Modern Age

They will NEVER go away!

Most of what I've talked about by this point is over a decade old. That Terry Goodkind is an asshole who thinks too highly of himself isn't really a secret. It's kind of how he's come to be defined. And that clearly irks him to some degree.

So now let's talk about what the latter half of Goodkind's career has brought us.

As I've already said, Goodkind frequently spoke about how he wasn't a fantasy author, and considered himself too important to be slapped with that label, including accusing TOR of hurting his career somehow by insisting they market his books as fantasy, despite everyone who ever read them who wasn't Terry Goodkind knowing they were fantasy as soon as they read the first page. Again, while his followers often repeated the myth that they weren't fantasy, they didn't start talking this way until Goodkind told them to.

In the last post I talked about Goodkind's personal Goebbels, Ron "Mystar" Wilson, and how Mystar's disinformation campaign is probably responsible for a good chunk of Goodkind's reputation, both in how his fans behavior was perceived and in how Goodkind apparently would not listen to a word of criticism, regardless of whether it was constructive, and kept people like Mystar around mainly to keep his own ego nice and inflated.

Phew, that was quite the run-on sentence, wasn't it?

But I also mentioned that it doesn't appear that Mystar is hanging around Goodkind much these days, or at least, not in a professional capacity, and that it has been some time since he's shown up online defending Goodkind to the end and lying about his sales record and standing within the industry. He's also never said anything about his declaration that HBO passed on George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, probably because there's no defense for what he said.

I want to take a moment and deliver an aside; there are people who believe that Ice and Fire wasn't doing well until Game of Thrones premiered. This has been repeated by Goodkind followers (and Mystar) and has been used by Goodkind thralls to "prove" that Goodkind is the better, and more popular, author. The problem is, it was never true. Goodkind didn't start placing on the New York Times best-seller list until his third outing. By then, A Game of Thrones had been released to great critical acclaim, but while it wasn't on the best-seller list, its follow-up, A Clash of Kings, debuted at number 13 on the list. This is a better showing than Goodkind made, and it happened just three years after Goodkind's first placement on the list. This is not enough time for Goodkind to be the sort of game-changer that allows him to take credit for how well A Clash of Kings did.

So, to recap, Terry Goodkind did not make the New York Times' best-seller list until his third book, Blood of the Fold, in 1996. I'm not sure where it placed, as historical records don't seem to go past the top 15 of each year, but this means that whatever number he placed, it was below 15. While each subsequent volume placed somewhere on the list, only two, Chainfire and Phantom, made it to the top five.

Meanwhile, in 1999, George RR Martin's A Clash of Kings, volume 2 in its series, debuted at number 13. His third volume, A Storm of Swords, debuted at number 12 and his (so far) final two volumes debuted at number 1. Goodkind has only topped the list once, with Phantom. His output in the epic fantasy genre is also much higher, so really, despite what you may have heard, Goodkind might have been doing better in terms of sheer sales volume (due to having started earlier) but Martin actually achieved more, and in a quicker time frame, than Goodkind did.

Anyway, moving on from that.

So what's Goodkind been up to in the last ten years or so?

Well, among other things, lying about his product, ruining lives and ripping off his fans.

For starters, there's Goodkind's "general fiction debut", The Law of Nines. If memory serves, Goodkind was quite jubilant that he was finished with The Sword of Truth and could now start writing general fiction and get away from the stigma of being a fantasy author. So, in 2009, we got his first non-fantasy effort, The Law of Nines, which...sigh...turned out to be fantasy after all. Not just fantasy, but a continuation of the Sword of Truth novels. Of course, that was obvious the moment we learned his protagonist's name was Alex Rahl.

Have a look at the book's Wikipedia page for more on its ties to Sword of Truth. But the bottom line is, Goodkind told us this was his first non-fantasy novel and he lied to us. I don't see how more people didn't call him out on this, though you'd better believe the general fantasy readership did. Both Werthead and Pat from Fantasy Hotlist had a lot to say about it, and so, for that matter, did a lot of more professional fantasy review sites.

This sort of lie goes beyond insisting that his fantasy novels weren't fantasy, because at least there he didn't deny that he used some fantasy elements to deliver his message. He just insisted that the presence of fantasy elements wasn't a fundamental element of the series. Here he was literally telling us it was a non-fantasy thriller, and he lied. Why he felt the need to do that is beyond me, especially since he wanted nothing more than to be taken seriously as a non-genre writer, and specifically did all he could to market this to the general fiction readership. It was even published by a non-fantasy press, Putnam Adult.

In short order, Goodkind returned to the world of Richard and Kahlan, despite insisting that Confessor was the last book in that series. Considering that The Omen Machine, Goodkind's return novel, was published a mere four years after Confessor, it seems like Goodkind's insistence was never serious. I'm guessing he was lured back to TOR and writing about Richard and Kahlan by the promise of more money a chance to write about important human themes that are so universal they can only be told in a fantasy setting.

But then he did something kind of odd. He went the self-published route. Shortly after The Omen Machine's publication, Goodkind announced that he was working on a prequel novel that he would be publishing himself, without TOR's involvement, as an ebook. However, for $300 dollars, fans could purchase a special limited edition print version of The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus that would be leather-bound, and would come with other exclusive merch that would not be sold in stores. Additionally, this was reputed to be the only print copy that would ever be available to anyone.

Well, they sold out within minutes. As soon as pre-orders went live, fans couldn't wait to get their hands on this exclusive product. Too bad that as far as I can tell, they never did.

I can't seem to find anything online about how this was resolved, but I do know that Goodkind kept fans waiting for their product for well over a year, delivering promise after promise and breaking all of them. Eventually, TOR did publish The First Confessor under its own imprint. I see it every time I go to the fantasy section of any local book store. Again, I haven't been able to find out if fans got their money back (some $90,000) or if they ever got their product. I can confirm that such product exists and some fans must have gotten it because one of them is offering up their copy on picclick.com.

But the controversy with this book wasn't over. An online pirate managed to get ahold of the e-version and distributed it as pirates do. Goodkind's response? Put the man in fear for his life.

I'm not kidding. Now, I don't support online piracy, but the proper method of handling situations like this is to go to the police and let the law take care of it. Goodkind published the name and address of his hacker online, and encouraged fans to go after him with both barrels. In the end, he had to go underground. Sure, he was a pirate and deserved some sort of punishment, but did he deserve to literally receive death threats? Hardly. And this time it was actively encouraged by the author himself!

Now, the revenue lost by Goodkind thanks to this hacker's activity was likely negligible. I'm quite certain that Goodkind didn't have to mortgage his home or sell his car thanks to this hacker. In fact, I'd say his bank account didn't even notice it. And the richness of this activity coming from an author who had just ripped off his fans is unending. It's okay for Goodkind to literally take money from fans and deliver nothing (over-promising and under-delivering is kind of a microcosm of Goodkind's career anyway) but for a guy to distribute e-copies of a book that sold well anyway is worthy of sending a rabid army of fans after him to threaten his life? That's just plain nasty, and totally beneath the dignity of a multi-million best-selling author. You think Goodkind's the only author who's had this happen to him? More like one of thousands, and yet he's the only one who thought it was acceptable to open this guy up to all sorts of unhinged loonies that populate the internet. It may very well be the worst thing Goodkind has ever done. A close second would be ripping off his fans.

But the regular old douchey behavior didn't end, either. For one thing, take a look at the books Goodkind has chosen to review on Goodreads. I mean...my god. For comparison, here's Brandon Sanderson's list of reviews.

In case you didn't click the links, or even if you did, I'll spell it out for you. Goodkind has only reviewed his own books, rating each of them five stars. Now, I won't suggest there aren't other authors out there proud of their own work. That's just fine. Even Joe Abercrombie, one of my favorite authors, recently tweeted about re-reading one of his own books and finding it better than he remembered. But this takes being proud of your accomplishments a step further. Goodkind literally has no book on his review list that he didn't write. It's like he's saying the only books he knows of worth reading are his own. And in case you wonder if he can take criticism any better now, don't worry. He can't.

One of the reviews of The First Confessor comes from a fan, Jasmine, who was less than impressed:

a big disappointment, I wish I never read it

with this book Terry managed to destroy everything he built in the SOT series, right now I'm seriously wondering why did I ever like this series, or if it was as good as I remember it...
well I read every book he wrote, and currently reading the first confessor...

as for the Omen Machine I admit I was disappointed by it, it's the first in a new series, and if I'm not mistaken ...as long as SOT series, too long, too much waiting... and I loved the premise of the first series more...

the first confessor is suffering from the fact that I'm reading and LOVING the wheel of time series by Robert Jordan, I just can't bring myself to care for it...and the fact that I know all the major characters and what will happen to them doesn't help at all( I did some rereading of the parts that spoke of the great war and the first confessor in anticipation for this one)...it's not fun to know how the book ends before you red it, though I'm hoping there will be some kind of surprise for me in the end.... 

I don't know, I just hated it... I couldn't agree to anything the characters did, none of their actions made sense to me, it was very different from what I expected after reading the original series, things weren't the same, I can come up with at least a dozen contradictions from what was said before... and that's without rereading the books...finally the book had a serious need of an editor-I suspect he had none-if it was a paper book I could've teared off many pages without damaging anything but the binding :(

Goodkind couldn't let that stand, no sir!

Jasmine, Of course there was an editor. The very same that has collaborated with me on all of my SWORD OF TRUTH series books. It would be difficult to imagine spending 9+ months working on something only to not bother involving an editor (and a proofreader, etc).

I have no idea what contradictions you are expressing and I am utterly confused as to how you would suggest this book manages to 'destroy everything' I built. Explain please? 

Now, in all fairness, Jasmine got off light compared to that poor fan from 2004 who got ripped from stem to stern for daring to suggest (correctly) that Goodkind was inserting his views to the point where it was a detriment to the story. But still, calling out a fan for daring to have "the wrong" opinion? What kind of assholishness is that? For what it's worth, Jasmine did "explain" but Goodkind either didn't care for her explanation or couldn't be bothered to continue to the conversation, because as you'll see in that link, he never replied. Others did, both to tell Jasmine she was wrong and how dare she have a different opinion (Goodkind's followers are nothing if not persistent), and also to agree with her that the book was a letdown.

I have seen authors respond to fan complaints before, but usually they leave them alone, and when they do, it's usually to say "I'm sorry you felt that way" rather than a snippy "explain please?" Michael J. Sullivan, author of a truly enjoyable series of books collectively called Ryria, once had to tell a reader who accused him of ripping off A Song of Ice and Fire that he had yet to read those books and thus couldn't have ripped them off, but he didn't tell her she was wrong for not liking his book.

And this leads me to Goodkind's attempt to defend himself from his more asinine statements.

Michael J. Sullivan is actually the man who renewed the discussion, back in 2013, in a Reddit thread in which he sort of marvels at how a best-selling author chose to talk about himself and his work.

Goodkind found the thread, and to put it mildly wasn't happy about being called out, accusing Sullivan of having the ulterior motive of hoping to boost his own sales by tearing another author down, as if that's how it works. Now, I haven't met Sullivan in person, but I have had, and witnessed, several online interactions with him, and I can tell you now that the man is an utter gentleman, and a very good writer as well. He's pretty much Goodkind's polar opposite; he loves his fans and continually thanks them for their support, plus he talks about his own books as if he's grateful that anyone at all has read them. I compared him to the greats like Martin and Tolkien, and he said it was an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence with them. As for his books, they are unpretentious high fantasy stories that manage to become more than the sum of their parts mainly by not pretending they're anything else. Goodkind brags continuously on how he's breaking down barriers and doing stuff never done before when in fact his books are very standard examples of fantasy. Sullivan says "here are my standard fantasy books" but you end up becoming very attached to the characters and engaged in the story quite quickly.

Anyway, Sullivan wasn't impressed by two of Terry Goodkind's more incendiary quotes, and I don't blame him. We've talked about both of them, and if you're curious about what they are, feel free to click the link. But eventually Goodkind himself responded. Curiously, he didn't respond, at first, with the sort of accusations and vehemence we're used to. In fact, he seemed almost, dare I say it...humble. He acknowledged for the first time ever that he is a fantasy writer, and seemed to be suggesting that his earlier behavior was due to frustration over how fantasy was perceived.

Unfortunately, the more one reads his initial response, especially the ones that follow after, one realizes that the same old Goodkind hasn't gone away. A few years ago, I wrote a different blog post calling him out on his back-handed non-apology. I won't re-hash the same post again, but I will call your attention to several telling phrases from his response:

“Occasionally, this quote even gets rehashed by other authors that like taking public stabs at their peers (presumably to feel a little bigger).”

That's rich coming from a guy who spent over a decade trashing not just other fantasy authors, but fantasy as a genre, all in the pursuit of making himself feel bigger.

“Here is the net of it; I fumbled with my words and the message I had intended to be clear was not.”

This is Goodkind essentially saying that he never intended to trash the entire genre, or suggest he was the only good writer within it. He goes on to explain:

I want people to read my books as stories about the human spirit. I want people to approach my books as human stories that exceed the general conception of what most fantasy novels represent (particularly what most fantasy novels represented at the time when I gave that quote).

So...essentially it's exactly what he was already saying. The only change is that he's acknowledging that fantasy has come to exceed genre expectations since then. He still doesn't acknowledge, in fact does not do so throughout his response, that it already did exceed genre cliche at the time.

I don't want someone to walk into a store, pick up one of my books, read the classification ('Fantasy') and then immediately assume dragons, orcs, elves, wizards, and so on.

So..why did you write a series that has dragons, wizards and non-human sentient races? Essentially, this quote is saying "I wanted people to think my book is something it isn't. I didn't want them to think it's exactly what it is."

So far, he didn't fumble the intended message at all. He wanted us to think his fantasy novels were something other than fantasy novels.

"Keep in mind the context of when this quote was offered."

...which was 2003, a time when JK Rowling and George RR Martin had already topped the NYT list and were doing as good, if not better, than was Terry Goodkind. And for that matter, on a critical level, China Mieville, Steven Erikson and Paul Kearney had made their debuts and were already receiving comments on how they were changing fantasy's reputation.

"There had only been a few successful fantasy movies, almost nothing on TV, very few major stars were willing to take on title roles, fantasy scripts were some of the lowest selling commodities in Hollywood, publishers would routinely reject fantasy on receipt, etc."

This is just odd. He starts talking about movies and TV series, as if that's what he produced, and then talks about how publishers would reject fantasy just for being fantasy. What the hell is he talking about? Hollywood movie and TV studios are a totally different animal from the publishing world, even if authors often work with both, and does he seriously think that publishing houses that exist to publish fantasy would reject a novel because it's fantasy? Huh?

"It was before the nerds -- us -- took over the world."

I'm including this to show how after over a decade of saying he was not, Goodkind is now trying to suggest he's "one of us".

He continues to labor under the delusion that his sales were so extraordinary that there had to be something readers were seeing in his works that they weren't getting elsewhere. I again wonder what he thinks readers saw in authors like JK Rowling. He can suggest that she wrote for children and therefore doesn't count, but in truth, adults enjoy her stuff as well, and in fact, while I can't find direct proof of this, there have been reports that more adults read Harry Potter than kids do, to the point where it was re-printed with more adult-oriented covers and stocked in the main fantasy section.

After once again trashing the genre while trying to suggest he shouldn't have back in the day, he says this:

"I concede my quote appears to take a step backwards and step on the toes of my beloved genre; but I also hope most people would recognize I have written now 16 books based in a fantasy world. In fact, I have only written fantasy stories to this point. You can safely assume the guy that has written more than 4.25 million words in the genre, probably has a deeply rooted love for it, however awkwardly I may stumble when trying to explain it."

Fuuuuuuck you, Terry "Ego That Walks Like a Man" Goodkind. There's a short pier somewhere waiting for you to talk a long walk off of it. Please, go back to the "Where Goodkind Goes Bad" post and compare what he says about being a fantasy author there to what he says here. It's one thing to say "Yeah, I guess I am a fantasy writer" and quite another to deny you ever claimed you weren't.

"It is outrageous to think that I am somehow a 'fantasy-hater'. Incredibly I have been called that and more, even a few times in this thread. Pause and think. Could that possibly ring true?"

In a word; absolutely. Again, read what he said in 2003 and especially in 2004. Seriously, this guy.

"Again, context. WIZARD'S FIRST RULE shattered records."

No, it fucking did not.

"At the time (possibly even still today) it was the largest purchase of a fantasy work by an unknown author. It had one of the largest first edition print runs in fantasy history and it shattered expectations on every level of publishing."

Note the weasel words again. "Of an unknown author". Okay, I'll give you that one. But no, it's not still true even today. JK Rowling and Christopher Paolini have destroyed your records, and both were first-time authors. And no, it didn't shatter expectations on every level of publishing, because, as I have pointed out numerous times, Goodkind never at any point in his career out-sold Tolkien, Jordan or Pratchett, among others.

I am willing to accept that some of the names that are now out-selling Goodkind were not doing so at the time, or hadn't debuted yet. But there is no question that Tolkien, Jordan and Pratchett already were. He's still convinced that fantasy as a whole never saw sales like his, and that just isn't true, then or now.

He then launches into an explanation that what he meant by saying he "changed the face of fantasy" was that he, among others, proved that fantasy could sell, thus opening the doors for some very creative fantasy writers to finally break through and get published. But again, compare what he said at the time: "What you are seeing with my novels is something unique. They are not like all the other fantasy novels." "The one author who is different." "A tired, empty genre." Does this sound like he was suggesting that his sales changed publishing practices, and that he was one of a handful of authors that paved the way for this to happen, or does that sound like he's trashing everyone who isn't him on a pure quality level, and suggesting that his sales prove his higher quality?

"It is absolutely true, then and now, agents and editors are still screaming for work like that."

No, no it is not. There is simply no way a standard-issue fantasy story like Wizard's First Rule is still in demand by publishers today. In fact, if you read through what publishers and agents are asking for now, mostly they seem to care that you're breaking the mold. They want to see more representation of non-white, non-binary characters, and inventive stories that don't rely on decades-old tropes.

I've already said how Wizard's relies heavily on old fantasy tropes, and I know for a fact that the series just got tropier right up to Soul of the Fire, and nothing I've heard about the following books makes me think they're any less so, just that they are more blatantly author tracts promoting Objectivism. Some have said that his post-Law of Nines books are more in tune with his earlier work, but that doesn't impress me as I think his earlier work is still bad.

I can tell you right now that anyone trying to break into writing fantasy with yet another 900-page epic about a stalwart hero, his lady love and their wizard mentor going on a quest to save the world from a mad wizard emperor should probably stop and consider what it is they're doing. They're not getting published with that, not today.

But while I'm not going to rehash it all here, go through the thread and see how more and more peevish Goodkind gets that some of the replies are less than fawning praise. My favorite quote is "Looks like you pirated the wrong books" because of course anyone who didn't like his books must have obtained them illegally. The more he replies, the more the Goodkind we know and love to hate comes back.

But it doesn't stop there. In January of 2018, Goodkind took to Facebook to let everyone know how much he hates the cover of his newest novel from the Sword of Truth universe. See, he once again called one of his novels "the conclusion" to that entire series and now he's back with a new series focusing on one of the side characters, Nicci, a former Sister of the Dark turned good. Shroud of Eternity is the newest release and this is its cover:

Cool.

Now, this isn't the most inspired cover I've ever seen, but it's not bad at all. If I didn't already know who Terry Goodkind was, I'd be tempted to pick this up based solely on this cover.

Goodkind is still Goodkind, though, so he did this instead:

Does it get more douchey? Actually, yes, because this is Goodkind we're talking about.

The artist, Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme, as you might expect, didn't appreciate this, and I am 100% on his side. What Goodkind did here was about as professional as when my three-year-old tells me she can't go to bed at bedtime because she doesn't want to.

I'm not gonna dredge up the entire back-and-forth these two had, as it's still out there for public consumption, but I will say that, long story short, Goodkind threw the first punch and then acted like it was Lecouffe-Deharme's fault that there was any controversy. In the end he stated that his biggest issue with the cover was that it was "sexist", as Nicci is given heels on her boots.

Okay, I'd believe this more if it didn't come from a guy who has had every heroic female character be threatened with rape or actually raped in his books.

The whole exchange just proved Goodkind hasn't learned anything. He's still a raging douche and always will be. But now he's a raging douche who's actually impacting another person's livelihood. See, it's one thing to rail against TOR the company for the bad covers you get. It's another to attack the artist personally, which Goodkind did.

And when you add that to ripping off fans and causing one pirate to be in fear for his life, if anything, Goodkind's behavior is worse today that it was before.

Oh My Stars

The infamous "Yeard", now sadly gone.

We all get by with a little help from our friends.

If I were a published author, there's no question I would hope my friends would support me. Especially if they worked for me. What I wouldn't expect, in fact what I hope would not happen, is that they would lie for me.

That is not the case for Terry Goodkind. Remember back in the chat transcripts, where he talked about his friend and former webmaster for Prophets, Inc., the infamous "Mystar"? Remember how he said Mystar was "scrupulously honest" and how I said that would hurt later?

Welcome to the pain.

Mystar, whose real name is Ron Wilson, is almost as infamous in fantasy circles as Goodkind himself is, and likely responsible for a lot of the reputation that Goodkind has earned. This character, who we'll get to in just a moment, is apparently the only kind of person Goodkind would listen to. And what kind of person is that? An obsequious fawner who talks about Goodkind as one would a god.

Anywhere online that fantasy is being discussed, talk about Goodkind long enough and Mystar will show up, guaranteed, armed with alternative facts about the man, his books and his impact on the genre and readers. Or, at least, this used to be the case.

Mystar believes, or at least wants you to believe, every hyperbolic claim Goodkind has made. The entire fantasy genre is crap, except Goodkind. Goodkind sells better than anyone who writes fantasy. Goodkind has more pull with publishers than any other writer because he's acknowledged to be their meal ticket. Other authors are threatened by Goodkind, and they're lashing out at him. Fans of those authors are doubly so.

Here are some quotes from Mystar (it should be noted that most of the content Mystar has posted over the years has been deleted from just about everywhere).

Here's Mystar on Goodkind's sales compared to other authors.

And yet, Goodkind's back list continues to sell more and more, his series has out sold (by a far margins) GRM, Jordan, Hobb and the rest...

This quote is from 2008, and George RR Martin (that's GRM, in Mystar's language) was doing quite well already, almost as good as Goodkind and soon to surpass him. You already know he's lying about Jordan. In the same thread he says "Tor has made no secret that Goodkind's numbers have surpassed Jordan’s" but he offers no proof. Werthead, who was in that thread as well, offered links to Publishers Weekly that showed:

Worldwide sales of Sword of Truth according to Tor upon the occasion of Raimi buying the TV rights: 20 million.

Worldwide sales of Wheel of Time according to Tor upon the occasion of Universal buying the movie rights: 44 million.

The link is dead now, as it's way out of date, but Werthead has a very strong reputation and I believe him. That being said, I have searched quite far on the web to find evidence that Terry Goodkind was ever TOR's biggest seller, and I haven't found anything that implies this was ever the case. All official numbers I can find for Goodkind vs. Jordan show that Jordan was always ahead.

I recall myself getting into a long "debate" with Mystar (thinking he was just some dude, not realizing he new Goodkind personally) and I couldn't believe some of the things he was saying; launching accusations left and right about my motives and connections, making crazy assumptions about my character and my intellect. Unfortunately the thread is gone now, but it was entertaining. Fortunately, his behavior kept up, and thanks to Pat from fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com, we have an entertaining story as to how he handled learning that Pat was not a fan of ol' Terry.

Some background: Patrick St. Denis is a blogger whose blog is one of the longest running and most visited fantasy lit blogs online, especially considering it's privately run. The Wertzone is another. Pat, like myself, is a former Goodkind reader who thinks very little of Goodkind as a writer or a person, but he's fair-minded and wanted to give Goodkind a chance to explain himself when it came to some of the more outrageous things he's said. Mystar was the intermediary between the two, but then he saw a glib remark about The Sword of Truth from Pat on westeros.org (the largest message board for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and fantasy lit in general), and to put it lightly was not pleased.

He sent an email to Pat. Here are some excerpts, with commentary from yours truly:

And as for "detractors" the 5 people at your westros board don't really count as "detractors", more along the lines of hecklers and gits. But I've got better things to do with my time than spend reading or interacting with people who are incapable of any kind of coherent thought. Attacking Goodkind for what they admire in GRRM or Bakker etc... sorry pot calling the kettle black simply doesn't warrant time from me.

Note the peevish insinuation that Westeros.org, one of the highest-trafficked fantasy message boards ever, has only five users. Is Mystar five years old? Also note the name-calling "hecklers and gits", "incapable of any kind of coherent thought". Yeah, when you don't have an argument, insult the intelligence of your opponent. "They don't warrant time from me" so I'll keep trolling that board until they ban me (yes, this happened).

I've read many of your reviews for some time now. While I will admit you have wrangled a few interviews, they came not from anything "you" did but rather you asking (most persistently I might add, so says the people offering these reviews) to do them and trying to sell yourself to the task. Mediocre at best. I've seen worse interviews, but I've seem much better as well. You seem to get hung up on "your view of things, from your perspective only", and not allowing that opposing views have any merit.

Bloggers asking for interviewers is kinda how it works. What did he think, that the authors contact the interviewers and say "I have deigned to allow you into my presence for a precious few hours"? It's pretty rich for a Goodkind bootlicker incapable of seeing past the interior view of ol' Terry's anus to accuse anyone else of getting hung up on only their own view of things.

Yet, you not only lower your self by your close association with these trolls, but the quality of your work. You forget to remove yourself from a neutral standpoint and rather encourage the shtick. Bad form! I can only imagine that publishers getting excerpts of your behavior and lack of professional demeanor are going to be frowning at your so called ability to be fair and respectful.

Yep, because he's not a fan of Goodkind, publishers won't want to work with him anymore!

These poor pathetic people have no clue as to anything Goodkind is writing about. Faith of the Fallen in any poll out there is always 9 out of 10 top favorite of the series. That you and these lemmings of discord find it reprehensive is telling indeed. Telling everyone that you indeed have missed the whole point of the book as well as the series. No wonder you cannot tell good literature from mindless drivel. These people of Westros et al. read a paragraph, them proceed to eliminate anything they do not want to be there, and instead focus on only what they wish to see. [...] Sorry these people you hang out with have no idea about any thing other than their mindless attempts at twisting the series into something unrecognizable and vile for their own sick entertainment.

First thing I noticed is that he suggests Faith of the Fallen, the sixth book of the series and the one where Goodkind truly stopped trying to tell a story and was purely ranting at his audience, is always "nine out of ten top favorite of the series". He says this as if he's bragging on it but doesn't that mean that there's only one book the readers like less? I'm betting it's Naked Empire at the very bottom. So...even the fans call it his second worst? Or did he mean to say second best? Confusing. The term "lemmings of discord" has taken on a life of its own. Mystar is doing the same thing Goodkind himself has enjoyed for a long while; playing victim to some sort of conspiracy among readers of "typical" fantasy. I also have to laugh at Mystar's continued assertion that our problem isn't that we find the content of Goodkind's writing to be poor, we just "don't get it". This is the language of losers, which is kinda weird since I've already pointed out that Goodkind has been successful.

You seem to be under the impression that because you read a wide Varity of "Fantasy" that you are the rule,when nothing is further from the truth. The "small" number of vulgar voices at westros et al, is but a scattering of sand in a vast sea of readers. Having just gotten back from the book signing and Meet the Author" I arrange for Terry, I have come away with some new insights. Goodkind readership is vast and world wide. These people are not only willing to travel from all parts of the world to get a book signed but to meet the man himself and tell him face to face what truly phenomenal work he has done. I've been to many many book signings by Goodkind and never once have we ever heard anything but praise and adoration of Goodkind and his work. This weekend has shown that you and your band of troll are not only wrong, but far far in the minority. Something I honestly think you are aware of but refuse to admit.

Seth Meyers once suggested that politicians should stop mentioning that they met a voter at their rally who was in support of all the politician's stances. Because of course they are, otherwise, why would they be at the rally? So, if someone's coming to a Goodkind signing, chances are they're a Goodkind fan. But all writers who have reached anything approaching Goodkind's level of success will have a large amount of fans show up. Does Mystar really believe that Goodkind's crowd sizes outnumber any other fantasy author? He seems to suggest so here. The crazy thing is, while Goodkind might have a lot of readers, he also has a ton of detractors, and like Mystar says, fantasy readership is vast. I don't have numbers for it, but it seems to me there actually are more people who dislike Goodkind than like him.

Let's put it this way; people who dislike Goodkind might read a large number of other authors, most of whom either haven't been around as long as Goodkind or are more niche and less accessible. If I can use myself as an example, I loathe Goodkind but love Tolkien, Cook, Wolfe, Martin, Hobb, Feist, Jordan, Gemmell, Sapkowski, Keyes, Erikson, Butcher, Wooding, Rothfuss, Sanderson, Abercrombie, Lynch, Lawrence and Sullivan, among others, and while few of those names have outsold Goodkind, assuming there are millions of other fans like me, there are a lot more fans reading something other than Goodkind than there are fans reading Goodkind.

Pat, the thing about all of this is honesty and respect. You show neither. You may well not care for Goodkind, fine. I've no problem with that. But you not only do yourself a disservice, but you fail all of your readers when you refuse to see that there are more positive aspects to Goodkind and his works that you are willing to let on. You do yourself a disservice when you try to dismiss the facts that are so clearly evident and rather try to diminish them by refusing to admit that Goodkind and his series has merit. Trust me when I say, you will never achieve your goals until you embrace that which you refuse to admit...the truth. I do think you have potential, as long as you can keep your focus and stop letting your friends direct your thoughts.

Oh, you've got a problem with him not liking Goodkind, alright. Considering how often Mystar showed up in various places to defend him, it's clear he couldn't stomach the thought of anyone disliking Goodkind. And yet he keeps talking about how we are the ones who feel threatened. The sentence "you will never achieve your goals" is laughable as Mystar seems to be suggesting that nobody will come to his site unless he changes his opinion and embraces Terry Goodkind. I mean...wow. Not to mention Pat had already achieved his goal, and it's only grown since.

You can imagine Mystar didn't enjoy being exposed. He wrote back, in a lengthy essay that Pat let us in on a bit later, and it's safe to say he didn't win Goodkind any more fans throughout this endeavor. If you read through the comments, it's clear that Mystar brought a few Goodkind supporters with him...or, as they all remain anonymous, maybe they're all him.

It's interesting to note how Mystar accuses Pat of things he didn't do and tries to make himself appear more important than he is by name-dropping people that may not even exist.

That same link will point you to a claim by Mystar that Goodkind's success leading to a TV series based on his books was so gosh darn threatening that George RR Martin was now "looking to get in on the mini-series action too" as if Martin's sole goal was chasing Goodkind's success. But, speaking of Game of Thrones, let's move on to what is probably Mystar's crowning moment of dishonest idiocy.

Back in the late 00's when Sam Raimi's TV adaptation of Sword of Truth, the quickly-cancelled and even-more-quickly-forgotten Legend of the Seeker was in post-production and about to air, some board members over at sffworld.com wanted to know if any progress was being made on the adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire that HBO had been considering. Now, we all know how that turned out, but back in 2008 or 2009 it was kind of an open question. We knew it had been proposed and that HBO had optioned it, but we didn't know when, or if, it would be greenlit. There was some threat that a proposed King Arthur series was also being considered (this became Starz's Camelot) with HBO suggesting they would only do one or the other, not both.

Mystar popped in with this:

Actually, I was talking to a friend at TOR today, the TV/mini-series deal for ASOIAF fell through. HBO decided not to take it and the production company was said to have discontinued with the option In other words, they backed out. I was truly looking forward to seeing how this would be adapted to cinema. 

It is a pretty reliable source, but like any only time will tell 

Hopefully someone else will be able to pick it up... 

Note he's not suggesting it's a rumor. He's saying it's a done deal. Over. Finito. Kaput. Of course, most responders questioned why a friend at TOR would know anything, considering that GRRM didn't publish through TOR and TOR was in no way involved.

But he continued: The problem is the breath and scope of the story line. Condensing that down into a project for the TV is not an easy task. That and the fact that there really is no demonstrable reason to the story line that woudl appeal to the masses... No hero figure..who doesn't get killed, to many random killings for no more than someone was in someones elses way...things like that. HBO kicked it out, but that doesn't mean another could take it and make it work... 

No demonstrable reason the storyline would appeal...at this point GRRM's sales were very high and rising. This is why HBO was considering an adaptation to begin with.

Eventually Paris Martin, GRRM's girlfriend and the time and now wife, chimed in herself to say that nothing of the sort had happened; there had been no ultimate decision made and she was disgusted with this random person who had no inside info suggesting he was privy to more information than the writer himself was.

Mystar wasn't deterred: While I understand it GRRM's GF may offer her opinion, we also have to understand her possable reluctance(sp) to let out the fact that it did in fact get dropped....and perhaps having dinner with several agents in New York and jabbering about projects and books my information could also be rhumor heard and passed along. 

Did you catch his subtle insinuation that she was lying?

Later he changes his source, saying he was talking to HBO directly, as again they apparently will spill the beans to someone in no way involved while not telling Martin himself: I was however in Vegas a few weeks ago at the convention, while bidding, discussion and other news was being bantied about, So I would guess my information is just as creditable, as I was specificly asking HBO, agents and the money reps... 

~shrugs~ 

But thepoint is, I don't have to offer any proof... the proof will be know when it never happens.

I gotta wonder how he feels today. For that matter, how he feels about this bragging on how successful Legend of the Seeker has been, bearing in mind it hadn't even aired yet: BUT ABC/Disney would not be denied. "We know a block buster when we see it"... This also is fleshed out in the aspect that even BEFORE any hype, trailers or much of anything, this series has been picked up in over 98% of the markets...again a record breaker, and stunning ABC/Disney. 

All because this is a story about Hero's...TRUE heros!. Heroic people acting in a manor that underscores the true Nobility that is mankind. It proves what Goodkind has been telling us for over 15 years now... People want heros... TRUE Heros. This is the same thing Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert Ned Nallie, ABC and Disney all agree on... This is why you see something like George R R Martin's A song of Ice and Fire always failing by comparison, why it is still sitting on the shelf, why the screen play has had to have been rewritten several times already, and it is still sitting there... It has no true hero's and no honor for life... People want to feel good about their heros, they want Heros, they can believe in!!! 

Yep. Poor, poor George RR Martin. No one likes his multi-million selling novels. No TV series for him. No eight-season-long multiple Emmy-winning blockbuster hit series (the first fantasy series to win Outstanding Series). Goodkind is the success story here; two poorly rated, poorly reviewed seasons and a quick cancellation.

I guess they've changed the meaning of "scrupulously honest", because Mystar seems to really enjoy lying. I think was Goodkind meant was "tells me what I want to hear".

In recent years, Goodkind appears to have kicked Mystar to the curb. We haven't heard from him in years, and during that time, Goodkind has softened, at least to a degree, on some of his harder stanced, leading me to believe that it's entirely possible that most of the worst behavior we witnessed from ol 'Terry was being encouraged by Mystar. When you only keep yes-men around you, determined to never let you hear anything that might upset you, you start to get an inflated sense of yourself.

But then again, if you didn't already have an inflated sense of self, you wouldn't be surrounding yourself only with yes-men in the first place. In the next few posts, we'll see that Goodkind's douchebaggery merely altered form. It didn't go away entirely.

Terry Goodkind, Best-Selling Author

The one time a Goodkind book topped the list.

Before we begin, a hat-tip to Werthead of The Wertzone, a fantasy/sci-fi blogger who has done a great deal for the promotion of fantasy lit. I got my sales numbers from his website. Granted, it's from last year and even he admits they're only as up to date as he could get them right now, but this is the hardest data on sales figures you're likely to find, and it matches up pretty well, give or take, with what Wikipedia tells us. Sales figures are never 100% accurate because the data comes from multiple sources, usually few of which are the actual publishing companies themselves.

There's absolutely no denying that Terry Goodkind is a best-selling novelist. Only an idiot would say otherwise. Currently, his total sales equal somewhere around 26 million dollars. That's...phenomenal. It's certainly higher numbers than most fantasy writers see. This is an astounding achievement and I have no desire to take that away from him.

But even where he has unquestionable success, Goodkind just can't resist being a douchnozzle about it. While he's given lip service to the idea of valuing his fans (you know, the sole reason why he can claim such high numbers), he spends far more time blathering about how his sales figures prove his own brilliance, and give credence to his claims that he can't merely be a fantasy writer. If he were, his figures would be lower.

He also greatly exaggerates just how great his figures are, but we'll get to that in a bit.

Let's first of all talk about Goodkind's path to publishing.

According to the man himself, it happened this way:

“After I finished WIZARD’S FIRST RULE I wrote to the best agent in the country. My query letter aroused his curiosity and he asked to see the manuscript. He thought it was the most remarkable manuscript of the decade and at once accepted me as a client.“

I have little doubt that the agent, Russell Galen, thought he could sell the book. I also highly doubt he deserves the title "best agent in the country" but I'm willing to let that slide since for once Goodkind is bragging on someone besides himself. However, I strongly doubt he really thought it was the most remarkable manuscript of the decade. Either he was just trying to win Goodkind's business or Goodkind is overblowing what he really said. Considering Goodkind's tendency toward hyperbole, I'm betting the latter. Besides, it was 1993. The decade wasn't even halfway over!

“An agent’s professional career is in some ways a journey searching for that one remarkable discovery, like a miner searching for that one big ore strike. Agents see endless tons of worthless rock. If you are that writer a good agent will spot you like a shimmering gold nugget on barren ground. However, a piece of plastic polished to a high luster will never be worth a diamond in the rough. Any publisher would take the diamond in the rough because they know that with a little work a rough diamond can be made into something extremely valuable, while a hunk of plastic will always be a hunk of plastic, no matter how shiny it is; it can never be more than an imitation diamond.”

Goodkind seems to think books are chosen to be published because of how great they are. If that was the case, there wouldn't be so much crap out there, some of which sells well. Agents are not concerned with finding the next Tolstoi or Hemingway. They're concerned with making money. And due to the market of that time, Galen knew he could sell Goodkind's book. I've already talked about how the major best-seller in the genre was Robert Jordan, and how Goodkind was one of the first beneficiaries of the search for the next Jordan. I don't have to talk to Galen to know that's what he was thinking. And he was right. He might have enjoyed reading Wizard's or he might have just saw a potential money-maker but either way, I strongly doubt he read this book thinking to himself "Wow, this man is the smartest man I've ever seen! I love how he uses fantasy to communicate important themes. This is so brilliant it's not even really fantasy. He's another Jonathan Swift! Nay, another Ayn Rand! I must sign this man. I'll go down in history as the agent to the greatest writer in the world!"

Goodkind has also claimed that his book was sold to TOR only after a "bidding war" between three publishing houses, and was sold at a "record price". We covered that in the post about his most infamous quotes. While I don't doubt that three publishing houses expressed interest, I not only don't think it was a true "bidding war", I also don't think it was unprecedented. I have a feeling the "bidding war" consisted of talks with three publishers, with an offer put on the table by each, and the publisher just picked the highest offer, which was TOR, the biggest name in the business at the time, and the publisher of The Wheel of Time. They likely figured lightning would strike twice, and they were right. Mostly. A true bidding war is when the three bidders all keep offering escalating amounts, and while the search might have been on for the next Robert Jordan, I highly doubt that their negotiations went that far. Also, the term "record price", which again, I've only heard from Goodkind himself, could mean anything. For all we know, it was maybe a buck more than they offered the last guy. There was little question they were willing to pay a bit more than they had for other books they were less convinced would sell, but I don't doubt that it's been surpassed multiple times since then.

I also maintain that the entire thing felt like a rush job. I've already talked about how Wizard's feels like it was written in a hurry, and how it's filled with poor grammar (it's shocking what slipped by the editor), awkward sentence structure, repetitiveness and contradictory information that shows Goodkind didn't go back and re-read or edit (and he admits he doesn't do this). Everything I know about this book's path to publishing says that TOR was trying to get this thing on shelves while Jordanesque fat fantasy was still the order of the day.

Goodkind admits he wrote this quickly, and I don't doubt he was able to as it doesn't sound like he had a 9 to 5 job even before he became a best-selling author. If I had the ability to be utterly flexible with what hours I worked at my job and when, I could get a book out that big, or bigger, in about a month or two. It might not be of high quality, but neither was this book.

Listen to what Goodkind says about the editing, or lack thereof, that went into his first book:

“With my first book there was more initial editing than there is today simply because it was the first book I’d ever written. Still, that editing only consisted of untangling sentences for clarity. The story itself was sound, it simply needed housekeeping. My copy editor (the editor who edits for all the technical aspects) tells me that my manuscripts are now some of the cleanest she has ever seen.“

In other words, the editor didn't really do her job. She might not even have had time to, as TOR likely had a firm deadline in place.

I understand that the first two books in this series sold well, but not phenomenally. The thing no one had realized yet was that fat fantasy was there to stay, at least for the 90's and early 2000's. A couple of years after Wizard's, George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones was published and saw the same sort of success almost immediately. Robin Hobb, JV Jones and David B. Coe came shortly after and by then the market was flooded with fat fantasy, so the biggest names continued to sell the best while the others duked it out among themselves, jockeying for the position of fourth. Jordan continued to dominate, while Goodkind was doing about half as well, Martin was slowly climbing and established writers like Guy Gavriel Kay, Tad Williams and Elizabeth Moon were seeing boosts to their sales as well. It was likely the rise of fat fantasy that propelled Blood of the Fold onto the New York Times Bestseller list, but in all fairness, Jordan and made that list with his entry that year as well, and Martin started making the list with A Clash of Kings, the second volume of A Song of Ice and Fire.

We don't know for sure how they all were doing compared to each other at the time, or how well they kept pace with each other. And again, the data isn't always 100% accurate. But I hardly think there was a time when Goodkind was head and shoulders above Jordan, and I'm all but certain there were points where one of Martin's books was higher on the best-seller list than Goodkind's were. JK Rowling's Harry Potter franchise and Stephen King's The Dark Tower series both sold far better than Goodkind's books ever did, and both of them had volumes released either before or shortly after Wizard's First Rule.

But when Goodkind started talking up his sales as objective proof that no mere fantasy writer could hold a candle to him, it was 2003. He still hadn't outsold Jordan. Rowling was killing them both. Many other established fantasy authors were doing nearly as well as Goodkind and Martin was catching up rapidly with Goodkind. But listen to Goodkind talking and you'd think no one in the genre was doing anywhere near as good as he was: "...any one of my backlist sells more copies in a month than most fantasy authors' books sell in their entire run." There's that weasel word "most" again, but regardless, this claim simply cannot be true, as this would mean Goodkind was selling in the hundreds of millions by then, and that's not even true today. He also claims that he sells well in Japan "where fantasy just doesn't sell", and that claim seems silly on its face. Japan is where anime comes from, after all.

It wasn't enough for Goodkind that he be selling well. He had to be selling better than anyone else, and even though that wasn't true, he did his best to make it seem like that was so. And his followers, sorry, his "true fans" have continually shown up on fantasy message boards to inform us in no uncertain terms that Goodkind has sales that all other fantasy writers can only dream of. It's another Goebbels thing; repeat a lie loudly and often until it becomes the truth. Even today you'll find people who genuinely believe that no fantasy writer with the possible exception of Tolkien has ever sold as well as Terry Goodkind.

It wasn't true then, and it's definitely not true now.

Has Goodkind done very well? Yes. Has he reached such heights that fantasy has never seen such a feat? Absolutely not.

The Wertzone's figures are clear; in the speculative fiction market total, there are 33 authors doing better than Goodkind. I was a bit kinder, and made a list specifically of authors where there would likely be some cross-interest, you know, like if you like these guys, you might like Terry Goodkind. Mostly epic fantasy writers.

Here are the top 15, all of whom are over 26 million copies sold:

1. JK Rowling
2. JRR Tolkien
3. CS Lewis
4. Andre Norton
5. Terry Pratchett
6. George RR Martin
7. Robert Jordan
8. Terry Brooks
9. Neil Gaiman
10. Christopher Paolini
11. RA Salvatore
12. Sherrilyn Kenyon
13. Tad Williams
14. Mary Stewart
15. Diana Gabaldon

Notice a name missing? By the way, Martin is now surpassing Robert Jordan, as you can see. This is likely due to the success of Game of Thrones, the popular TV series based on his books. But then, Goodkind had a TV adaptation as well, and it was a disaster. His fans will say it's because they changed so much from the books, but that's ridiculous. That only explains why they didn't like it. No one else did, either, and in fact a lot of Goodkind readers who, like me, can see how bad the books are, actually thought the TV series was better.

Here are the authors doing similar business to Goodkind, anywhere from 20 to 26 million copies, including authors who would likely be doing better if we knew the exact figures for each:

1. Terry Goodkind
2. Marion Zimmer Bradley
3. Brandon Sanderson
4. Philip Pullman
5. Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
6. Brian Jacques
7. Raymond E. Feist
8. Michael Moorcock
9. Mercedes Lackey
10. Frank Herbert

It's worth noting that Tolkien, Lewis, Norton, Pratchett, Jordan, Brooks, Salvatore, Williams and Stewart from that top list, and Bradley, Weis & Hickman, Jacques, Feist, Moorcock, Lackey and Herbert from the second had all had their major works of epic fantasy published before, and in some cases well before, Goodkind published his. Rowling, Martin, Gaiman, Kenyon, Gabaldon and Pullman all came along shortly enough after Goodkind that he wouldn't have reached his dizzying heights yet before they were on the scene (again, I'm talking about their epic fantasy masterworks, not their first published novels of any kind).

Christopher Paolini and Brandon Sanderson, however, came much later and did much better by this point in their careers than Goodkind. It wouldn't surprise me at all if within just a couple of more years, Sanderson surpasses Goodkind. And I know that Goodkind likes to claim that it's because his brilliant work opened the door for guys like Sanderson, but we'll get to that claim shortly.

Now let's look at the authors doing very well, but nowhere near where Goodkind is yet. David Eddings and Anne McCaffrey, who have been around since the 1980's, and Roger Zelazny, who has been around since the early 70's, are in the 15-20 million sales record.

John Norman, Diana Wynne Jones, Robert E. Howard, Stephen R. Donaldson, Gordon R. Dickson and Patrick Rothfuss have each surpassed 10 million, and Rothfuss is quite the newcomer compared to the other names on this list. He also only has two full novels and one novella to his name. Once he releases the final third of his trilogy, assuming he ever does, his sales may shoot into the stratosphere. He's one of those guys who took off like a shot. He just hasn't been around very long ore released much.

Bernard Cornwell, Peter S. Beagle, Jim Butcher, Barbara Hambly, Garth Nix and Conn Iggulden are all doing reasonably well at above 5 million but below 10. Butcher, Nix and Iggulden are all names that came well after Goodkind and could some day surpass him.

The following writers have sold over 1 million copies but haven't broken 5 million:

1. Markus Heitz
2. Fritz Leiber
3. Ursula K. LeGuin
4. Robin Hobb
5. Guy Gavriel Kay
6. Lloyd Alexander
7. Joe Abercrombie
8. Robert Silverberg
9. LE Modesitt, Jr.
10. Brent Weeks
11. Ed Greenwood
12. Sarah J. Maas
13. Simon R. Green
14. Harry Turtledove
15. SM Stirling
16. Lois McMaster Bujold
17. Susan Cooper
18. Andrzej Sapkowski
19. Katherine Kurtz
20. Trudi Canavan
21. Stephen Lawhead
22. Robert Rankin
23. Jacqueline Carey
24. David Gemmell
25. Dave Wolverton/David Farland
26. Lev Grossman
27. Sara Douglass
28. Melanie Rawn
29. Jennifer Roberson
30. Elizabeth Moon
31. Susanna Clarke
32. Stan Nicholls
33. Naomi Novik
34. Mark Lawrence
35. Paul S. Kemp
36. Steven Erikson
37. Ian Irvine
38. Richard A. Knaak
39. Katherine Kerr
40. Dave Duncan
41. Glen Cook
42. Karen Miller
43. Peter V. Brett
44. Kevin Hearne
45. Anne Bishop

Heitz, Abercrombie, Weeks, Maas, Green, Stirling, Carey, Grossman, Clarke, Nicholls, Lawrence, Kemp, Erikson, Irvine, Miller, Brett and Hearne all started publishing after Goodkind, and are likely doing much better at this point in their careers than he was. I fully expect, given their sustained and widespread popularity, that Abercrombie, Weeks, Carey, Grossman, Lawrence, Erikson, Brett and perhaps Hearne will surpass or at least equal him as the years go on.

My final list is authors that are sitting at or have yet to crack a million copies sold, yet are considered up-and-comers and have a lot of acclaim. Again, some of these names will likely equal or outpace Goodkind's figures in time, and are probably doing comparably at this point in their relative careers:

1. Michael J. Sullivan
2. Chris Wooding
3. Alison Croggon
4. Scott Lynch
5. David Dalglish
6. Daniel Abraham
7. Anthony Ryan
8. R. Scott Bakker
9. Richard K. Morgan
10. Brian McClellan
11. Glenda Larke
12. John Gwynne
13. Juliet Marillier
14. James Islington
15. Myke Cole
16. Angus Watson
17. Kameron Hurley
18. Miles Cameron

Hell, most of these authors haven't even been around a full decade yet and not one of them got the kind of aggressive advertising campaign Goodkind received. Sullivan, Dalglish, Ryan and Islington (as well as Paolini) began as self-published authors and were later signed to major publishing houses. That's pretty rare, and for them to even have done this well is pretty amazing.

Let's take a closer look at Goodkind's career trajectory.

As I already stated, when Goodkind was shopping his book around, agents and publishers were looking to capitalize on Robert Jordan's popularity and Goodkind more than fit the bill. Why, you may ask, did not more professionals in the industry recognize the obvious plagiarism I pointed out in the last post? Well, for one thing, I don't know that anyone Goodkind interacted with had actually read The Wheel of Time novels that were released, or if they had, maybe just the first, and it was really the second through fourth novels in that series that Goodkind most heavily ripped off. Also, it's possible that they just didn't care. They knew it would sell, and that was the final concern.

Fantasy was experiencing another renaissance, as I already pointed out, and even before Goodkind came along, sales figures in general were on the rise, and for TOR, they were better than fantasy as a genre had ever seen. Of all the houses out there that could afford to take a risk on a first-time author, they were the ones. While not all the authors released during the 90's saw sales figures even approaching what Goodkind would climb to, the market in general was already opening up to new talent and new approaches by the time Goodkind was published.

I'm saying this to come back around to Goodkind's claims that he was the game-changer for the genre. In fact, even today he still claims that he broke records in the genre that had never been approached at the time, which isn't true because he has never equaled Robert Jordan or Terry Pratchett, and he claims that it was his books selling so well that opened the market further so that now, in the 2010's, we have newer authors doing as well as he did. Paolini, Sanderson, Abercrombie, Weeks, Lawrence, Brett? They can all thank Goodkind that they have careers, because if he hadn't opened the gates, they would still be shut.

Bullshit. The gates were open already. He was just one of the first ones through, and broke through well before the kind of standard-issue pulp that he writes had become passé. Jordan opened those gates, but even he didn't do it alone. In fairness, Goodkind has recently acknowledged that he wasn't the first major seller in fantasy, even at the time, but he does still suggest that only a few even approached his numbers, when a look at the list above shows that many writers who started at the same time that he did, or shortly before, did as good or even better. Salvatore, Kenyon, Williams and Gabaldon all started either when Goodkind did or less than a decade before. All of them are doing better today. Rowling, Martin and Paolini hit shortly after him, when he had yet to really take off, so none of them could be said to be riding his coattails, as I'm sure he would suggest Sanderson is.

In other words, while Goodkind's sales are very good, no question, they are not genre-busting or game-changing. They aren't in 2018 and they weren't in 1994. Again, he's done well. He continues to, from what I've read, but the way he talks about his success, you'd assume that no one in fantasy had ever seen anything close to it, and that's just not true. He keeps talking about "smashing records" but what records would those be? My favorite comment from him along those lines is his talking up of his first self-publishing effort, The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus. Of course he smashed records in the self-publishing category! We're talking about a man that had already topped the New York Times best seller list and had all books he'd released except the first two place on it! When competing with no-names who will be lucky to sell five thousand copies let alone one million, yes, he's going to do better, especially since, unlike most self-publishers, his self-published book was sold in major retail stores.

Not only that, but Goodkind has repeatedly suggested that his sales figures are due to the high quality of his content. Read the chats again; when asked what makes him stand out or what made him so successful, he's all proud boasts about not writing fantasy, and being so much more than typical fantasy. So...how far down that path does he want to go? What does he think was the secret to Stephanie Meyer's success, or EL James (50 Shades of Grey), or, closer to home, Christopher Paolini's? RA Salvatore is the best selling Forgotten Realms author that exists. His books are crazy revered and as you see above, he's outselling Goodkind. He writes RPG-based fiction. I'll admit; I've tried to read his stuff and I don't care for it at all. But a lot of people do. Enough to put him in a sales bracket that Goodkind would be lucky to see.

I have yet to encounter a single person, in life or online or anywhere, who thinks Christopher Paolini's books are even good, let alone great, yet he's seeing more success, at a quicker rate, than Goodkind ever has. And just like Goodkind, he writes epic fantasy set in a fictional pre-industrial world, focusing on a "true hero". In fact, he employs many of the same tropes Goodkind does, such as the orphan farmboy/rustic who learns his true heritage and becomes a powerful wizard. Surely Goodkind bows to the master that is Paolini, as surely Paolini's success is due to his being even more brilliant than Goodkind?

Well, no. Goodkind likely believes Paolini's success is thanks to his own. Let's examine that claim. First of all, I have to comment on Goodkind's continuing movement of goalposts for himself. When he first made that infamous quote, "I have irrevocably changed the face of fantasy, and in doing so, I've raised the standards..." and blah, blah, blah, he was clearly saying that his work was of superior quality to anything else being produced in the genre. He did not mean, as he now claims to have been saying, that his sales changed practices within the publishing industry. But let's examine that; if this is true, then why have people who started publishing after him surpassed him, and why are several more gaining on him rapidly?

JRR Tolkien has been a published fantasy author since 1937. CS Lewis has been part of that scene almost as long. Mary Stewart has been publishing since the 50's, Andre Norton since the 60's, Terry Brooks since the 70's, Terry Pratchett, RA Salvatore and Tad Williams since the 80's. All of them are outselling Goodkind to this day, even those who are no longer with us. And, as I have repeatedly stated, Robert Jordan really was the man who kicked off the fantasy boom of the early 90's, and while all these names likely paved the way for Goodkind, he very clearly was the one who opened the very door that allowed Goodkind in. So, if they're still outselling Goodkind, surely Goodkind is still outselling the writers that followed, the ones he claims to have cleared the way for?

Not so for Rowling, Martin, or Paolini, definitely. Post-Goodkind novelists like Sanderson, Hambly, Butcher, Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Weeks, Maas, Carey, Grossman, Lawrence, Erikson, Brett, and Hearne, who have been around long enough that their popularity does not appear to be a fleeting thing, all seem to be doing better than Goodkind was in terms of pure numbers, and if they don't place as highly on the NYT list, it's likely an increase in competition rather than genuine lower numbers. I fully expect that most will end up doing at least as well, if not better, within a relatively short time. Sanderson in particular will outstrip Goodkind quite shortly, and he's been around just over a decade and was in his early 30's when he got into the game. Sullivan, Lynch, Dalglish, Ryan, Bakker, McClellan, Larke, Gwynne, Marillier, Islington, Hurley and Cameron, who have all been mainstream publishing for less than a decade, are doing spectacular for how shortly they've been around. If they were truly just riding Goodkind's success, he should be selling like a hundred million more copies than they are, but he hasn't even reached 30 million in total.

And even if he had, so what? Look at the names near the top of Werthead's list: Stephanie Meyer, Suzanne Collins, John Saul, Rick Riordan, Terry Brooks, Cassandra Clare, Veronica Roth, Christopher Paolini, Charlaine Harris, RA Salvatore, Sherrilyn Kenyon. All these authors have outsold Goodkind. Let's examine them a little closer. Meyer, Collins, Riordan, Clare, Roth and Paolini are marketed as young adult fiction, and I'm certain that Goodkind would dismiss the idea that young adult fiction would ever touch his brilliance, because he's already suggested that books written for adults are automatically of higher quality. That's not true, but that's what he believes. For that matter, Meyer, Collins, Clare, Roth and Paolini have significant hatedoms almost as large, if not larger, than their fandoms. I'll talk about that more in a bit. John Saul is considered by most to be a low-rent Stephen King. Terry Brooks is popular, but also widely despised as a Tolkien-cloning hack (if perhaps unfairly). Charlaine Harris writes pulpy vampire fiction, a sort of adult Twilight, if you will. Sherrilyn Kenyon's novels, while undeniably fantasy, are marketed as paranormal romance, which is a niche market of two niche markets and therefore should be selling in the high thousands at best.

And I haven't even mentioned Goodkind's sales compared to all fiction across the spectrum, and he really doesn't want me to do that. For those that don't want to click that link, you will find the top 100 best-selling authors of all time, regardless of genre. Stephanie Meyer is on that list. So is EL James. Wanna guess who isn't on it?

In other words, if we apply Goodkind's standards across the board, there is no question that Meyer, James, etc., are all of higher quality than he is. If course, he doesn't really believe that. He's said as much, recently, that selling as well as Meyer and James has clearly shows that his sales records don't mean as much as he used to claim.

Something to keep in mind is that sales figures can sometimes be inflated by such things as gift-buying, readers who bought books because the author was controversial, and readers who bought them and later soured on them. I mean, I've already said that despite their sales, it seems far more people despise Stephanie Meyer or EL James than love them.

But even if he was the best-selling author of his day, here's the thing; the authors we truly revere today were rarely best-sellers in their own time. The measure of an author's brilliance, if such a thing can be measured, must be not in how well they sell but in the response of readers and how they stack up compared to their contemporaries, those who came before, and those who followed them. We don't revere Shakespeare as the greatest playwright in history because he sold more plays than others in his time (although he has by now). Mozart was considered a flash in the pan at best, and wasn't taken seriously by serious music critics.

So, where does Goodkind fall on the critical and reader response scale? Well, he got many good reviews when he first hit the scene, and many bad ones. Probably more good than bad to start off with. His readership is a decidedly mixed bag; you've got his followers who like to think they're smarter or enlightened because they swallow his pap, you've got fanboys who love it because they love fantasy, you've got the guilty-pleasure sort of fan and you've got the fans who grew to hate his books.

But what about his claims that a majority of his readership are general fiction readers who don't read fantasy? To be blunt, I'd love to know where he's getting that, because I don't think there's a way you can accurately measure such a claim. Sure, he likely gets letters all the time saying "I don't like fantasy but I love your books", but I can guarantee that every fantasy author that has seen any success at all has seen similar letters. Every fantasy novel is someone's first, and people get into fantasy at any age. I have little doubt that most of those who discovered fantasy thanks to Goodkind have moved on to other authors since and learned that he's on the lower end of the spectrum. Unfailingly I find that most people who call Sword of Truth their favorite fantasy series are either quite young or haven't read much fantasy. I'm sure there are exceptions, but there are stupid people everywhere.

I also think a lot of the word of mouth about Goodkind has been inflated due to some of his more rabid followers repeating lies about his sales, his content and his general presentation. One such man has become infamous on his own.

Next, we're gonna talk about Mystar.

Magic and World-Buildng: Who Needs 'Em?

The only map you will ever need. Or at least the only one you're getting.

Time to take Goodkind to task for the two things he takes "typical fantasy" to task for: magic and world-building.

As you will recall, Goodkind said this about the topic:

Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It's either about magic or a world-building. I don't do either.

And in most fantasy magic is a mystical element. In my books fantasy is a metaphysical reality that behaves according to its own laws of identity.

Because most fantasy is about world-building and magic, a lot of it is plotless and has no story.

*tamps down anger*

I'm actually going to give Goodkind some leeway on this quote, because he uses the word "most", and indeed "most" fantasy, as is true of any genre, consists of authors trying badly to imitate what made other authors successful and missing the point. We call such writers "hacks" and for the most part these writers either get better and cease to be hacks or they stop being published at all. In any section of any bookstore, you're going to find racks and racks of hacks. This is not unique to fantasy. And yes, the fantasy genre includes game designers pretending to be novelists (and being published because they work for the game companies producing the books), game players who tried their hand at turning their latest RPG scenario into a novel and managed to get published anyway, writers who were published by Baen, an infamous company that is more concerned with quantity than quality (and primarily survives by flooding the market), but let me state for the record that you'll still find some quality stuff produced by Baen.

By including "most" fantasy, he's not exactly wrong. After all, if I can fit a majority of the fantasy authors whose work is considered noteworthy into a single blog post with room to spare, then it goes without saying that "most" of the genre is pretty one-dimensional and silly.

However, I take issue with his insistence that the problem with other authors is a focus primarily on magic and world-building. I won't claim there are no authors so focused on their magic system that they forget to focus on the characters, or that are so in love with the world they built that they forget the world is supposed to be there to tell a story, but I will say that those writers are probably in the minority. Having read in the genre as much as I have, I feel the worst issue it faces is how acceptable it became for far too long a time for fantasy to be derivative.

I won't pretend I know exactly where it started, but I have a feeling the first person to succeed despite blatant derivation, or perhaps because of it, was Terry Brooks. I said as much in the last post; Brooks openly and unashamedly re-wrote The Lord of the Rings with some surface changes applied and managed to produce the first fantasy novel to hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, The Sword of Shannara. After that, for a long time, a lot of what became popular in fantasy (but by no stretch all of it) followed a distinct formula. The orphan farmboy, or farmgirl, would be swept away on a quest, usually to find a magical artifact, but sometimes already in possession of it, would end up winning the love of a young woman (or man if the heroine was female) that by all rights he should never have met, and visit every city on the map in the process. The formula was played with a lot, increasingly so as years went on, but never really went away. In fact, you can still find the "epic quest" in fantasy today, though it usually takes forms like a marching army or band of sellswords instead of the orphan farmboy and his ragtag group of friends.

So ultimately, what killed the genre was just that; too many people doing the same thing over and over again. Were magic and world-building contributors whatsoever to these books' issues? Honestly, not really, and in many cases were their only saving grace. If they were contributors to the problem, they were mere symptoms, not the cause. An author who produces a one-dimensional story with one-dimensional characters is likely to produce a one-dimensional world and one-dimensional magic. Or, if he produces a derivative story with derivative characters, his world and his magic will likely be just as derivative.

In some cases, the magic and the world are the only thing to recommend the books, but that doesn't mean the books are all magic and world-building and no story. It just means a story that isn't any good.

A bad story will not be saved by well-thought-out magic systems or worlds. But a good story will not be served by poorly considered worlds or magic.

Let's talk about magic first. Magic can be approached a variety of ways. Increasingly fantasy authors are relying on it less and less. Even back in the early days you had writers like Glen Gook and Guy Gavriel Kay using it sparingly and keeping it mysterious, something that a majority of the characters mistrusted. Some authors use it like espionage authors use spy tech. It's all over the place and just about every character uses it to some degree. Steven Erikson is one like that. Of the two approaches, Goodkind is more like Erikson than he is Kay. All three of his major characters are magic users, as are a majority of his supporting cast.

Some writers don't explain much about how their magic system works, at least not in-story, because most of the characters aren't magic users and probably wouldn't understand. Others explain their systems in great detail because a majority of the characters are indeed magic users and the reader is better served by knowing how their powers work. Joe Abercombie is a good example of the first group and Brandon Sanderson perhaps the ur-example for the latter. Goodkind definitely leans toward the latter. In his first book, he has Zedd give Richard a long lesson on how magic works, and in the process, explains it to the reader. In the second book, Sister Verna does the same.

There's no right and wrong way to do a magic system. It can be minimalist or detailed. It can be mysterious or functional. Used by many, used by few. Prominent or background. But it needs to be consistent, regardless of how it's presented. Don't tell me in one chapter that magic works one way if you're gonna tell me in another that it works completely different. Don't tell me it can't do something and then have a character do that very thing. And above all, don't spring on us the idea that for one character the rules don't apply.

If you're gonna include a magic system, you at least need to know how it works. Even if you don't explain it to your readers, you need to know what you are working with as an author. It's usually best to ask yourself the following questions:

• How is it learned and executed?
• How is it accessed?
• Does it have a will of its own?
• Is it restricted in space and time?
• What does available magic do?
• How does it relate to the character, plot and theme of the book?
• What is the cost of magic?
• What can it not do?
• How long does it last?
• Who can use it?
• How do others react to it?
• Why haven't people with this power taken over the world?

It becomes more and more clear as the books wear on that Goodkind has asked himself none of these questions, or if so, the answer changes depending on what scene he's constructing.

Goodkind disparages questions about his magic system, insisting it's not important. "Why are you idiot readers so focused on the magic system instead of the story and characters?" is his general attitude. Again, I feel like if he'd given us a story and characters that were more engaging and consistent, he would have had fewer questions like this, but remember his complaining that fantasy readers are more focused on the inner workings of a flashlight than they are in asking why the character is stumbling around in the dark?

As I pointed out, we know how a flashlight works, but if Goodkind had written a scene where a character uses a flashlight because he's stuck in a dark place, he would first remind us how long batteries last, talk about the beam's radius and circumference and how limited they are, and then proceed to have his character wander for hours on end with the beam never even flickering and the beam lighting up the space around him to daylight-level brightness. He doesn't, if we extend the metaphor, understand himself how that flashlight works and doesn't care, because he needs that beam to keep getting brighter and those batteries to be everlasting in order to write the scene the way he wants it. If the character has to worry about what to do when the flashlight goes out or if there's something he doesn't see because his beam isn't focused on it, Goodkind might have to re-think how he's approaching this scene.

Goodkind's magic is very prevalent. Characters use it on nearly every page. And Goodkind writes it as working however he needs it to in order for the scene to proceed as he wants it. Rather than write organically, he forces everything in his story, and everyone, to do what he needs them to do in order to get where he needs to go. And he never re-writes or reconsiders because he doesn't do rewrites. He has said many times that he does not feel the need, ever, to go back and try a different approach to the his narrative. And it shows.

It's not really a problem if Goodkind doesn't want to explain his magic system to us. If that's the case he never should have started, and definitely should not have told us what it couldn't do. He also, probably, should have cut way back on its use. What he did was include it but very haphazardly, to the detriment of his story. As I said, a good story about magic users is poorly served by a half-assed magic system, even if the main point of the story has nothing to do with using magic. Which, unfortunately for Goodkind, is not the case for The Sword of Truth.

Now let's talk about world-building. What is world-building? Essentially, it is the consideration of the world you're writing within, what its history is, what its present is like, and how it got there, and how it will serve your story. The world should definitely serve the story, rather than the story serving the world, and yes, I have encountered books where the latter is the case. But the bottom line is that whatever story you're telling, it needs to feel real.

I know what you're thinking. "How can you expect fantasy to feel real?" I don't mean "real" as in "could this happen in real life". I mean real as in "within the context provided, is it believable?" If the world itself feels hollow, plastic and little more than a backdrop, then I'm not invested in what the characters in the world are doing. I don't care if the world is saved by their actions, because nothing about their world really matters to me. I've read some books where world feels like faerie land, and others where the world feels as solid and grounded as the world I actually live in. The first sort of world has me wondering why the characters can't just wave a wand and solve all their problems. The second means that every action they take has consequences, the sort of consequences they might have in real life. If a person is killed, they're likely gonna stay dead, and if a wizard says "magic doesn't work that way, I can't do this", then he can't do it. Even more to the point, if two characters from different countries that don't trust each other end up alone together, I'm already more invested in their situation because there's a basis for distrust or even violence that feels real.

I have no idea how a random person from Nicobarese might react if they had to work together in close quarters with a person from Tamarang, because Nicobarese is just a place where people talk funny, and Tamarang is just a resting place for an evil queen.

For that matter, I have no idea how long it would take to get to Nicobarese from Tamarang. They look pretty close together on that map, but it apparently takes weeks to travel between them. Have a look at Hartland. Richard and Kahlan travel from there to the village of the Mud People (are you fucking kidding me!!??) in about a week. But from the Mud People (seriously??) to Aydindril takes weeks upon weeks. Richard and Sister Verna travel from the village of the Mud People (I'm seriously getting angrier every time I type that) to Tanimura and it seems to take at least two months, not to mention that Sister Verna has apparently been searching for Richard for years when it doesn't look like it would take more than about a year to visit every place on that map. Their journey is fraught with danger from various places that appear absolutely nowhere on that map. Now, this is the same map that Goodkind apparently never wanted to make and only did so under pressure from TOR. Yeah, I really don't think that's what happened. I think that, like his fantasy, Goodkind started realizing that people thought his map sucked, and once again decided that the map wasn't important and it was the complainers' fault for focusing on it.

Kinda like his magic and his world building. He didn't think he needed to put effort into either, so he didn't, and then he got mad when people pointed out that he didn't put much effort into them.

Let's liken Goodkind's works to a living room set. He's got a nice couch and love seat pair, with a neat little coffee table, none of which look bad but obviously came from Ikea, and he's really proud of it and wants you to look at the living room--just the living room. Because if you look anywhere else you'll notice that the ceiling is being held up by about five spindly-looking dowels, and the whole thing is about to come crashing down.

The worldbuilding is the wall, the foundation, the support structure. If you don't have it, the rest falls apart. No matter how nice it looks. And Goodkind flubbed it, so rather than fix it, or admit he could have done better, he just rants and raves at his audience for even bothering to care.

Goodkind, any time there's an element to your work that you yourself don't care about, then it is your work that is one-dimensional and silly. Maybe you don't do world-building and magic, but then, maybe you shouldn't have even tried. Then again, without magic your story wouldn't work, because it depends on magic (the inconsistent kind that you right) to be told, and without your invented world, it would become obvious how thin and flat your characters are, and how they don't act like real people, and how skewed their values are. Hell, we notice even in the world you invented.

Next time, we're gonna talk about Terry Goodkind's status as a fantasy best-seller. Stay tuned because this one required actual research.