What is Fast-Publishing and What Does It Have to Do with Fantasy?

With the emergence of BookTok, reading culture has seen a revival largely due to the boom on TikTok over quarantine. What this means for the quality of books being produced is already seen.

I finished a 500-page book in under two weeks. Not a stunning metric for some I know but when I really was only devoting 30 minutes a night to reading it the wow factor is much less, well, wowing. This is not to say that easy-to-read books are inherently less valuable; many classics that are acclaimed by critics and English Lit teachers alike are simple to grasp. I was hesitant initially to embark on this journey, The Order of the Phoenix was the only other book I’ve read that even rivals this word count. Sure there were plenty of assigned textbooks of similar lengths that went unread but I’m not alone in this specific reading dynamic. Many returning readers fell back in love with books in 2020 once our myriad excuses evaporated into thin air. My hiatus from reading was largely attributed to those perilous class readings so when I was given the option to select a genre or title I was lost and burnt out. At the time I had no To Be Read (TBR for the real fanatics) list, I was just a girl ordering books I saw recommended online. Thanks to the community on TikTok I was finally able to find books that weren’t bland nonfiction but still more enticing and challenging than the books I read in middle school and early high school. 

The BookTok to Fantasy Reader Pipeline

One undeniable side effect of joining the BookTok community is exposure to Fantasy novels. Maybe it was my aforementioned childhood love of Harry Potter or the elements of fantasy in all dystopian novels that were a staple of my coming-of-age reading, but I was moderately receptive to the genre thanks to the recommendations of my online peers. Important to note that at this time, yes 3 years ago to be exact, Fantasy had an entirely different reputation than today. Fantasy was akin to Dune, Star Wars Comics, and the never-ending novels of George RR Martin. I avoided these titles for much of the reason I still avoid Sci-Fi movies. By the time I started coming around, the thing these books lacked had finally been corrected: accurate portrayals of women and subsequently romance. Suddenly I was more than willing to suspend my belief in faeries, spelled that way for more authority, in the name of some sexy forbidden love affair starcrossed in an impending civil war.

Once you bought in, a whole new world of reading opened to you. Boring conflicts of before like workplace romance had now been tossed aside for borderline unrealistic male love interests who would sacrifice anything, no everything, to save the girl of his dreams who just so happened to be the most mundane yet cataclysmically important in the entire realm. Gone were the days when you would watch some vanilla man and extraordinarily successful working woman fall in love over some minor speed bumps like miscommunication or the fear of commitment in 200 pages. Instead, you get romantic A plots, end-of-the-world B plots, and ANOTHER romantic B plot which pairs with a secondary mystery of the heroine’s real identity/lineage/power C plot. And this is a 5 part series with more books on the way.

Fast-Publishing: An Industry-wide Problem with a Genre Case Study

Well, where does this “Fast-Publishing” play in? Great question. TLDR: writers are getting sloppy because demand is so high and publishers want to pump out more books. Specifically in Fantasy, there requires a bit of thoroughness when world-building, and it's not necessarily something you can fix as you go. If your story takes place after a 100-year war followed by a 50-year rebellion, the event shouldn’t be necessarily up for debate in book 3 if it contradicts the prologue of the whole series. Readers and all media consumers alike have very high expectations of storytelling today. Formulaic Marvel movies and overdone nerd gets the girl doesn’t cut it, especially in Fantasy where you’re being compared to legacy reads like Harry Potter, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, or The Hunger Games. Cheap shots are sniffed out a mile away. 

RIP Good Love Triangles

The biggest offender is the death of the slow-burn romance. Seen also on TV, the slow burn is a long will-they-won’t-they of two love interests, where it always seems to be the wrong time to truly fess up on what the other means to them. This trope lends itself to many romances but most often it is the “enemies-to-lovers” cliche that thrives in this environment, love and sexual tension festering like an abandoned petri dish. Unfortunately, to earn the interest of an audience so feral and eager for a fix of superhuman sexual encounters, you need to deliver exactly that, and within the first 150 pages. Considering letting the candle burn a little longer for logic’s sake? You risk your book being only rated one or 2 pepper emojis, the universal spice scale among readers, or even worse, being shelved as a DNF (did not finish, for those still keeping score at home). Remember, authors today are not just competing with each other, but the entire internet for your attention. We imagine that we don’t have time for “will they won’t they”s when we can binge a 40-minute episode or a 90-minute movie to get the same satisfaction in half the effort.

The Fantasy genre demands creativity unlike any other and its boundlessness isn’t for the faint of heart. In fantasy, you are not only attempting to write a story worthy of being told but also in a world that is notable unlike our own. Being able to dwell on your creation, letting thoughts be idle, is critical for putting your best work forward. I can only imagine the rigorous amounts of editing and reflection these authors put into their manuscripts but that only brings me to another rule of creativity. The closer you get to your work the less you will see. Devoting years to writing a story allows you to know all the ins and outs until you get feedback from a neutral third party. Nothing quite pokes holes into your creativity than an innocently posed question of a well-meaning friend that shatters your perception of what you made. Writers, like all creators, get in the weeds. It used to be the role of editors to point out minute and major details but like many art and print industries, publishers’ resources have been slashed. They don’t have the time or manpower to edit your book and to maximize profits they’re looking for a manuscript that’s ready to print. Now the burden falls upon often independent writers to shell out X thousand dollars to hire a freelance editor/literary agent to split your earnings IF you get the deal. 

So I forgive you, unnamed fantasy author who recently published the second mediocre installment of her Dragon School series. I know it’s not your fault that publishing has changed forever so no longer will qualified experts go through your novel with a fine tooth comb. There’s no one to ask you “Did they really need to get together in book one?” or “The magical powers element seems underthought and overdone”. I will keep my finely veiled criticism amongst dear friends once they come to the light. Without much-needed support you will probably put out another book by next summer so said dear friends and I can laugh at its unreadability. Until then I will passionately advocate for you and your craft on the internet.