Yup, and tons of not very good writers become successful and wealthy. The point being, whilst piracy might affect direct sales of a particular book, there's good evidence to suggest it leads to people going and buying more books by that author. This in turn leads me to believe that piracy might piss off the publishing industry when they heavily market a particular book(s) but there's probably a net financial gain for individual authors across all their work.

I'd say step one is to be a good writer, like Neil Gaiman.

You should tell them to get Neil Gaiman to explain it to them.

Can't think of a better way to encourage piracy.

I'll curb my initial reaction which was to not think very highly of you and try to be positive.

Tolkien invented whole language systems just to make sure his races had a depth and mythology that didn't feel off the cuff. The lore and therefore depth of the examples you mention are akin to stepping into a puddle vs swimming in the ocean.

The examples you mention have fully realised histories. Tolkien's world has history so established, concrete and utitlised it's become mythology to the characters that take part in the events of the books.

I've read all the stuff you mention and they're simply not comparable. Yes they make you feel like you've stepped into another place. Tolkien makes you feel like you actually live there, or more accurately, that your ancient ancestors did and you're reading their story which is partly about their ancient ancestors. It's so immersive the only fantasy literature I can think of that really compares is Dune.

Don't be, it's great. I understand OP's points but I personally don't tend to slice up which characters carry the most emotion, I just enjoy the story.

There's nothing wrong with long novels. The issue with King is that he sometimes writes flabby novels.

I'll happily do that. My rate is $300ph, in advance.

Overlong, particularly the opening act. Lazy stock King characters - The Grumpy Old Man, The Good Boy etc etc - truly awful prose on occasion. I mentioned this in a previous post on this book but when you commit a sentence like 'they darkened the darkening sky' to paper and think its good, you're in trouble.

He's showing his age too. Nothing wrong with that, he's older now, but why try and write a teenage character when you clearly can't write a teenager? It had 'how do you do fellow kids' energy running all through it.

It was, yeah.

It's a valid take on a lot of his middle-career work. It, Tommyknockers, Dark Half, Needful Things, the Dark Tower series etc. He got so big that I think editors got scared to actually tell him to reign it in a bit.

Thankfully, as he's got older, he's either got much better at self-editing or some editor somewhere has had the balls to tell him straight up that he's waffling and he's by and large returned to the more streamlined, better and more effective writing of his youth. Apart from the recent, dreadful Fairy Tale of course.

It's owned by Amazon so it's essentially a marketing tool to collect, store and sell your data and push whatever the publishers have paid them to promote that month.

A bunch of automated tools to fill up websites with awful crap. Just what the world needs more of.

It's kissing for christ's sake.

I've just started The Mirror and The Light - I was going to give myself a Tudor-break after Bring Up The Bodies but I just had to carry straight on.

They are so good. Even knowing exactly what's going to happen it's the characters individual stories and personalities that make these books shine. It's going to be an emotional goodbye to Mantel's Cromwell. A man I've met before via fiction (C.J. Sansom's also excellent Shardlake series for example) but never had an ounce of fellow-feeling for before now.

It made me laugh till I cried and it also made me cry.

Long term, you have to change your mindset.

Reading a novel is not about getting the salient points. It's about experiencing the entire journey the characters are on. You're not reading it for information or education, you're reading it to enjoy the whole process.

Short term, try reading some short stories. Plenty of authors have written short story collections or there's anthologies of short stories by multiple authors in a wide variety of genres.

It's one of those rare instances, in my opnion, where the movie is better than the book.

I found the book a turgid slog to be honest and Legion was self-indulgent twaddle.