Grimdark Fantasy discussion

Since we have some Authors in the group, and the subject has already surfaced, we'll be discussing the possibility of self-nomination for future Group Reads.

Please share your thoughts.

I'm OK with it.

As long as they are grimdark, I don't have a problem with it.

It seems like it would be difficult to discuss when the author is part of the discussion. Often this leads to very basic discussion and cannot be critical. Will the author be banned from commenting?

Chris wrote: "I'm OK with it."
Tracey (Queen of Blades) wrote: "As long as they are grimdark, I don't have a problem with it."

Agreed.

Heather wrote: "It seems like it would be difficult to discuss when the author is part of the discussion. Often this leads to very basic discussion and cannot be critical. Will the author be banned from commenting?"

The goal is to see what regular members think about it, and although authors will most certainly support Self-Nomination, I don't think that they should be banned from the discussion...

I suppose it is worth seeing how it goes. I've read all the horror stories of authors going after bad reviewers!

I really like to support self-publishing folks so I'd be interested to see what comes out of nominations.

I'm good with self-nominations. I'm not sure it is a great idea or an easy conversation if one is selected per Heather's point.

As long as authors realize that the main point of discussions of books is primarily to be critical and not take offense, but view it as constructive criticism.

I'd say give it a go and just see what happens for one book.

Chris wrote: "As long as authors realize that the main point of discussions of books is primarily to be critical and not take offense, but view it as constructive criticism."

That's the whole point I think, it would be in the author’s best interest to welcome the criticism.

Even some of our favorite authors get bad reviews, “newcomers” are not immune to that either.

Good point Brenno. When we have various people who don't care for Sanderson, Rothfuss or Abercrombie it is expected there will be people that also don't care for smaller authors.

By that same token, I'm thinking we'll have people that love them too.