3 ms·
> That map you spend a week or two creating? It'll be a messy blur in a kindle. There's a funny thing going on with maps in books. Fantasy novels frequently i
by thaumasiotes 1y ago
> That map you spend a week or two creating? It'll be a messy blur in a kindle.
There's a funny thing going on with maps in books.
Fantasy novels frequently include maps, and some people are pretty vocal about how much they appreciate those maps. But the maps are never relevant to the story at all; you'd lose absolutely nothing by leaving them out of the book.
History books also tend to include maps. The maps are much less detailed, and it's rare for people to make appreciative comments. But the maps are in there, even though the authors appear not to really care for them, because they're necessary to understanding most of what's going on. As far as relevance to the text is concerned, history books have a much more severe undersupply of maps than fantasy novels have an oversupply, and the fantasy oversupply is considerable.
And yet, somehow, all of the popular demand is for fantasy novels to have more maps and for history books to have fewer.
- protocolture 1y agoKJ Parker does this really well, he just doesnt include maps, nor does he hold himself accountable to them. Fans trying to stitch his world together run into issues and he just straight up doesnt give a shit.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoThat sounds like the exact opposite of doing it well.
- protocolture 1y agoHow do you figure? You get all the required context from the words in the book.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago> he just doesnt include maps, Totally fine. > nor does he hold himself accountable to them. Iffy: consistency matters in worldbuilding. > Fans trying to stitch his world together run into issues and he just straight up doesnt give a shit. Bad: This implies that 1. the constructed world is inconsistent and 2. the author doesn't care. A story set in a fluid world where things just move around breaks immersion and undermines stakes because the reader doesn't know what the rules are and stops caring when it becomes clear that things are just made up on the fly whenever it's convenient.
- dsign 1y agoI love maps on books. And illustrations and schematics. But the kindle experience with all of those is so bad, even slowing down the device, that I may prefer to skip them. And because the kindle device drags down all the other platforms (e.g., kindle on ipad), then the experience on other platforms is also bad. Authors may be better served by hosting their digital books on their websites, but that also comes with its own sets of problems :-( . It's a different story on physical media, for example a well-made hard cover.