Right when I was getting riled up about more A Twisted Tale - Twisted Tales Series installments (basically, feminist YA AU novels about what if the villains had taken over the realms of classic animated-musical princesses and other heroines) being published in Spain... WHAM.
The release of the book series in our country was nipped in the bud right after
Once Upon a Dream.
After the Waterfire Saga (constructed-world feminist fantasy, just like Twisted Tales) and Storm Sisters (feminist historical fiction) --PS. Both the Waterfire Saga and Storm Sisters star a mainly female multinational cast, while Twisted Tales has a different setting when it comes to historical epoch and counterpart culture for each installment, just like the Period Piece Animated Musicals it uses as sources--, this is
the third girl-power-themed historical or counterpart-culture YA fantasy book series that Planeta nips in the bud, after having translated or released one or two installments (
fortunately, unlike the serialised and cliffhanger Waterfire Saga and Storm Sisters, each Twisted Tale happens to be standalone and can be read on its own! So no compulsive need for closure in the latest case!). All the YA girl-power-themed fantasy released by Planeta is in general
contemporary fantasy (including paranormal romance), while Yours Truly prefers backward-looking, preindustrial early modern or at last industrial Victorian settings (Ghibli hills, fortress towns, brightly-coloured uniforms, gentlemanly cadets and officers, spirited bluestockings, you name it); and all their girl-power-themed serialised constructed-world and historical fantasy is mostly for the
middle-grade demographic (
That's not to say that there isn't a degree of What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? that are found in the books; it's not uncommon to see Middle Grade and Young Adult share the same space in a library or bookshop due to the blurry distinctions between the two genres. The Harry Potter books are a prime example as they are technically both Middle Grade and Young Adult, particularly as the series went on. So basically, if Young Adult is the teenager, Middle Grade is the "tween." The upside is that a chapter book for late-primary schoolgirls like that often comes with lovely illustrations --even though,
if they do feature illustrations, they are small or appear sparingly-- of the characters; the downside is that no one takes a 20-something --or 30-something, or from that decade up--, whether biologically male --regarded as camp gay-- or female --like yours truly, regarded as a womanchild--, who reads girl-power-themed middle-grade fiction, even more so if it's a period piece or fantasy setting and with animesque illustrations, seriously).
Let's say that, having lived through these frig-ups and disappointments, I saw it coming and resigned. And rejoiced that the Twisted Tales saga is comprised of standalone stories, of course.
No Export for You
This is when a work was not released in a country even though there were good reasons to export it there. It has to meet at least one of the following conditions:
- It is part of a franchise which has previously proven to be successful in other regions (e.g. Sailor Moon).
- It was made with the specific intention of being sold overseas (e.g. Sin and Punishment).
- Its genre and/or sensibilities make it the sort of thing that would be exported in the absence of foreign fans clamouring for it.
The Waterfire Saga, the Storm Sisters series, and the Twisted Tales Saga fit all three of these conditions.
But, just because a Vocal Minority believes something from abroad should be released for them, doesn't mean their country is a viable market. The distributors have to think of the money.
Book publishing, like with any other creative product, is primarily about business, not art. Most normal publishers only want to publish books they think will sell, and will publish manuscripts that have possibilities of reaping good sales. Sensible publishers will try to publish good manuscripts under the logic that quality is appreciated. Vanity publishers really don't care either way and will publish anything, as they make their money off the authors rather than the audience.
So it can be the reason a work isn't released is problems with other parties who worked on it wanting too much money, or deciding it's too much trouble (or there's considered not enough money to be made in a release) to justify going to the effort and trouble to work out all of the necessary clearances.
So let's face the facts: the releases in Spain of serialised young adult girl-power-themed historical fantasy by Editorial Planeta are all DOOMED being subject to No Export for You, having been Screwed by the Distribution and-or Publishers, due to both the Girl-Show Ghetto and the minority-within-the-minority that is the Fantasy section of the Sci-Fi Ghetto. "Money, Dear Sandra. No Money for Us, No Export for You." In short, the medium, and to a lesser extent the genre, define the target audience. Entire classes of works are "pigeonholed" into "target" demographics, and woe unto any fan who happens to fall one day, cent, chromosome, or lateral inch outside of these appointed bounds. Some works surrender and even embrace these holes, falling into unoriginality and Flanderization, so long as the money keeps rolling in.
Remember ghettos are created by society, convention, advertisers, and critics and have no bearing on how artists actually work. Artists actually draw influences from a wide variety of references and don't see their work in the way categories are created. Thanks to changes in society, evolving trends and growing sophistication (and vice versa) of audiences, this is very much a Cyclical Trope and subject to Popularity Polynomial.
In fact, fantasy fiction often has it even worse (than sci-fi), as it is speculative in a completely implausible way (science fiction is just mostly implausible); considered material which is poorly written with lame plots and characterization, almost entirely lacking in literary merit.
The Spec-Fic Ghetto reflects a long-lasting stigma which has been applied towards the speculative fiction genre, which frequently leads creators and marketers to shun "Science Fiction" or "Fantasy" labels as much as possible, even on shows that have clear science fiction or fantastical elements. It also reflects the tendency for critics, academics, and other creators to near-automatically dismiss or disdain works which cannot escape these labels being applied, regardless of relative quality or merit. Conversely, if these critics, creators, and academics
do feel that the work possesses merit by their standards, expect them to strenuously insist that the work is
not science fiction or fantasy
(How could it be? It's ''good''), regardless of how many tortuous hoops they might have to jump through in order to do so.
This perception tends to be drawn from two extremes. In the first place, speculative fiction is often
dismissed as lightweight, formulaic, and poorly-written rubbish churned out by talentless hacks who never met a cliché they didn't enthusiastically regurgitate. On the other end of the spectrum, genre fiction is often seen as aloof, dreary
Doorstoppers, with impenetrable jargon, and use of a number of tropes that cater to those who are familiar only with the genre, rarely attracting casual readers. In either case, the result is considered the same; material which is poorly written with lame plots and characterization, almost entirely lacking in literary merit. This, of course, unfairly prejudges a massive and wide-spanning genre by its worst extremes, and ultimately takes a fairly narrow and limited view. Sturgeon's Law applies to historical fantasy, for instance, no less than any other genre.
It is not interesting enough for the general reader, and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
— Publisher rejecting H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
The whole association of fairy tale and fantasy with children is local and accidental. I hope everyone has read Tolkien's
essay on Fairy Tales which is perhaps the most important contribution to this subject that anyone has yet made. If so, you will know already that, in most places and times, the fairy tale has not been specifically made for, nor exclusively enjoyed by children. It has gravitated to the nursery when it became unfashionable in literary circles, just as unfashionable furniture gravitated to the nursery in Victorian homes.
—C. S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing For Children
You can, if you wish, class all fantasy or all science-fiction together; but it is about as perceptive as classing the works of Melville, Ballantyne, Joseph Conrad, and W. W. Jacobs together as ‘the sea-story’ and then criticising that.
—C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
Then there's the romance genre or the romance aspect of girl-power-themed genre fiction. In general, many critics view romance novels as nothing but the Extruded Book Product of the worst depths of YA fiction, pandering to a Lowest Common Denominator of straight single women, ie empty-nester divorcées (like my mum if it weren't for Yours Truly --still, she's a regular soap addict!) and teenage (as well as 20-something) girls (I fit the twentyish minority, or I would if I were less of an asexual fujoshi), of mainly straight single women who want to dream of an exciting new man. In this case, it typically overlaps heavily with the Girl-Show Ghetto, the implication being that no self-respecting red-blooded straight man, or cold-blooded professional woman, would ever read a novel like that.
"The belief that boys shouldn’t be interested in girl things is the main reason there’s hardly anything decent for girls in animation — or almost any media for that matter. It’s a backwards, sexist, outdated attitude."
Add that girl-power, just like prog rock (another guilty pleasure catnip of mine), appears to be regarded by the mainstream as a fossil from another decade (girl power from the 90s, prog from the seventies), as alive to the mainstream as the dodo is; and of course the mainstream is the star of the law of supply and demand (for instance; why are there so many fat people and why is fat food so cheap nowadays? Because the mainstream crowd voted with their fat-craving mouths that things would be so!)... What is not sauce for the mainstream is geekery, but we geeks call their viewpoint caviar to the general (Shakespearean equivalent of pearls before swine; the idiom refers to the general public, not the general officer!)...
No Export for You
This is when a work was not released in a country even though there were good reasons to export it there. It has to meet at least one of the following conditions:
- It is part of a franchise which has previously proven to be successful in other regions (e.g. Sailor Moon).
- It was made with the specific intention of being sold overseas (e.g. Sin and Punishment).
- Its genre and/or sensibilities make it the sort of thing that would be exported in the absence of foreign fans clamouring for it.
The Waterfire Saga, the Storm Sisters series, and the Twisted Tales Saga fit all three of these conditions.
But, just because a Vocal Minority believes something from abroad should be released for them, doesn't mean their country is a viable market. The distributors have to think of the money.
Book publishing, like with any other creative product, is primarily about business, not art. Most normal publishers only want to publish books they think will sell, and will publish manuscripts that have possibilities of reaping good sales. Sensible publishers will try to publish good manuscripts under the logic that quality is appreciated. Vanity publishers really don't care either way and will publish anything, as they make their money off the authors rather than the audience.
So it can be the reason a work isn't released is problems with other parties who worked on it wanting too much money, or deciding it's too much trouble (or there's considered not enough money to be made in a release) to justify going to the effort and trouble to work out all of the necessary clearances. #MoneyDearSandra. Like Tywin Lannister once said, a lion (a powerful publisher) does not care about the opinions of the sheep (the vocal minority).
May also invoke Screwed by the Network if it's only later seasons of a show that is not being exported and the show has been taken off the air in said markets where the show had been screwed, which may result in a case of Keep Circulating the Tapes, or in this case, Keep Circulating the Novels (when a series you like is denied to you, except through methods of questionable legality — shady file-sharing sites... it's either that, or the series is likely to be lost outside of fan recordings and company archives), if they are any of them obtainable on any Russian pirate online reading site (seriously, I think Russians are doing it both for themselves and for those EU readers who distrust online shopping and distribution of foreign books and would rather have the same read for free -- such as Yours Truly).
Nothing sucks more than a certain series you want to see translated not getting one. Sometimes even a Fan Translation can't help, since the company may throw a Fanwork Ban at you, stonewalling any translation attempt. That was what happened to the Spanish fanslations of the ASoUE novels 9-13 (from The Carnivorous Carnival to The End) when the last book in the series translated was installment 8, The Hostile Hospital, the series having been Screwed by Montena due to supply being cut off due to lack of demand. So yes, there are fanwork bans when it comes to fanslations --whether of graphic or written literature--.
After steam stops shooting out of your ears, the question you're asking is probably... why? Well, a typical answer is that the companies (correctly or incorrectly) don't think there's enough of a market for it to be worth releasing them, but it's not always their fault... directly.
Just say that copies exist out there on the Internet, and leave it at that.
Still, with today's primary distribution point being online for music (iTunes, Amazon), games (Steam), movies (Netflix), books (Amazon), and television (Hulu), you gotta wonder about the motivation behind regionally restricted release when manufacture and shipping costs simply don't apply.
After all, Amazon... well, let's say I have always been a bit of a shopping Luddite, even though I now have got a card of my own.
- Maybe because of sheer impatience; Instant Home Delivery of printed books is something that only exists in fiction as an Acceptable Break from Reality:
- 1. Instant Home Delivery: When you buy something, it shows up instantly or at least much faster than in Real Life. Waiting for a month for backorders is already frustrating enough in real life, so why would that be included in a game intended to be enjoyed?
- Maybe because of the never-to-be-underestimated force of custom (usus tyrannus, the Romans already said).
- Maybe because shipping costs will be added to the prize of the novel.
- And maybe because of my own privacy concerns and fear of giving personal information on the Net in the paying form (what if someone finds out my name, ID number, physical address. et al, and uses these data for sinister purposes?).
Very many shopping malls are in decline (so-called "dead malls") with competition from [···] online shopping —
In fact, the real reason for my shopping Luddism is all four of them above.
Seeing the film
Storks and regarding how it depicts online shopping (In that film, basically the premise is that the baby-delivering storks are bereft of their usual duties to do Instant Home Delivery for online shopping sites... until two human orphans, a teen and a baby, step into the picture... I won't spoil the ending, but merely give you a clue that it's a pretty pungent and precise satire of online shopping!) confirmed my shopping Luddism even more.
Yet, considering the implications of both systems, capitalism is the Scylla to five-year-planning's Charybdis.
(For those who don't get the reference to classical myth; Scylla guards the right shore of the strait and ensures you will lose a certain number of men; Charybdis guards the left shore and is a maelström that sucks in all or nothing... and nothing is the outcome in the rarest cases).
Well, maybe this is a self-centered faux-left turn caused by a member of a vocal minority interested in fairytale/early modern fantasy. After all, finding the final Waterfire book outside the Protestant North is a Herculean task compared to, let's say, catching a wild Vaporeon in Pokémon Go! Or a Shiny Dunsparce, for that matter.
No Export For You / Literature
- The Norwegian series Phenomena has only been released in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany. It sells well in both Norway and Germany, but still no word of it ever to be given out in other countries.
- Another Norwegian series Halvgudene has only been translated into Icelandic.
There is a Waterfire wiki, but no trope page (see here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheWaterfireSaga). Ditto for the Twisted Tale book series!
Though these three girl-power-themed Sagas use so many tropes that there SHOULD be a trope page, right?
To quote a few: Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, Gotta Catch 'Em All, Aloof Ally, Love Makes You Evil, Magical Girl Warriors, Bastard Bastard, More Than Mind Control, Careful What You Wish For, Rage Against the Heavens... the list is endless.
Maybe a dooming factor in the Spanish/Italian perception of the Waterfire Saga happens to be this sort of Public Medium Ignorance:
Girl Show Ghetto
Actually, the Waterfire books are a feminist fantasy saga that subvert these stereotypes. And this Girl Show Ghetto perspective led to Waterfire slumping in Romance languages half-way across the saga. While Germany and Denmark have completed the saga.
Compare this to the similar case of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Not a girl-show, but actually unisex, with an interesting equal-opportunity cast (aside from a Lemony Narrator that hearkens back to the nineteenth century and inspired Yours Truly's narrative style). Suddenly interrupted in Spain, where the last book released was eighth installment The Hostile Hospital, but which was completed to the very last book, The End, the very last out of 13, in Germanic languages (German, Danish, and Swedish to name three).
Similarly, all three Monster Blood Tattoo books were released in the Anglosphere; second book Lamplighter (introducing both Winstermill [the Academy of Adventure setting, a monster-hunting cadet boarding school] and Threnody Vey [IMOHO, a really badass female character and a true predecessor to Merida Dunbroch of Brave fame]) was released in Sweden and Germany, unlike the to me less-interesting trilogy finale Factotum; while the Spanish edition (in detriment of hardass Winstermill and Threnody fans like Yours Truly) never made it past the first book.
The 2010s Little Prince Franime graphic novels and DVD'd episodes were all of them published in France; their Spanish translations halted release after The Planet of the Astronomer, volume 5 out of 24, leaving a lot of exciting adventures which had been screened in Spain never to get a printed (or, for that matter, a DVD) release in the same country and in many others.
Yes, there have been critics ranting and raving against the Waterfire Saga and Monster Blood Tattoo, against Storm Sisters and A Twisted Tale; just like my favourite Sailor Moon series Sailor Stars and my favourite Yu-Gi-Oh series Zexal appear to have far more haters than they have got fans like me. Add the fact that my mum is a hardcore Jar Jar fan, which makes me think that my preference for obscure and/or criticized fiction runs in the blood.
PS. In the Commonwealth, a middle-grade magical girl-power-themed franchise (chapter book series, YouTube webseries, and fashion dolls) with an animesque aesthetic and a cast themed around the Western Zodiac has been subject to the same tragic destiny:
- Disney heavily underutilized the Star Darlings series, with near-invisible advertising, a lack of merchandise in general, focus on the Star Darlings band of 5 instead of all 12 girls, and a shallower, shorter webseries compared to the more serious books, but the dolls are where things really get bad. Of the 12 Star Darlings, only the core 5 had both a Starland outfit and Wishworld outfit (Cassie's Starland look was UK-only), none of the supporting cast got dolls, and Scarlett's doll barely resembles her official art and webseries look. The books were cancelled in January 2017 with three planned books being shelved, the webseries last aired in late 2016, and the toyline is similarly inactive, with Jakks Pacific ceasing producing the dollss.
