[ImprovedSilence]

Everyone knew about LOTR and read the books before the movies came out. It was in no way some obscure out of print lit, it was both pop and a cult classic, and it was very much front and center of any must read fantasy bookshelf. Hence the wildly profitable movies.

[vidarh]

"Everyone" very much didn't. Most of the people in my life have seen the movies. Relatively few have read the book even now. Most of those close to me who have read the books did so after the movies came out as a direct result of hearing about or seeing the movies.

It wasn't obscure to fantasy fans, but very few fantasy books break through and sell well. Most genre fiction outside of romance, thrillers/crime sell ridiculously low numbers.

In a 2003 interview, the project manager for Tolkien at Houghton Mifflin, who held the US rights, stated that they had at the time only had two million-copy bestsellers in the company's history: The Silmarillion in 1977, and LOTR in 2001 in the runup to the first movie.

By 2003 they'd sold 2 million copies of the one-volume trade paperback in the US.

Worldwide, combined sales went from 50 million copies in 2003, already massively boosted by the movies, to 150 million by 2007. In other words: Nearly half a century to get to 50 million, with a significant proportion of those 50 million in the last few years of that period, and then 100 million in the following 4 once the movies were well known.

The readers of "any must read fantasy bookshelf" are a small enough demographic that if they were the only ones who'd watch the movies, they'd have bombed spectacularly.

[coldtea]

>"Everyone" very much didn't. Most of the people in my life have seen the movies. Relatively few have read the book even now.

Those aren't the people that read fantasy in the first place. If they haven't "read the book even now", it's not like it matters that they seen the movies. For them it could be any other movie in their place, and they would be just as satisfied.

[vidarh]

The point was that the people that read fantasy in the first place other than when nudged by movies is a tiny little subset of people.

And the proportion of people who rarely read fantasy who went on to read LOTR multiplied it's total global sales several times over in a few short years after it'd been out for half a century because of those movies.

[bryanrasmussen]

>It wasn't obscure to fantasy fans, but very few fantasy books break through and sell well. Most genre fiction outside of romance, thrillers/crime sell ridiculously low numbers.

is that still the case?

It seems that almost all media nowadays is some fantasy / scifi subgenre. As is often remarked the nerds won. It seems unlikely that the conventional wisdom about what sells would not have been changed somewhat by this state of things.

[vidarh]

For the most part. There are outliers, especially in non-fiction the ones that makes it onto the bestseller lists at all are often very topical and so hard to predict runaway successes happen. And at least this year thrillers are also doing poorly.

Of the 20 best selling print books for adults so far in H1 2023 according to publishers weekly and Bookscan (so these are not total sales numbers, but they're pretty representative):

Romance: 11 out of 20. The 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 8th 9th, 11th, 19th were all romance by Colleen Hoover alone (2nd and 3rd sold 885k and 882k each).

Non-fiction: 3 out of 20, including the 1st (prince Harry's biography; about 1.8m until end H1)

Non-genre fiction: 3 out of 20

Historical fiction: 1 out of 20

The first and only fantasy novel is the 11th: A Court of Thorns and Roses, which at 350k until end H1 is a breakaway success in fantasy.

Thrillers: 1

The number for e-books could very well shift that somewhat, but if you follow some writers on social media, you'll see romance readers churn through romance novels at an absolutely ridiculous rate.

The thing is the key demographics for fantasy and scifi don't read many books. As part of that demographics who does read, it's very noticeable how much of an outlier I am, and I still read a tiny fraction of what a relatively typical romance reader reads.

EDIT:

> As is often remarked the nerds won.

This is true, but not in books: Bertelsmann owns Penguin Random House and has a market cap of ~15bn Euro, and that also includes e.g. RTL and a bunch of non-publishing assets.

Electronic Arts has a market cap of $35bn. Activision has a market cap of $74bn.

"We" won through scifi and fantasy in other media far outdistancing books.

[PhasmaFelis]

The OP isn't talking about the megahit live-action movies. They're crediting LotR's popularity to the cartoon movies that came out between 1977 and 1980.

[vidarh]

I wasn't commenting on OP's claim, but on the claim by the person I replied to, who claimed "everyone" had read the books.

[boomboomsubban]

It's impossible to say how popular the series would have been in the late 90's without the cartoons. It'd probably still be a fantasy classic, but I never actively searched out the fantasy genre. I read those books because of the cartoons.

[bruce511]

It can be both.

LOTR is the gold standard of Fantasy, and if you got anywhere near that, it was always recommended. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so well after the novels were published, and they were still ubiquitous.

Which of course does not negate the introduction that the animated series or movies had on their continued popularity. Each experience can be different. All roads can lead to Rome.

I would say that there's a reason LOTR remains huge, while C&H is mostly nostalgia by an aging fan base. LOTR reinvents, C&H is locked in a decision point in time.

I guess in like 65 years it'll enter the public domain and we'll see if dome enterprising publisher decides its worth repeating.

[PhasmaFelis]

It was the best-known and most influental fantasy fiction on Earth before the cartoons. Anyone with more than a passing interest in fantasy was at least aware of Lord of the Rings. I'm sure the cartoons helped, and I also loved the Hobbit movie, but I think you're making your own experience more universal than it really was.

[vidarh]

Yes, but as sales numbers for genre literature will tell you, most people don't read fantasy (or sci fi, or pretty much any genre literature outside of romance and thrillers).

Being one of the best-known genre-work of all genres means the vast majority of people have still not read it.

Estimates worldwide sales were around 50m by 2003, and 150m by 2007.

Figuring out where they were at before the movies is hard, but the US 2001 edition of LOTR alone sold ~2m copies between 2001 and 2003, so it's pretty clear sales in 2001-2003 were far higher than the average for the preceding years of sale.

[bryanrasmussen]

> but the US 2001 edition of LOTR alone sold ~2m copies between 2001 and 2003

do we have stats for sales in the 1980s etc. ? I would expect the 2m was replacement, new generation of readers sales because before extra market opened up by movies (which obviously must have happened) all the people who would buy that book, which was also probably a lot, had already bought one.

[vidarh]

> do we have stats for sales in the 1980s etc.

Not really. The earliest cumulative estimate I've found was the 50m number for 2003.

There are some earlier numbers:

First edition of the Fellowship of the Ring was printed in 1500 copies in the US, 3000 in the UK. Return of the King up to 5,000 in the UK and 7,000 in the US.

It's worth noting that those were good sales number for fantasy hardbacks, and still are. The vast majority of authors can only dream of selling even a few thousands hardbacks for genre fiction.

In the 1960's Ace published an unlicensed paperback copy of LOTR due to an issue with the US copyright that reportedly sold a combined 150k. Ballantine's subsequent authorised paperback supposedly sold at least 100k. Those numbers were astounding for fantasy, and still are.

Someone from Houghton Mifflin said the 2001 edition was their second book ever to sell over a million, with the 1977 edition of The Silmarillion the only other one in decades of publishing. It's pretty reasonable to assume there must have been quite a few million copies of LOTR out for there to be enough of a market for The Silmarillion to sell over a million in a US edition.

So by fantasy standards it certainly was one of the biggest successes ever already at that point.

I really want to know what the worldwide sales were for the last few years before the movie marketing started and from they were launched and until 2003, though. It's clear the movies effect were massive, but it'd be interesting to see just how massive.

[PhasmaFelis]

> Someone from Houghton Mifflin said the 2001 edition was their second book ever to sell over a million, with the 1977 edition of The Silmarillion the only other one in decades of publishing.

Wow. Very strange that The Silmarillion outsold any of the Lord of the Rings books.

[pyuser583]

LOTR heavily inspired Dungeons and Dragons, especially the earlier versions.

That alone guarantees it’s immortality.

[devjab]

Everyone in a certain generation did, yes. But it didn’t carry over to their children as such, unless you were a member of fantasy communities I think it’s largely positive that you haven’t heard about them. This is obviously anecdotal, but I grew up in the 80/90ies, played dnd and was a general fantasy nerd and nobody in our community had read them before the movies. Even after the movies a lot of us never made it through all the running around in the second book, which was a staring point for a lot of us after having watched the first movie. Our younger siblings never got into it, they got into Harry Potter instead. For todays youngsters LOTR is basically non-existent.

While anecdotal like I said, none of the “fantasy” stores around my city sell anything LOTR related while some of them have entire floors dedicated to Harry Potter merc.

But you’re absolutely right about what we call the 57’ generation. They all ate it right up. Everyone in my parents generation read it during their early university years, and I do mean everyone.

[indigochill]

I grew up in a family of fantasy nerds and it still took a while for me to get around to LOTR. My main interest was I vaguely remembered a WIRED interview with the creators of Riven (the sequel to Myst) where they said it was an inspiration. I don't remember in what way since the setting is very different, although looking at it now I can see some thematic similarities (a formerly pristine world set on a doomed path by an evil figure with a god complex).

Anyway, I did read the trilogy and the Hobbit and held them in high regard. The movies (mainly the Return of the King) actually did _significantly_ "cheapen" the idea of the LOTR in my eyes at least because the "Return of the King" movie left out plot points that I felt were vital to the message of the books. Primarily that even after the "big bad" was defeated, people were still evil (see the Scouring of the Shire). Much like the real-world war that must have inspired Tolkien given his participation in it, it was a major victory to celebrate but nevertheless not the end of every struggle.

Tangentially I'd also say that even the original Harry Potter brand is cheaper than LOTR because although it's fun and palatable, it doesn't have as much to say about the real world or challenge us in how we live our lives.

A major theme throughout the book trilogy had been that everyone, even Gandalf, has a "shadow" that corrupts their good intentions, except for hobbits which made them ideal ring bearers since the Ring would twist ambition/pride/etc to its own ends. It's basically a morality play for the post-WW2 generation, where the demons are not just external monsters but internal temptations. The movie trilogy's ending was much "neater" and also much less true to life.

But on the other hand, the RPG "The One Ring" does right by the source material by making the shadow a mechanic in the game that mirrors the theme in the books.

So LOTR seems like an excellent example of licensing gone both right (The One Ring) and wrong (admittedly the movies weren't all bad, but most could probably agree the Hobbit movies did cheapen the source material).

[uncletaco]

I honestly didn’t know anything about LotR, only the hobbit because the cartoon came on tv once. I didn’t even know it was part of a bigger story until someone in the movie mentioned Bilbo Baggins and I was like “wait, I know him!”

I was maybe 12 when the first movie came out.