gnatsaredancing t1_j1m5pb1 wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in The Witcher by Andrez Sapkowski is an underrated masterpiece. by [deleted]
The books resulted in a billion dollar merchandise and media industry exactly because the stories were quite popular already.
zedatkinszed t1_j1m9fda wrote
No that's factually inaccurate. The games "resulted in a billion dollar merchandise and media industry" more specifically Witcher 2 & 3.
Up till then outside Eastern Europe the books were relatively unlnown. Proof of this is that they only finished translating the books into English after the Witcher 3 was released.
After Witcher 2 was released there was 1 set of short stories and maybe 2 of the novels in English.
So no. This is just not true. At least in English speaking world.
[deleted] OP t1_j1m69xe wrote
Nope. Quite the opposite. CDPR was a relatively small publishing company that saw an opportunity in a video game license with Andrez as he was "The Pride of Poland" at the time, despite not being very popular outside of his home country. Sapkowski even decided to take a flat payment instead of a percentage-based payment due to his lack of faith in the success of the game outside Poland.
theburiedxme t1_j1m7bt6 wrote
Flat instead of % is a big ouch :( Seems many here aren't getting it for some reason.
[deleted] OP t1_j1m7r1b wrote
Yeah, he still got 16 mill out of it. Also, I expected to get downvoted into the shadow realm, despite my disclaimer at the end. Mostly because Reddit can't read lmao.
BankshotVanguard t1_j1m67uo wrote
I agree with OP, if you consider the popularity of the games and show and other spinoff media, by comparison, the books are underrated.
But I think, without comparing them, the books themselves are popular in comparison to books that didn't receive any spinoff media.
Like, I really like The Tapestry series by Henry Neff, and I'd consider it underrated, and. It's definitely less read known than The Witcher.
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