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[deleted] OP t1_j1m51m5 wrote

Reply to comment by gnatsaredancing in The Witcher by Andrez Sapkowski is an underrated masterpiece. by [deleted]

I might edit my post to make it a little more clear what I mean. I think that more people should read the books considering how overshadowed they are in comparison to the show and games. Which is why I consider them "Underrated"

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gnatsaredancing t1_j1m5pb1 wrote

The books resulted in a billion dollar merchandise and media industry exactly because the stories were quite popular already.

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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.

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[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.

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theburiedxme t1_j1m7bt6 wrote

Flat instead of % is a big ouch :( Seems many here aren't getting it for some reason.

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[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.

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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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