Article about the writing process of Ivypool's Heart

Hmm. I find it interesting that the editor team is so convinced that introducing completely original characters without ties to current ones will result in readers not caring about their stories. Meanwhile, the fandom has been asking for ages for a clean slate and we’re all rather tired of every arc involving characters related to the last. I don’t know why they are so certain that a completely new cast would be so hard to appeal to readers — unless they are hilariously self-aware that they aren’t good at writing characters in general, and knowingly rely on nostalgia of older, better characters to carry the new ones.

I appreciate the ambition of where they’re going right now. I just hope it will live up to the hype they’ve been drumming up!

(Also, lol at the author admitting the “StarClan forgot” plot point being essentially a loophole so they could write the StormClan story while avoiding having to explain anything).

I feel like this is directly because so many people fell off for dotc. People (including myself at the time) just didn’t read it. And a lot of people do skip it still. I don’t blame the Erins honestly. I think it’s a good move for them to introduce new characters like this in a book about a very popular character, as a way to get people onboard. I have absolutely no doubt that if a super edition named “Galestar’s Heart” released instead of Ivypool’s Heart then not nearly as many people would buy it or read it, especially younger readers. I still see a lot of people who haven’t read dotc or even Hawkwing’s Journey, look at how few people read Riverstar’s Home just last year. Usually whenever they’ve done this kind of thing set away from the most current characters and/or timeline it’s to much lesser fan fanfare than stuff about pre existing characters.

Wow, I didn't read the name but that's so cool!

Online fandom often shares very little similarities to the real deal fandom of less-online people which actually compose the majority of consumers. A random example is something like the 2019 Lion King movie which is relentlessly bashed online, but was in fact the highest grossing animated movie of all time for several years and received generally positive reviews from the wider audience. 

Unfortunately, books don't have the same kinds of sales reports and reviews (that is to say, something like an equivalent to Cinemascore) made public typically, so it's hard to make comparisons, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's the case that something like DOTC had poor internal numbers relative to the later series.

I’d say it’s a legitimate concern that selling a story revolving around DoTC era characters(new or pre-existing) without depending on to some degree, on established characters with nostalgia in their favor(whether or not partly due to their inadequacy to write new, compelling characters)could fail. Since, even though there’s no conclusive reports of actual sales of these books. I can say at least that the DoTC books were the only main series entries that didn’t appear on the New York bestsellers list(besides The Sun Trial and TFB), in comparison that every other appeared at least several times. Shows a much lower interest as a whole.

The exact difference in sales obviously only they know.