These days, it seems, to be a super-successful author, one should write a good, epic book series.  Harry Potter.  Twilight.  The Hunger Games.  Love them or hate them, they’ve caught on with the masses and have become huge franchises.

One has to wonder what the mass appeal is.  “People like [epics], obviously, as the epic form has been going on for a long time,” said freshman Elizabeth Grossman. “But I think that the idea and themes of a hero… really connect to people in general.”

Content is king, but there’s also a more practical side to it.  “The epic form lends itself to many books because of its episodic nature,” said English teacher Sheri Steininger, who teaches epics like the Odyssey.  “The hero is going out into the unknown and testing his heroism or encountering difficulties.  It’s supposed to be a series of adventures.  You can have three adventures or thirty, so you can easily shoehorn a number of books.”

If the first book is any good, most people will keep reading, whether the sequel is rubbish or not.

It appears that there’s a predictable pattern.  Some relatively unknown author will write some game-changing first novel.  A few people will read it and grow enamored, convincing all their other friends to read it.

“They’ll push it on their friends, who feel like ‘I should like this book’, and they’ll try extra hard to get into it even when it might not be worth it,” librarian Lauran DeRigne said.

This word of mouth will give the book a decent readership.  The worth of the book will still be debated, and the fandom will gain more diversity.

Then the movie deal – Hollywood will go insane with publicity and usually casts some big-name stars to keep the attention flowing.  There are arguments among the fans about everything, and fandom will be a blissful utopia no longer, but the storms will usually die out within the month.

Once the movie finally premieres, there will undoubtedly be criticism from purists – that it wasn’t faithful to the book, that a scene was left out, that the integrity of the story was compromised in order to cater to the lower common denominator.

It may be a little hipster, but what they mean is that they liked being the first and privileged few.

“It’s a little like being part of a club,” Steininger said.  People are more likely to bond with someone over something uncommon.

The movie creates casual fans who don’t know every single detail, and while the diehard fans may be happy for the author that their work is being celebrated, it can be maddening to hear people only remark on the dreaminess of the protagonist.