Sarah J Maas: Building a fantasy multiverse
Sarah J Maas is a sensational author for Bloomsbury and for good reason, her books reignited a passion for reading for many people, including myself. Her online presence is highly influential on social media such as Instagram and a website where she advertises her upcoming books, communicates with her fans and discusses her life journey to where she is now. Most importantly, she uses these platforms to observe what her audience likes and dislikes about her published work, including wide debates about her work such as the correct reading order for one of her series’ and her preference on this, which she has stated on her website. This debate largely occurs on tiktok where there are currently 523,100 posts about her books, possibly more. What is unusual about this is that it can be argued that her fans advertise on her behalf. Through discussions about complex characters, inter-connected series’ and a passion for her books, her initial use of a digital presence was so successful that now she is a sensation among readers and easily one of the top recommended authors for romance and fantasy books.
Her books demonstrate how a digital presence has allowed her to understand what her audience wants. For example her book, A Court of Thorns and Roses, was initially inspired by Beauty and the Beast, East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Tam Lin which has now developed into a 5 book series with largely loved characters, and a plot that combined battles, politics and a romantic subplot that fit exactly what her audience desire. She herself has even stated in a recent interview she stated “Even if it took me until I was 90 years old, I just wanted one book to publish. That would be it” showing her gratitude for her fans and her success. She has demonstrated nothing but gratitude for her fans and also discussed how writing these stories has helped her with her own struggles which she added into these stories. Her books are inclusive in both race, gender, sexuality and includes mental health issues in her books, issues that until recently, were largely ignored by media or rarely included. This wide range of inclusion helped her books to grow so much via her digital presence as she was able to include groups that were unrepresented in media, allowing her to reach many more people around the world, as evident by over 38 million copies of her books being sold worldwide.
Overall, having a digital presence is largely where her success grew and developed from a dream where she would have been happy to release just one book “until I was 90” to having 16 books published, consisting of 3 inter-connected series’. Sarah J Maas is an excellent example of how important a digital presence has become in the book industry, as well as being inclusive across many characteristics such as race and sexuality. Her books and social media demonstrate an understanding of what her audience want in both romance and fantasy.
