The Knock Off Syndrome

I noticed a strange, though not entirely unexpected trend the past few years.

It seems that every time a new Twilight movie was released, the drug stores and supermarkets near me would suddenly be flooded with vampire romance novels with artwork that was similar to the Twilight novels. It was an astonishing amount of books written around that subject.

And the number of books I've seen over the past decade about child/student wizards blows my mind. Of course, a lot of them were books written specifically to cash in on the Harry Potter trend.

I thought it was also sort of cute that below the Stieg Larsson trilogy about the girl with the dragon tattoo at my local supermarket, there was a parody novel entitled The Dragon With the Girl Tattoo.

So what I am wondering is, with the success of the Game of Thrones on HBO, are we now going to see a flood of new dynastic fantasy series making their way to the bookstores, drug stores and various other outlets in the coming months and years? Or do publishers believe that despite the fact that novels from that series have topped the New York Times Best Sellers list, that random people might not buy similar titles as impulse purchases.

But I do have a feeling there is going to be a massive amount of books with similar titles coming out in the next two years. I guess time will tell if I am right or not.