Reposted by Mick Cook
Thanks to John Fea and his team for doing a quick interview on “Orchestrating Power”!
thewayofimprovement.blog/2026/01/20/t...
thewayofimprovement.blog
The Author’s Corner with Nathan K. Finney
Nathan K. Finney is a U.S. Army strategist; a non-resident research fellow at The Duke Program in American Grand Strategy; a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Securi…
![Tolkien’s Works on the Book Market
Call for Papers for the 21st DTG Tolkien Seminar (31 Oct.-02 Nov. 2025)
(Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz)
“It is in fact hard to think of a work […] written with less concern for commercial considerations than The Lord of the Rings. No market researcher in the 1950s could possibly have predicted its success. It was long, difficult, trailed with appendices, studded with quotations in unknown languages which the author did not always translate, and utterly strange. It had, indeed, to create its own market” (Shippey 2001: xxiv), as Tom Shippey describes the situation in J.R.R. Tolkien. Author of the Century. Nevertheless, The Lord of the Rings proved to be a million-selling bestseller, new editions have been regularly published worldwide for 70 years and the epic has repeatedly been voted the number one favourite book in surveys. The Hobbit and other works by Tolkien have also become long-sellers. Not a year goes by without new editions of Tolkien’s works, including both lavishly illustrated volumes and luxury editions. The materiality of these books also plays a role in times of social media and cross-media marketing, for example when special Tolkien editions are proudly presented on YouTube or TikTok or publishers advertise Tolkien adaptations with new book covers.
Tolkien’s relationship with his publishers was not always easy, as his abortive attempt to change the publisher from Unwin to Collins or the unauthorised US editions of The Lord of the Rings in the 1960s show. This was partly due to Tolkien’s demands on himself and his texts, and partly due to the mechanisms of the book market. The fact that Tolkien’s works were nevertheless made accessible to a broad public and found a loyal readership is therefore not a matter of course.
The aim of this seminar is to bring together researchers from different disciplines and subject areas to explore the various questions and problems posed by Tolkien’s works on the book market.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:m5xahlmxfkjljfqufsxh4cmb/bafkreihjuuw55nu7edi3chqs46gxi5vwegmvmxmkv7ox6qmprl5glnragq)
![Possible starting points for presentations would be:
• Tolkien and his publishers (Tolkien’s relationships with publishers, rights and license trading, etc.)
• Tolkien’s works on the German/international book market
• Tolkien film adaptations and the book market (effects of the adaptations on the sale of the works etc.; significance of the films and series for the perception of the books)
• The materiality of the editions and their paratexts (economic significance of the paratexts, design of the editions, etc.)
• Use of the book as a motif
• Cross-media marketing, book merchandise, Tolkien’s books on social media (BookTok, podcasts etc.)
The 21st seminar of the German Tolkien Society is supported by Walking Tree Publishers and will take place in cooperation with the Department of Book Science in a hybrid format (mainly in presence but with online options) from 31 October to 2 November 2025 at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Interested parties are requested to send a short synopsis (no longer than one page) and a short biography as well as their preference (attendance or online presentation) to Thomas Fornet-Ponse by 31 May 2025: hither-shore@tolkiengesellschaft.de
A selection of relevant publications on the topic:
Bushell, Sally. 2016. “Paratext or Imagetext? Interpreting the Fictional Map.” Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 32 (2), 181-194.
Carpenter, Humphrey. 1977. J.R.R. Tolkien. A Biography. Paperback edition 1995. London: HarperCollins.
Croft, Janet Brennan. 2018. “Doors into Elf-Mounds: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Introductions, Prefaces, and Forewords.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 15, 177-195.
Groom, Nick. 2023. Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century. The Meaning of Middle-earth Today. New York, London: Pegasus Books.
Hammond, Wayne G., with the assistance of Douglas Anderson. 1993. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography. Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies.
Higgins, Andrew. 2019. “More than Narrative [...]"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:m5xahlmxfkjljfqufsxh4cmb/bafkreibowi5erm5oqi6l3bdi4x4ksc4gsbntvxt5qdixwzf7a77gsx7x3u)
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