Why “I” Would Sell Out Like Paolini

Apparently the community of Eragon haters is increasing throughout various avenues of the literary world. I’m sure many of you have already noticed this, and many have jumped on the wagon. Some of you are like me where you just don’t care what the rest of the world thinks because you take it as a personal attack on your integrity when people question your ability to like or dislike a book. There are still others that truly battle to the end with people who have apparently spent the ridiculous amount of time to analyze a book that they apparently hate with a passion–a group of folks that continue to baffle me. I’m not a fan of the LOTR books, but I certainly have not taken it upon myself to analyze the living crap out of the novels just to simply get my point across that I don’t like the books. It’s a personal opinion, nothing more. Generally speaking I consider myself a critic, and like all critics, I have a select cast of people who like books like me. I offer an avenue to perhaps find new books that fit into the mold for such people to peruse, since most of us are not magically connected to the hip of big SF/F publishers and don’t have the option of getting advanced reading copies of all the latest releases.
Having rambled sufficiently enough now, I’ll get to my point. This all came up on TeenageWriters during a very similar Eragon bash fest as I have seen in various other avenues all over the Internet. Granted, it is not nearly as thorough or hateful as the anti-Eragon websites where people that apparently have nothing better to do with their lives sit down and read the book cover to cover, over and over again, and then resort to actually digging up statistics from ancient times to apply them scientifically to a universe that can’t exist in the real world in the first place. If you can’t see that as insanely absurd, then you probably shouldn’t read further.
Now, one of the things that came up was a discussion of Paolini’s success and the overall impression I get is that he basically sold out to the market or some such. It involved plenty of hate for the cliches and such.
I’m here to say that I would gladly sell out in much the same manner if it means that I’m going to be read and admired by fans across the world. If selling out means I get a best selling novel, or two, or three, or hell twenty, and have a following of devoted fans who, while very much as absurd as the haters, spend their lives analyzing and learning every little niche of my world, then by all means I would gladly sell out. If selling out means I get to sell 8 million books and get a magnificent opportunity to see my work put on the big screen, then you better believe I would jump on that opportunity. My dream is to be a published writer and someone who can make a living as a writer. But if selling out means I get to write something I enjoy, that others enjoy, and makes me successful, then I am more than willing to do that.
And for the record, this is not directed at any individual, but something that has been swimming around in my head ever since I saw that anti-eragon site on the net. I’ve been thinking of writing this rant for some time now, and the TW thread pretty much gave me the spark to do it. A further note, I doubt any of the members on TW actually did the extensive reading as the anti-eragon sites have, but likely took much of their information from such avenues. I don’t believe anyone at TW would waste that kind of time because I get the impression that most of them have adequate lives and can leave a book they dislike well enough alone in the end.
Okay, now that is all.