So how long is Harry Potter's shadow?

I've noticed that unlike genre fans, editors, and agents are quick to compare a work to a more popular and therefore dismiss it as unoriginal. Unlike a field like romance, where I think they all pretty much sound the same, basic similarities are enough to be branded, "It's too much like Harry Potter," or "It sounds like Lord of the Rings to me."

Have certain franchises gained enough popularity that certain ideas are just not viable anymore. Have the basic ideas of epic fantasy, and urban fantasies using teenagers become so clouded with major hits that even basic concepts such as magical teenagers have become taboo because of the success of one work.

I think its so bad in the urban fantasy genre right now that massive amounts of territory are just untouchable for unpublished writers. A couple of examples; one of my friends had a novel he was working on described as Goonies, but with magic, and it essentially was lighthearted contemporary fantasy that made fun of a number of 80s concepts, but because it had children and magic in it, everyone compared it to Harry Potter and he couldn't get an agent; Another one of my writer friends recently had her contract killed for a series about a 20ish year old woman who joins a pack of werewolfs because some people felt the idea, although not the plot, substance or style, but the basic concept was too close to Twilight.

I've been working on a story about a newspaper reporter who covers a community of sorcerers. The criticism I've most consistently gotten is "It sounds like Harry Potter." Even though I was basing the story my experience as a reporter and wanted to use urban fantasy as an analogy for undocumented citizen or a GLBT person I still got comparisons to Harry Potter despite the fact the actual magic was minimal, it didn't have a school in it, and since it was based in Atlanta no one rode a train, but I still got, "your character reminds me of Harry Potter as a grown up."

Has Harry Potter fouled the well of urban fantasy because it's so incredibly popular, and has so elements in it almost every work can be compared to it?

dclary said:

Sometimes, that's a gentle way of saying "Not for us, thanks." If you can blame potter, rather than tell a writer you don't care for their material, you sound more genial than were you to admit the truth.

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You know I've thought of that too, because its very difficult to get honest professional feedback even when you go to conferences and pay for it.

But it's something you get from fans a lot in this genre too. More so in fantasy than Science Fiction I've noticed, but reading through the crit boards its pretty easy to find a thread where a someone leaves a comment along the lines of it "sounds too much like," and add the name of whatever franchise you want.

It seems to be an unfair standard that doesn't exist in other genres, such as romance, thriller and literary. But in if you have an urban fantasy about magical teenagers who attend a school people will pop up to accuse you of deriving your ideas from Rowling, and try to draw parallels from your work to hers.

In my friend's case her publisher paid to get out of a contract because of the perception of a similarity to Twilight, and felt it was so grave that any re-writes wouldn't solve the situation.