By Scott Bury

The Hobbit. Game of Thrones. The Twilight saga. Harry Potter. Snow White and the Huntsman. Oz, the Great and Powerful. Once Upon a Time.

Hollywood continues to score hits in the science fiction and fantasy genres, on both the big and small screens. There is an appetite for this kind of fiction.

And browsing around bookstores, grocery stores and the immense emporia that masquerade as drugstores these days reveals an appetite among the public for fantasy, too. Like Hollywood, when the Big Six (I accidentally typed “Bix” there — maybe that should be the new short form for the six most over-bloated international conglomerates that dominate print publishing these days) notice something that sells, like sexy vampires, they trip over each other trying to put more of the same out there.

The strategy works, to a point; or it works for commercial publishers, in…