Paolini’s writing is, whatever people may think of the fantasy genre, remarkable. Perhaps part of the charm of reading his Eragon series is watching him mature not just as a writer but as a person throughout the years-long process. Nonetheless, his first novel on its own was quite the feat regardless of how young he was when he wrote it, and despite that he wrote the last book in the series with a very different, much more accomplished adult voice.

When he wrote his first novel, he was a genuine artistic prodigy.

Outside of prodigies, one rarely sees writers in their teens or early twenties succeed in the book-publishing business. That may say more about the business than about the ability of young people to write excellent books people would enjoy.

Just speculating here, but from my experience with the publishing business, there is a lot more formal gatekeeping involved than in the music business.

Putting aside the fact that musicians today can often become popular with internet distribution, musicians have always had something of a leg up getting their work out there compared to novelists.

More than one garage band rocketed to fame after a handful of local radio stations started giving them a lot of air time. That sort of thing was never possible for writers, who could only be read if a publishing house went to the significant investment of printing lots of expensive books.

Loathe to lose money, publishing houses were very conservative about their decision making. Taking risks on very young writers was just not in their playbook.

Things are changing now with e-publishing, but they aren’t changing very fast, at least not with traditional publishers who do things the way they do because it’s always been done that way.

Let’s see what things are like 10 or 20 years from now when the consequences of Internet publishing start to really shake out.