"Epic" subcategory under "Fantasy"

[Nathaniel Phillips]

I am putting the finishing touches on my latest novel. I have decided that it fits into the "Fantasy" genre better than "Sci/Fi". I was just looking around on SW to see what was in the Fantasy category and I noticed that there is a sub-category called "Epic"

Does anyone know that "Epic Fantasy" is? Reading through the descriptions of some of the books it wasn't clear to me what they had in common.

Would "Epic" fantasy be something like The Lord of the Rings - a story that tells of an epic quest from start to finish?

Or does "Epic" mean "I think my book is Epic ?"

[ahpellett]

Looking at the home page of SW, the term "epic" is the length of an ebook (over 100,000 words - SW length category). Epic traditionally refers to a journey that covers multiple generations, lands, achievements, large numbers of characters, etc.

In my humble opinion, in no way do I consider a book that I think great to be "epic" unless it has some of the above features (and even then it is usually well beyond the 100,000 word count).