You'd think that selling millions of copies of your books would be a good indication to anyone that you've made it, but when it came to Dungeon Crawler Carl author Matt Dinniman's mom and her friends, a completely different milestone is what really drove home just how successful the LitRPG book series has become.
Matt Dinniman told the story at NYCC earlier this year about how his mom's friends saw Dungeon Crawler Carl referenced in an episode of Jeopardy!, which was what made it seem real for them.
The first time people outside my life who weren't readers started to notice was -- there's a question in Jeopardy about Dungeon Crawler Carl earlier this year, and you know, my mom's friends saw it and then that alone made it real for some people.
Part of me wants to smirk at that statement, given how popular the 8-book (so far) series is, but the rest of me completely gets it. Seeing your books rise on the charts -- Book 1 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series has spent 41 weeks on the NY Times Best Seller list as of this writing -- has to be a real thrill for any author, but getting referenced on Jeopardy!? That's the big time by anyone's standards. And as Dinniman pointed out at the start of his story, he's talking about people who aren't readers taking notice of the series. That includes his mom's friends.
There are plenty of books and series that I haven't read, but am familiar with just by proximity as a book fan. Even if I weren't a Dungeon Crawler Carl fan, it would be impossible for me to spend as much time as I do on sites and apps like GoodReads, Audible, Libby, Amazon, etc and not be aware of the LitRPG series. Heck, the whole reason I "discovered" the DCC series is because I follow a lot of fellow book fans on social media. If that weren't the case, I might've also needed a pretty big platform like Jeopardy! to make me aware of just how popular the books are.
For the series to be known enough to be used for a Jeopardy! question is undoubtedly its own kind of milestone, and I can see why it'd be a marker of the books success for many people -- that includes actual fans of the series. Screenshots of the Jeopardy! clue -- which calls for the contestant to question what the "RPG" stands for in LitRPG -- have been shared around since the episode. (What is role-playing game?)
Dungeon Crawler Carl's popularity is likely to continue to grow in the coming months and years. Not only is there a DCC TV show in development for Peacock (Dinniman is involved as a co-EP), there's also Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 9 to look forward to in the not-so-distant (but undetermined because there's no release date yet) future. As we wait for updates on the new book and the book-to-screen adaptation, it's likely more people will discover the series and give it a try.
