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I like Brandon Sanderson's definition!
"...The discussion began with the panel trying to define what made something epic. I suspected it had something to do with having a mighty beard, as most of the panelists did. (Christopher Paolini expressed his envy.) Patrick Rothfuss said that being called an epic fantasy writer was more people seeing his big, heavy book and deciding that that’s what it was. While most of the panelists agreed that the length of the story was crucial to epic fantasy, Paolini pointed out that A Wizard of Earthsea was only forty thousands words long, tops, but no one would say it wasn’t an epic. The most agreed upon shared trait between the panelists’ books was that each novel contained many smaller stories that were part of a larger one. Sometimes with dragons. “The main character is the story itself, moving forward chapter by chapters,” said Kevin J. Anderson.
For Brandon Sanderson, epic fantasy is a matter of immersion in a world, through many inhabitants’ eyes. Their dramas, choices, failures. It’s a cycle that is never-ending. (Much like The Wheel of Time series, the moderator, Michael Spradlin quipped, to thunderous applause.)
For George R.R. Martin, epic fantasy is mostly a marketing category, shorthand to distinguish their books from others in the genre...."
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