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Was GRRM an unknown writer before HBO?


cseresz.reborn

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Prologue

The Changing of the Guard: Myth or Reality?

(Wednesday, August 15, 2007 | By: Patrick)

The lower echelons of the fantasy totem might change significantly in the coming years, but I expect the predators at the top of the food chain to remain the same. Barring health problems (I'm sincerely hoping that he still has many years of writing in front of him), Robert Jordan should maintain his position as "top dog." With 4 consecutive number 1 NYT bestsellers and with the forthcoming A Memory of Light all but assured to debut at number one on the bestseller list, Jordan is not going anywhere. Knife of Dreams sold more than 600,000 copies in hardcover in the US alone, which is more than twice than Martin's A Feast for Crows. And that was GRRM at his apogee in terms of sales. . . Yes, but the Wheel of Time is all but over, you say. Not necessarily. . . With another prequel yet to be published, in addition to the possible "outrigger" trilogy, I would bet some good money that the WoT is not over, not by a longshot! Understandably, nobody knows how well Infinity of Heaven will be received by the fans.

But consider this: Even if only 50% of RJ's fans buy that book, the author will remain the number one draw in the fantasy genre. If only 20% of his readers decide to give that new series a shot (and I can't believe in such a possibility), Jordan would still rank at number 3, standing behind only Goodkind and Martin. Even then, the novel would likely debut at number 1 on the NYT list. . .

An "evil" note:

Spoiler
"Infinity of Heaven" has a new name: The Stormlight Archive. That was Doherty' big idea: (with three WoT books) every Wot fan will convert to BS from Robert Jordan. Thank God, I don't see this happening.

100 Bestselling Books of 2005

98. Knife of Dreams, Robert Jordan

The Path of Daggers, lands on PW's and the New York Times charts in the #1 slot after just one week on sale -- a new milestone for the author. First printing: 360,000 and three more trips to press brings the in-print total to 455,000.

Winter's Heart: 750,000 first printing

Winter's Heart lands on the mass market list 650,000 copies after two printings

Crossroads of Twilight: 900,000 first printing

Crossroads of Twilight: 536,802 03/22/2004 ???

Crossroads of Twilight: 553,270 03/22/2004 ???

New Spring: 548,937

Knife of Dreams: 1,000,000 first printing

A Storm of Swords: 65,000 first printing.

A Feast for Crows: A Storm of Swords (2000), had a 110,000-copy first printing; this one, says Groell, will be much higher.

A Feast for Crows: 200,000 first printing.

3/27/2006

Knife of Dreams: 514,833

A Feast for Crows: 325,000

Chapter One

July 14, 2011

George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons, book five in his epic "A Song of Ice and Fire' series, had the highest single and first-day sales of any new fiction title published this year: 298,000 copies in print, digital, and audio formats, publisher Random House announced today.

On Tuesday, sales of 170,000 hardcovers (26% of the 650,000 pre-publication printings); 110,000 e-books; and 18,000 audio books were reported sold.

100 best-selling books of 2011

18. A Game of Thrones

26. A Dance With Dragons

37. A Clash of Kings

52. George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones (Boxed set of the first four volumes)

57. A Storm of Swords

64. A Feast for Crows

These numbers are staggering. GRRM is my second favourite (epic) fantasy author, so I'm really happy with the sales figures.

Well, I have a question anyway: where were these fans before?

sources:

http://fantasyhotlis...or-reality.html

http://www.usatoday....2011/52504752/1

http://www.abebooks....100-books.shtml

Publishers Weekly

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No, GRRM was not an unknown writer at all. With a minimum of effort you can just google ASOIAF and check wikipedia:

That's does not say "unkown writer" to me. Far from it. And t

Another thing to consider is that the first part of WoT was released in January 1990, while AGOT was not released until August 1996. Give ASOIAF 6 more years and you may see the numbers get more even, or ASOIAF even overtake WoT.

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The awards aren't as big an indicator to the general reading public. They wouldn't even know most of them.

GRRM was a fairly well known writer because he was on the NYT bestseller list afaik and at least his last few books have gotten the place of big sales on that table at the front of the bookstore.

When you are sitting at the entrance of the store so people can just walk in, grab and head straight for the cash, you are well known.

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All of the above ^ was falsified by Them, to create the impression that "GRRM" existed before HBO decided to cut in on the ratings triumphs of Legend of the Seeker.

Don't be fooled.

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Before the show, GRRM was an unknown writer to the extent that, say, China Mieville or Richard Morgan are unknown writers. Depending on your priors, that’s either “superfamous” or “never ’eard of ’im”.

Song of Ice and Fire was certainly an extremely successful fantasy series and critically very well acclaimed before the tv series. Storm of Swords topped the internet top 100 book list (whatever it was called) for many, many years.

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The awards aren't as big an indicator to the general reading public. They wouldn't even know most of them.

GRRM was a fairly well known writer because he was on the NYT bestseller list afaik and at least his last few books have gotten the place of big sales on that table at the front of the bookstore.

When you are sitting at the entrance of the store so people can just walk in, grab and head straight for the cash, you are well known.

The general public rarely knows anything outside Twilight and Harry Potter. :P

My point was, one tiny googling for something very familiar (asoiaf) will bring you to wikipedia which can tell you this. It's more a comment on the question posed by the OP than on whether or not GRRM is famous/unknown/God or not.

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Was he a relative unknown to the general masses? Yes.

Was he an unknown in the sci-fi fantasy writing world? Not at all.

He wasn't even an unknown in Hollywood prior to Game given his work for the show Beauty and the Beast.

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How many NYT bestsellers can you name off hand? Those you can't are "unknown" to us, but not their millions of fans. ;)

An "unknown" writer can be living the high life with his/her millions.

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Basically aping what everyone else has said, but when a lot of people say unknown, they usually mean "Not everywhere in every bookstore, media outlet, newspaper and talk show."

If I ever write a book that approaches a 200,000 first printing, I will litterally jump for joy, because that would be an unimaginable number of readers (if they all sell, of course.)

But will I still be "unknown" to the mainstream?

Yeah.

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Was GRRM an unknown writer before HBO?
BWA-HAAA-HAAA That has to be one of the most hilarious things I've seen on this board.

Let's see...

Multiple award wins and nominations

Wild Cards was wildly popular before A Song of Ice and Fire published

Hollywood / TV Writer - Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast

Editor of several anthologies

So no, I would say something on the opposite end of the stick from 'unknown'

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Just because he wasn't a cultural phenomenon a few years ago doesn't mean he was unknown. When I started looking for fantasy book recommendations on the internet a few years ago aSoIaF was one of the first I saw. Ask anyone who's not a big reader, or even just not a big fantasy reader who Mieville, or Lynch, or Abercrombie are and I doubt they'll know.

The tv adaption happened because Martin was already big by book standards. The show just brought him to the awareness of casual readers who don't know much beyond Grisham, Brown, and Rowling.

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Another thing to consider is that the first part of WoT was released in January 1990, while AGOT was not released until August 1996. Give ASOIAF 6 more years and you may see the numbers get more even, or ASOIAF even overtake WoT.

Actually, ASoIaF is close to overtaking WoT in terms of numbers of readers already. Both series are heavily serialised, so we can assume that people buying later books in the series will have bought all prior books. The numbers joining the series with Book 4 or Book 7 of a very-heavily serialised story are likely negligible (the numbers who perhaps borrowed the first few books from the library and bought later ones less so, but that factor is unquantifiable).

In 2007, upon Robert Jordan's death (after 11 books had come out), WoT had sold 44 million copies. In 2011, just before ADWD was published (after 4 books had come out), ASoIaF had sold 15 million copies. So that's - extremely roughly - 4.4 million WoT fans in 2007 versus 3.75 million ASoIaF fans in 2011.

Of course, as the above figures do indicate this is rather unscientific. Most notably, the massively high placing for AGoT will have been responsible for quite a few of those sales versus just a few years ago, and the drop to the next book in the series indicates a lot of people who bought AGoT were not proceeding to the next book in the series, at least straight away (i.e. they are not overall fans of the series, at least not yet). However, the same is likely true of WoT (probably a notable percentage of those who bought EotW never read on in the series).

So it certainly looks like ASoIaF is massively closing the gap to WoT, and could overtake it in a few years in terms of sales-per-book (overall sales seems rather less likely right now, but five or six years down the line, who knows?). However, WoT could reverse the trend and see its own sales increase if a movie or TV adaptation was undertaken (considerably more likely now that GoT has been a success), or even if the word-of-mouth about the final book is good enough and if the publishers can get some heavy marketing behind the final novel and inspire some people to pick up the series once it is finished.

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As was the case with Charlaine Harris, HBO allowed GRRM to reach the mainstream audience. Which explains the enormous spike in sales both authors have been enjoying. :)

Patrick

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