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TWOW in July 2020 seems ever more likely


Alyn Oakenfist

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5 hours ago, Chad Vader said:

Winds being out during this confinement mess would have almost made it all worth it. I have begun rereading some of my favorites which have helped fill the void but oh how nice if George could have delivered. 

Don't give up hope yet. I've read that he only goes into the mountains (his cabin) if he's close to finishing a book. He's been in there for a couple months, to be fair, but I have a good feeling from his latest blog posts that he's actually getting close to the end of the writing (and hopefully rewriting) stage of Winds.

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Checking this subforum for updates is kind of strange. On one hand, when I see this thread having a new post, I get thrilled that there is at least some new thoughts being shared from other people who wait for TWoW like me. Maybe there's even an indication of progress. On the other hand, I know that it can't be the news we are waiting for, because an event like that would lead to a cascade of TWoW threads flooding the subforum, or the site wouldn't be able to load at all due to the traffic. In other words, what I hope the most to see when I check this forum isn't a new post in the TWoW progress thread, it's an error message. As long as the site runs fine, TWoW isn't finished.

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On 4/18/2020 at 6:38 PM, Chad Vader said:

Winds being out during this confinement mess would have almost made it all worth it. I have begun rereading some of my favorites which have helped fill the void but oh how nice if George could have delivered. 

Just out of curiosity, do you have any other fantasy books/series that you would highly recommend?  In the time since ADWD was released I have read

1. Wheel of Time books 1-10 (I started reading Crossroads of Twilight, and just couldn't read the series anymore.  I threw that book across the room)

2. Kingkiller Chronicles Books 1 and 2 (phenomenal books by the way for those who have not read.  Easily on par with ASOIAF,  although I have been waiting for the third book as long as for TWOW)

3. Stormlight Archives Books 1-3

4. Farseer Trilogy

5. Currently finishing the last book in the Liveship Traders Trilogy

I know I am supposed to look for book recommendation in a different thread, but every time I do, I get overwhelmed.  I thought I would just ask whoever is reading this thread if they have any fantasy books or series recommendations.  

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3 hours ago, Rubicante said:

Just out of curiosity, do you have any other fantasy books/series that you would highly recommend?  In the time since ADWD was released I have read

1. Wheel of Time books 1-10 (I started reading Crossroads of Twilight, and just couldn't read the series anymore.  I threw that book across the room)

2. Kingkiller Chronicles Books 1 and 2 (phenomenal books by the way for those who have not read.  Easily on par with ASOIAF,  although I have been waiting for the third book as long as for TWOW)

3. Stormlight Archives Books 1-3

4. Farseer Trilogy

5. Currently finishing the last book in the Liveship Traders Trilogy

I know I am supposed to look for book recommendation in a different thread, but every time I do, I get overwhelmed.  I thought I would just ask whoever is reading this thread if they have any fantasy books or series recommendations.  

Joe Abercrombie's First Law series, and the standalone novels set in that world, are good fun.  Glen Cook's The Black Company series is worth reading.  Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles are excellent.  Andrej Sapkowski's Witcher short stories and novels are very good.

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6 hours ago, Rubicante said:

Just out of curiosity, do you have any other fantasy books/series that you would highly recommend?  In the time since ADWD was released I have read

1. Wheel of Time books 1-10 (I started reading Crossroads of Twilight, and just couldn't read the series anymore.  I threw that book across the room)

2. Kingkiller Chronicles Books 1 and 2 (phenomenal books by the way for those who have not read.  Easily on par with ASOIAF,  although I have been waiting for the third book as long as for TWOW)

3. Stormlight Archives Books 1-3

4. Farseer Trilogy

5. Currently finishing the last book in the Liveship Traders Trilogy

I know I am supposed to look for book recommendation in a different thread, but every time I do, I get overwhelmed.  I thought I would just ask whoever is reading this thread if they have any fantasy books or series recommendations.  

Keep reading the Robin Hobb books, you have another two trilogies and a quartet to go yet ;) Inwill always recommend these books

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7 hours ago, Rubicante said:

Just out of curiosity, do you have any other fantasy books/series that you would highly recommend?  In the time since ADWD was released I have read

1. Wheel of Time books 1-10 (I started reading Crossroads of Twilight, and just couldn't read the series anymore.  I threw that book across the room)

2. Kingkiller Chronicles Books 1 and 2 (phenomenal books by the way for those who have not read.  Easily on par with ASOIAF,  although I have been waiting for the third book as long as for TWOW)

3. Stormlight Archives Books 1-3

4. Farseer Trilogy

5. Currently finishing the last book in the Liveship Traders Trilogy

I know I am supposed to look for book recommendation in a different thread, but every time I do, I get overwhelmed.  I thought I would just ask whoever is reading this thread if they have any fantasy books or series recommendations.  

Mistborn, The Sword of Truth series, Dune, Red Rising.

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On 4/3/2020 at 10:40 AM, Kyll.Ing. said:

This indeed and so many times over.

May 2015 is almost 5 years ago. At that point, it had been a little over four years since he finished ADWD (given a couple months of publishing time). In other words, since he committed to that deadline, more time has elapsed than the time he had already worked on TWoW by then. If TWoW was finished tomorrow, that 2015 bout of optimism would still be less than halfway through the writing process. Give it a couple months, and his New Year's blogpost of 2016 will be before the halfway point too. How come he could see himself that close to the finish line, yet still be less than halfway there? What did the 2015 manuscript look like? Why did it have to change so? Was all of it so bad it needed revision? In the time that has passed since early 2016, he has theoretically had the time to work more or less from scratch back up to where he was in May 2015.

Didn't GRRM once say that he can write something one day and think that it's the best thing he has ever written, and then look at it the next day and think that it's absolute garbage? Apparently, this happens to many creators.

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On 4/15/2020 at 8:57 PM, Werthead said:

The first UK printing of ADWD had a completely erroneous cover blurb and also the wrong maps in it, which was fun.

Fairly consistently for the past five or six years, ebooks have held firm at around 20% of global market sales. Physical still makes up the overwhelming majority of sales. In fact, it's gone backwards in recent years with the ebook market in the United States shrinking from 22% to 18% by the end of 2018.

I'm sure plenty of people would make an exception for TWoW, but the relatively normal, casual readers of the book would hold off in their droves for the physical edition, impacting the bottom line.

GRRM is one of the biggest-selling novelists on the planet right now. As they did with ADWD, the publishers will move heaven and earth to have the book on shelves three months after turn-in of the final manuscript.

Steven Erikson used to be moderate fantasy seller and, after his last book bombed, is now a low-selling author (cumulatively he's done quite well over the years, of course, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to GRRM's). Tor and Transworld are both being very cautious with the new book as they see it as relaunch, the success or failure of which may determine his long-term career trajectory.

Nope. Forge of Darkness did middlingly and Fall of Light bombed massively on release. It's why Walk in Shadow was put on indefinite hold and Erikson was asked by his publishers to move up the Karsa Orlong trilogy, which they believed would have greater financial success. The core Malazan series has done well and remains a strong legacy seller, but Erikson's viability as an ongoing fantasy author is in some debate after the unexpected failure of the Kharkanas trilogy.

To put it another way, Erikson's last two new Malazan novels have sold significantly more poorly than Ian Esslemont's Path to Ascendancy Malazan trilogy.

GoT Season 1 did okay, but not great, and it was the only thing on air when ADWD launched. The TV show helped boost sales of the entire series, but ADWD was only moderately helped by Season 1 of the TV show.

Since then, ASoIaF has sold an additional ~80 million copies, GRRM has become one of the biggest-selling authors in the world (and among living fantasy authors, only outsold by Rowling and King; also Meyer and Collins if you count YA) and the critical drubbing of Season 8 of GoT seems to have dramatically increased demand for the "real" ending. TWoW will comfortably be one of the biggest-selling novels of whatever year it comes out in, possibly the biggest.

 

Almost all show viewers that would have bought the book, will no longer buy it.  And awful lot of book readers won't buy it either now, as they know how it ends (and a lot of the, including myself, don't ever expect the tale to be completed in written form).

It'll be a big selling book, but my guess is it will sell less than half the copies it would have sold had it been ready in 2015.

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26 minutes ago, Ser Gareth said:

Almost all show viewers that would have bought the book, will no longer buy it.  And awful lot of book readers won't buy it either now, as they know how it ends (and a lot of the, including myself, don't ever expect the tale to be completed in written form).

It'll be a big selling book, but my guess is it will sell less than half the copies it would have sold had it been ready in 2015.

An awful lot of generalisations there which are not really supported by how publishing trends work. Looking online, there are also huge numbers of show watchers, including previous vehement show-only watchers, who feel the ending to the TV series sucked and have picked up the books in the hope of them having a superior ending, one which even if broadly similar (though in the details will be massively different) will at least be executed better.

I think it's much more accurate to say that the book will probably not sell as many potential copies as it would have done had the book been released before Season 8 or if Season 8 had been better than it had been. However, it will still massively outsell ADWD, which was already one of the biggest-selling novels in the year it came out. Short of JK Rowling releasing Harry Potter #8, it'll probably be the most successful book of the year, or one of them.

If GRRM takes another few years to bring it out, then I can see sales being significantly down even on that as people lose interest and even forget about the franchise, unless House of the Dragon is a massive hit.

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On 4/15/2020 at 9:57 PM, Werthead said:

Fairly consistently for the past five or six years, ebooks have held firm at around 20% of global market sales. Physical still makes up the overwhelming majority of sales. In fact, it's gone backwards in recent years with the ebook market in the United States shrinking from 22% to 18% by the end of 2018.

So the claim that physical books are dying out is false?

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14 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

So the claim that physical books are dying out is false?

At the moment, yes. The physical book market has had a strong rebound in the last few years and the unstoppable growth of ebooks that everyone was predicting never really happened after that original burst from almost nothing to 20% about a decade ago. It may increase again in the future, especially if the pandemic encourages a switch to digital downloads.

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On 4/15/2020 at 12:57 PM, Werthead said:

The first UK printing of ADWD had a completely erroneous cover blurb and also the wrong maps in it, which was fun.

Fairly consistently for the past five or six years, ebooks have held firm at around 20% of global market sales. Physical still makes up the overwhelming majority of sales. In fact, it's gone backwards in recent years with the ebook market in the United States shrinking from 22% to 18% by the end of 2018.

I'm sure plenty of people would make an exception for TWoW, but the relatively normal, casual readers of the book would hold off in their droves for the physical edition, impacting the bottom line.

GRRM is one of the biggest-selling novelists on the planet right now. As they did with ADWD, the publishers will move heaven and earth to have the book on shelves three months after turn-in of the final manuscript.

Steven Erikson used to be moderate fantasy seller and, after his last book bombed, is now a low-selling author (cumulatively he's done quite well over the years, of course, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to GRRM's). Tor and Transworld are both being very cautious with the new book as they see it as relaunch, the success or failure of which may determine his long-term career trajectory.

Nope. Forge of Darkness did middlingly and Fall of Light bombed massively on release. It's why Walk in Shadow was put on indefinite hold and Erikson was asked by his publishers to move up the Karsa Orlong trilogy, which they believed would have greater financial success. The core Malazan series has done well and remains a strong legacy seller, but Erikson's viability as an ongoing fantasy author is in some debate after the unexpected failure of the Kharkanas trilogy.

To put it another way, Erikson's last two new Malazan novels have sold significantly more poorly than Ian Esslemont's Path to Ascendancy Malazan trilogy.

GoT Season 1 did okay, but not great, and it was the only thing on air when ADWD launched. The TV show helped boost sales of the entire series, but ADWD was only moderately helped by Season 1 of the TV show.

Since then, ASoIaF has sold an additional ~80 million copies, GRRM has become one of the biggest-selling authors in the world (and among living fantasy authors, only outsold by Rowling and King; also Meyer and Collins if you count YA) and the critical drubbing of Season 8 of GoT seems to have dramatically increased demand for the "real" ending. TWoW will comfortably be one of the biggest-selling novels of whatever year it comes out in, possibly the biggest.

1. I've never read Erikson besides the 80 pages of Gardens I made it through before starting my latest ASOIAF reread. But I didn't expect to be THAT wrong. Malazan has been one of the most popular fantasy series for a long time.

2. I'd guess TWOW would have gotten it's biggest sales if it was published between season 7 and 8. At least that's when I noticed everyone and their mother were suddenly GOT fans. Unless he can release TWOW this year or 2021 and take advantage of this post season 8 demand for a "real" ending. He's been in a cabin for awhile and seems intent on finishing Winds ASAP. But if he took until even 2025 it would significantly decrease sells in comparison. Though that would probably just mean it'll be #1 by a smaller margin than it could have been.

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On 4/18/2020 at 5:38 PM, Chad Vader said:

Winds being out during this confinement mess would have almost made it all worth it. I have begun rereading some of my favorites which have helped fill the void but oh how nice if George could have delivered. 

It's hard to read anything besides ASOIAF. I'd love to find another epic medieval fantasy series written in third person POV.

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On 4/22/2020 at 5:53 AM, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Didn't GRRM once say that he can write something one day and think that it's the best thing he has ever written, and then look at it the next day and think that it's absolute garbage? Apparently, this happens to many creators.

GRRM's gardener style leads to him writing everything out to see if it will work. He often writes chapters that are reworked or thrown away because of this. 

Didn't he throw away most of what he had for ADWD once? 

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On 4/19/2020 at 8:27 AM, AlienCarnivore said:

Don't give up hope yet. I've read that he only goes into the mountains (his cabin) if he's close to finishing a book. He's been in there for a couple months, to be fair, but I have a good feeling from his latest blog posts that he's actually getting close to the end of the writing (and hopefully rewriting) stage of Winds.

In his mind, he might have been at the finishing stage for years now. :(

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On 4/24/2020 at 11:21 AM, QhorinQuarterhand said:

It's hard to read anything besides ASOIAF. I'd love to find another epic medieval fantasy series written in third person POV.

I can recommend one! It's admittedly a somewhat obscure bit of fantasy literature by a largely unknown fringe author.  It is called 'The Lord of the Rings' . :P:D 

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On 4/24/2020 at 11:21 AM, QhorinQuarterhand said:

It's hard to read anything besides ASOIAF. I'd love to find another epic medieval fantasy series written in third person POV.

The Hammer and the Cross by Harry Harrisson seems to fit (partialy?), it reads well imho. The Hussite Trilogy by Sapkowski was said to be released in English in May 2020, maybe this one would suit you. Some say it's his best work.

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