Given how big TWOW will be should it be released in two volumes?

[Werthead]

22 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Which is curious, because the wait for the next book from Rothfuss has been even longer than the wait for Winds.

George has provided updates, if sporadically, whilst Rothfuss has provided almost no updates. He's done very odd things like promising to release a sample chapter on a set date and then missed it by three months and gotten grumpy about it. He also spends a lot of time on podcasts and playing video games on stream. Now, he might writing for 5 hours a day solid and then goes to stream video games, but the perception is that he's doing that rather than writing the book. That might be fair or not, but GRRM had the same complaints on a smaller scale (people yelling he was watching football rather than writing TWoW, despite him watching football on the weekend in his downtime like almost every other football-loving American with a full-time job).

Rothfuss has also released only a small novella since the last full novel, whilst George has edited several books, co-written one companion book and written another companion book from scratch. So George might not have released what most people want him to release, but he's at least released something substantial and adjacent.

We also have Rothfuss's editor saying she doesn't think he'd worked on the book at all for at least four of those eleven years and she's never seen a manuscript (partial or not) and her company has had to let other, more niche but excellent authors go because they rely on their star performers releasing novels at a regular clip, which he is not doing. The perception with GRRM is that he may have periods of not working on the book, but nothing approaching that kind of time gap (which may or may not be incorrect).

Rothfuss I think also got more stick for spending a lot of time working on the TV series and movies despite the main series not being complete; GRRM got stick for that later on, but at the time GoT entered development (just after AFFC came out) it wasn't seen as a problem, whilst obviously a decade later it became a much bigger one.

[Rubicante]

It’s truly sad that we are never going to read the end to either series from Rothfuss or Martin.

If you view “Name of the Wind” as the only book in the series, it is fine.  Same with ASOIAF.  If you view the series ending at A Storm of Swords, it is good enough as most plot elements are resolved.  Dany to rule in Mereen, Tyrion and Arya to Essos, Jon new Lord Commander, Stannis to help defend the Wall from the Others, the Lannister reign in disarray, Sansa to learn under Littlefinger, Jaime wanting to earn his place as a Kingsguard.   You really don’t need anything else.  Just delete AFFC and ADWD, and the series is complete.

 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 5/10/2022 at 12:30 PM, Werthead said:

We also have Rothfuss's editor saying she doesn't think he'd worked on the book at all for at least four of those eleven years and she's never seen a manuscript (partial or not) and her company has had to let other, more niche but excellent authors go because they rely on their star performers releasing novels at a regular clip, which he is not doing.

Wow, that's rough. Obviously, GRRM's editors and publishers would never do something like that, but I do wonder how they really feel about the long wait for Winds.

[HouseBastard]

50 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Wow, that's rough. Obviously, GRRM's editors and publishers would never do something like that, but I do wonder how they really feel about the long wait for Winds.

I don't see how they could be pleased that such a potential cash cow of a release is still not forthcoming. Imagine how big TWoW would've sold when GoT was at the height of its popularity. Now after the show left such a bad taste in fans' mouths the popularity has tanked potentially costing TWoW publishers millions.

[SeanBeanedMeUp]

On 5/1/2022 at 3:14 PM, Kyll.Ing. said:

Or it could mean he has managed to set up an arc for the POV characters, and is tallying in his head: "To resolve all of this, I need five more chapters featuring Daenerys, six or seven more with Jon, four with Bran, eight with Brienne if I decide to go for that side arc ..." and so on for all his POV characters, and concluding that there will be a whole lot of chapters left to write even if some of them feature multiple of the characters. And then there's deciding whose POV to use in those cases, and in which order characters will meet ...

That is not to say he is necessarily far from finished. The above is a sort of worst-case scenario. It's just that the statement is consistent with pretty much every interpretation on the scale from "the book is almost finished" to "he has only drafted a rough outline". In short, we could read anything into it, and thus should read nothing into it.

Or he could also be preparing for the Dream of Spring book.

On 5/2/2022 at 11:08 AM, Ninefingers said:

That would sure be nice, but it's been multiple years since he said he thought he could get it done in three months. 

That was because he was busy on the show which looking back was a huge waste of GRRM's time.

On 5/7/2022 at 1:30 PM, Gravity Grave said:

When he’s finished though how long is the process of him reviewing it, chopping and changing and then having it proof read, etc, etc. Seems like that’s probably a years worth of work once he’s put the last full stop on the last chapter he intends to write. 

Can’t help but feel it’s still at least 2 years off.

If he does have a rough draft finished then at least it'll be assuring.

On 5/8/2022 at 7:14 AM, Werthead said:

Physical book sales still make up the majority of the market. Ebook share has actually been declining slightly, with audiobooks becoming a much bigger deal.

Yeah that just reinforces my argument that releasing the physical book will be a lot of trouble unless GRRM decides to makes the pages bigger in length and width.

[Werthead]

On 5/12/2022 at 1:35 PM, HouseBastard said:

I don't see how they could be pleased that such a potential cash cow of a release is still not forthcoming. Imagine how big TWoW would've sold when GoT was at the height of its popularity. Now after the show left such a bad taste in fans' mouths the popularity has tanked potentially costing TWoW publishers millions.

It will still be a huge-selling book, maybe not quite as much as if it had released in say 2016 but certainly far more than if the TV show had never existed.

[Unloyal Bannermen]

t I think if there was enough material to release a volume it would have been released by now. Just think of how many people watched season 8 of the tv show and went "man, that sucked, I should give the book a shot". If then, or at any point since then, there had been indication of a book being released it would have done wonders in sales. Now of course with the HOTD show, that might revive some of it but I don't think they will reach close to the peak that they could have had in 2019/

 

 

[Ninefingers]

18 hours ago, Unloyal Bannermen said:

t I think if there was enough material to release a volume it would have been released by now. Just think of how many people watched season 8 of the tv show and went "man, that sucked, I should give the book a shot". If then, or at any point since then, there had been indication of a book being released it would have done wonders in sales. Now of course with the HOTD show, that might revive some of it but I don't think they will reach close to the peak that they could have had in 2019/

 

 

I guess, but does George really care about sales at this point?

Or put another way, I don't believe that "If I release at time X it will be better for sales" is a motivating/important thing for George. 

[HouseBastard]

18 hours ago, Ninefingers said:

I guess, but does George really care about sales at this point?

Or put another way, I don't believe that "If I release at time X it will be better for sales" is a motivating/important thing for George. 

Probably not but he has obligations to his publishers who can't be entirely satisfied with his lack of direction.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

20 hours ago, Ninefingers said:

I guess, but does George really care about sales at this point?

I mean, just because some authors don't need money, it doesn't mean that they don't care if they sell well. Prestige is important too.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Takiedevushkikakzvezdy

[Ninefingers]

On 5/21/2022 at 6:50 AM, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I mean, just because some authors don't need money, it doesn't mean that they don't care if they sell well. Prestige is important too.

Sure, but at this point I suspect it's a "nice to have" for George more than any sort of behavior changing factor. He has all the prestige an author could ever hope to have, so I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he's much more in the "what do I want to do" camp rather than the "what do I need to do" one. (Which is great! He's certainly earned that right.)

[The Bard of Banefort]

I think George cares a lot about sales and awards. He blogs quite a bit about both.

[Giuliano]

It should have been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

1 minute ago, Giuliano said:

It should have been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.

All jokes aside, I really wouldn't mind another preview chapter right now.

[butterweedstrover]

It's funny how people are super confident the book will come out eventually. 

George has said multiple times in case of his passing no one is to finish his series and he might as well wish an incomplete book to not be published. 

I'm not saying its likely, I'm saying its possible. 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

9 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

It's funny how people are super confident the book will come out eventually. 

I don’t think most people are confident, just hopeful.

[butterweedstrover]

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I don’t think most people are confident, just hopeful.

I mean more so everyone has ruled out the possibility that we never see Winds. 
 

Because OF COURSE the publishers will do it. 
 

But we have to ask if the manuscript will even be a publishable state, or if the legal hurdles set up by Martin are even worth testing.

[PetiteSir]

I think it will definitely be released in two volumes in the UK/other places considering he's alluded to the fact that it's ending state will be larger than ASOS and ADWD. Whether or not it'll be two volumes in other regions is still up for debate. If it truly is that large then I think it'll be a huge hurdle between he and his publisher. He probably doesn't want it to be split but they might make him do it. Just based on my own intuition I'm leaning towards the possibility that it'll be split in all territories.

I think a misconception is that if it does end up needing to be split then they'll publish one half while George finishes the second half. But I think George will most likely insist on finishing the entire thing before any of it gets published. He writes things out of order sometimes so I think it wouldn't be possible that way.