When is 'The World Of Ice and Fire' coming out?

[CassBlackfyre]

I've read this whole argument and i still dont understand what Alhazreds point is >.>

[Ran]

You all have seen what I've had to say based on actually, you know, writing the book, discussing issues like this previously with the editor and GRRM, and you all have seen what Alhazred has said, based on his understanding of the situation based on his understanding of how the publishing business works. Don't think we need to continue dancing around the issue.

Further posts on this particular matter will be removed as off-topic, unless there's new information to be had.

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

I have a question :)

When the World book is finished, and a date of publication is agreed upon, where would this date appear? Here on this thread, or on GRRM's website, or perhaps a site like amazon?

Eventually, it will be on all of those websites, probably, but I was wondering which site would be able to tell us first?

[Lord Varys]

If I understood Ran right then there are by now three accounts on the Dance of the Dragons.

1. The story as it is going to appear in 'The Princess and the Queen'. It is a shortened version of the 80,000 words account GRRM originally wrote for the Worldbook. Gardner Dozois brought it down to about 34,000 words or so.

2. The Worldbook version by Elio and Linda. They draw on the 80,000 words account but should mostly rewrite/retell GRRM's account in their own words. In universe this version draws on Archmaester Gyldayn as well as other sources that are all part of GRRM's longer account. That version should also cover events that are not covered by TPatQ (because they have not yet happened or because Gyldayn focuses on other events). No idea how many words the Worldbook version has but I guess Ran can easily count them for us...

3. The GRRMarillion version which would be essentially the unpublished 80,000 words version all other accounts draw from.

I'm not sure if GRRM ever intended to publish the full 80,000 words version in 'Dangerous Women'. My guess is that TPatQ always was supposed to be only the account of Archmaester Gyldayn. But it is pretty obvious that no part in this story was not heavily shortened and condensed. You don't cut a story down from about 80,000 words to 34,000 by not omitting anything.

Although I'm still not really sure if the 80,000 words do refer to only Gyldayn's full account on the Dance or to the length of all accounts GRRM has written on the Dance. If the latter was true we would have to assume that GRRM originally entertained to publish all on the Dance in 'Dangerous Women'.

[Ran]

The full version was written for the world book, but became of length and style, it went the way I described -- it was cut down to fulfill his obligation to Dangerous Women, and became a source for TWoIaF.

In fact, Bantam had final approval on the text of "The Princess and the Queen", since it was material commissioned for the world book in origin.

[Hardstone]

it goes up to the point where Rhaenys Targaryen dies

I thought it would have made more sense for TPQ to end with Rhaenyra's death (I assume Alicent dies earlier on), did you mean Rhaenys or Rhaenyra here?

[Ran]

Ah, Rhaenyra, yes. Slip of the fingers.

[RumHam]

Ah, Rhaenyra, yes. Slip of the fingers.

Glad I'm not the only one who makes that mistake. It's confusing!

[Hardstone]

Ah, Rhaenyra, yes. Slip of the fingers.

Splendid! Thanks, Ran.

[Werthead]

I love how no one seems to know anything about even when remotely soon this book will come out. Like with the main sereis all we ever seem to get are a bunch of "maybes and it could be this year"

don't get me wrong I sure the book will look nice when it comes out in ten years, lol

Erm, we've been discussing the fact that the book will officially come out in November 2014, but that GRRM and Bantam had mooted possibly bringing it forwards to Spring. If they decide not to do it in the spring, it will - almost definitely now - come out in November 2014.

So you are hinting (without actually saying) that Ran's version will somehow be inferior to the version that will appear in DANGEROUS WOMEN

What the heck? No, I wasn't saying that at all.

The world book is about the total back-history and world of ASoIaF stretching back millennia (but, from the sound of it, focusing a lot on the Targaryen reign). As part of that kind of narrative, the Dance of Dragons can't command a huge amount of space; it certainly can't command 80,000-90,000 words. That's what, about half of the whole book? So that was never going to fly.

The Dangerous Women version will clearly be much more detailed than the world book version, because it has the luxury of more space. And the GRRMarillion version will be more detailed than both, because that will have even more space.

The issue is space and clarity, not 'inferiority' and 'superiority'.

[Bolivar]

I'm kinda put off that this one story GRRM wrote is being commercially carved up and auctioned off to separate works to maximize the commercial value of each. But only slightly.

Keep doing your thing Ran. Take your time. I'm salivating for this thing, but I can wait.

[Werthead]

I'm kinda put off that this one story GRRM wrote is being commercially carved up and auctioned off to separate works to maximize the commercial value of each.

That's not really how it worked.

If the full, 90,000-word thing was put in either the world book or Dangerous Women, it would crowd out a whole bunch of other stuff, because it's not physically possible to put that amount of information in one volume. Remember this isn't a novel, it's a coffee table book with lots of artwork etc, with a much stricter word count than the novels and things like layouts to consider. You can't give half the book over to one event, no matter how interesting. In the case of Dangerous Women, you can't put 90,000 words in there without losing (I'd estimate) between three and five other stories from other authors. At 30,000 words, The Princess and the Queen is already by far the longest story in the book anyway.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if we got to the GRRMarillion and GRRM had second thoughts on the length of the ADWD material. The Silmarillion is only 130,000 words in total. GRRM's version can be a fair bit longer, but even at the length of ADWD (420,000 words) that's still dedicating nearly a quarter of a book about the whole history of Westeros to one single event, and a long way from being the most interesting to most readers (I suspect readers would much more want 90,000 words on Robert's Rebellion or the history of Valyria instead).

[Ran]

Can't say it was ever auctioned off to anyone.

GRRM wrote material for the world book, it was much too long to fit in, we found a solution for that; it also happened to be that it could resolve a situation with another book, so that was done too with Bantam's approval.

But these solutions leaves this big chunk of text unpublished (along with some other texts originally intended for the world book which were converted to source material because they were otherwise too long), so that may see the light of day.

[Lord Fred of Mole's Town]

The reason that they get writers like GRRM to contribute to these anthology books, is so that GRRM's fans will then buy that book. The exclusivity deal is to make sure that happens. They don't care one bit if they get a Dunk and Egg story or the Princess and the Queen, all they care about is that those stories cannot be published elsewhere, thus meaning all the GRRM fans will have to purchase Dangerous Women to read the story. That's what these exclusivity deals are about.

Interesting discussion.

Diverging rant related to your statement: I understand the pragmatic service and old-school publisher's economics behind selling "anthologies" but why do they still exist as "all or nothing" products? You must buy the whole book (or ebook) or nothing. Haven't book publishers learned anything from the music industry? Customers want to be selective. Anthologies, when sold online, should be allowed to be sold in "singles", like albums, with the entire anthology sold at a discount over the cumulative price of individual stories. Why haven't they adopted the iTunes or Amazon business models yet?

As is done worldwide for movie soundtrack MP3 albums, if a consumer wanted to buy the TP&tQ GRRM tale in ebook form without buying the whole anthology, it should be easy to do so. If one wanted to just buy the sample "Ser Barristan" TWoW chapter from the newly-released paperback ADwD (which has its own separate ebook from the hardback ebook!), it should be easy to do so. Why isn't Bantam selling TP&tQ and "Ser Barristan" separately in ebook form? Is the book publishing industry so desperate/greedy/naive that they won't/can't rethink the anthology/preview chapter concept? So what if one of the stories is more popular than the others? The consumer should be given that choice.

Oh well...it is what it is....(hopefully Ran doesn't suspend me again since I have made this challenge/argument to TPTB before). In any case, I do hope that TWoI&F, in all its extracted and re-compiled forms, is a grand celebration of the GRRMverse. Please, just do the fandom justice, with respect.

.... but for Bantam, et al, change should be a comin'.

[Victarion Chainbreaker]

Diverging rant related to your statement: I understand the pragmatic service and old-school publisher's economics behind selling "anthologies" but why do they still exist as "all or nothing" products? You must buy the whole book (or ebook) or nothing. Haven't book publishers learned anything from the music industry? Customers want to be selective. Anthologies, when sold online, should be allowed to be sold in "singles", like albums, with the entire anthology sold at a discount over the cumulative price of individual stories. Why haven't they adopted the iTunes or Amazon business models yet?

Exposing people to new musical artists is easy. Radio, TV, movies, and the internet all make sampling new musicians effortless and free. Listening to the entire song takes all of a few minutes, but you can usually tell if you like the song in less than a minute.

Exposing people to new writers is much more difficult. Sampling a new author takes a large investment in time and concentration, and you usually have to read to the end to be able to fairly judge if you like it or not. I'm guessing you are exposed to more musicians in one week than you are to writers in a year.

The publishing business has to advertise how it's able to.

[Ran]

I think Victarion's spot on. You can't really break up anthologies like you can albums, and anthologies are an important way to provide lesser-known authors exposure.

[The hairy bear]

I'm with Lord Fred in this one. IMO, forcing the consumers to purchase things that they don't want is generally a bad idea.

I will buy "Dangerous Woman" as soon as possible, and I will hurry to read "the Princess and the Queen" at least two or three times. But in all likelyhood, I will never read the rest of the stories (the other one I was interested in, Abercrombie's one, has already been offered as a sample).

My pile of books to read is huge. The public library next to my home has myriads of books I'm interested in. I can borrow many books from friends that have recommended them to me. Through my Kindle I can download hundreds of old novels out-of-copyright without cost. In short, my reading time is limited and there are dozens of novels I can read for free that I'm more inclined to read before the rest of the short stories of the anthology.

As I see it, and at least in my case, forcing me to buy a novella won't lead to me geting to know more authors and buying more books. The only way I access new authors is through recommendations or reading reviews. Giving away short novellas or offering the first chapter for free can help consumers to judge whether or not a novel is for them.

But being obliged to pay for a whole book when I'll only "use" about one tenth of it makes me annoyed at Tor. I feel extorted. I'd gladly pay 50% of the book's price for a mail with a .pdf version of the "Princess and the Queen", and I don't think I'm alone. I believe that publishing houses don't see that.

[Maia]

It is disappointing that the complete version of Dance of the Dragons is being relegated to this very uncertain and far away "GRRMllion". Wasn't there a lot of demand for the 3 Dunk and Egg stories to be made into a collection? Couldn't the whole 80K DotD piece be published as part of such a collection, once exclusivity runs out? Seeing how it is already written?

I mean, it will be years before the 4th D&E story would be available for such a collection, as it is not finished yet and will likely go into another multi-author anthology first when it is.

Don't know about everybody else, but I kinda wish AWoIaF hadn't been a coffee table book with lots of art, but instead included all of the texts that GRRM wrote for it, uncut....

[Ran]

The world book was never intended to be that way, I'm afraid, and I'm pretty sure we've always been clear about it. The excess material George created may or may not be published some day -- that's up to him -- but The World of Ice and Fire remains pretty much as always planned: an illustrated coffee-table type book, covering a very wide range of topics.

When the project started, no one thought that George providing some background details for Linda and I to work with would lead to 100,000+ complete words of background material. We all thought, well, a couple of pages of notes here and there.

So, all that stuff that will not be directly published is for the proposed GRRMarillion, if and when that ever happens. Until then, The World of Ice and Fire makes use of all of it as background material. I can't say GRRM might not ever decide to publish things as chap books or what have you before that time, though an isolated text like the Dance of the Dragons material seems like it's intensely hardcore fan stuff. Which I understand, being one, but I'm not sure of the economic viability of it. Perhaps as a Subterranean Press illustrated limited edition kind of thing, with the requisite markup for a limited print run...

But that's up to George, some time in the future after The World of Ice and Fire has been published and has been out for awhile. As for including the Dance of the Dragons material as part of the Dunk and Egg collection, that's not happening, as it's not Dunk & Egg.

[LordBloodraven]

I pre-ordered Dangerous Women yesterday after a long hesitation. I'm not interested with the other stories, caring only about The Princess and the Queen.I bited the apple because it was the only way to read the book but I'm fed up with all these business decisions. One part of the Dance will be featured in TPatQ, another in AWOIAF and the complete version in GrrMarillion which will be released God Knows When. It's perfectly right but quite tacky from the author and the people involved in this. Looks like money-grabbing to me, similar to how the Lands of Ice and Fire was separated from A Word of Ice and Fire. And there's The Wits and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister with quotes that can be easily found on Google./My rant of the day