I have always said, after having put out my first two books via a traditional publisher that I would never do it again. While George may be richer than I, he is learning what it is like to have a hating fan base.
Many years ago, when LinkedIn had the possibility of becoming something there was a writer’s group I belonged to. Today LinkedIn is completely irrelevant. No actual professional goes there, writer, IT geek, profession doesn’t matter, professionals don’t go there. Many have profiles which have not been updated in years because the profiles were created almost a decade ago when there was a possibility LinkedIn might become useful. Now it is just a place for the world’s most useless creatures to collect.
At any rate, I and others spoke often of George R. R. Martin and how “he” through his publisher’s, and possibly own, greed, was viciously alienating his book fan base to service HBO. I stopped reading the book series after waiting far too long for “A Feast for Crows” only to see the writing turn to shit. Obviously heavily padded to stretch out the content for the television series.
Hey, I can understand wanting to “live the life,” hobknobbing around some of the sets chatting with everyone and oogling the women. Perhaps that is why he is back to writing. Famous men aren’t allowed to even look at a woman, let alone speak to her these days. If a well off guy wishes to think about having either sex or raising children he now has to leave America (#whatsnext – that’s what’s next – only the poor working the lowest level jobs will feel emboldened enough to attempt dating and procreation – #toofar).
Wow! That book has been out so long it has a new cover!
At any rate, George was off enjoying life and cashing checks. His publisher was hauling buckets of money to the bank, but, the next book wasn’t coming out. I quit following the saga of “when will it arrive.” I’m glad I did. I see that saga is still going on. After I read the article at the link, well the first few paragraphs, I found out why. The publisher, finally coming to the realization the HBO series was going to end looooong before the book series started missing those checks before they quit coming. Rather than finish this book series in a timely manner, they dipped into television history and came up with an old idea, “the spin off.” They also dug into the movie studio’s bag of tricks and found the “prequel” idea.
I didn’t even know there was a prequel spin off book series. That’s how little I’ve followed a series I used to love. You see, now the publisher can have yet another movie/film revenue stream and maybe, if they are lucky George will live long enough to finish the book series. There’s only one problem. Movie and television studios used to put together another team of writers to work on spin offs and prequels. Both of these book series have the choke point of a single author.
How many of you used to read “The Wheel of Time” series? I did, until, once again, the writing started turning to shit because it was obvious both the author and publisher were trying to stretch it out. If you followed the story of the book, you know that the author, Robert Jordan, died before the series ended and someone else had to finish the series. I was glad I stopped reading when I did.
About the only other difference I can see is the publisher of this series never managed to sell it to a studio.
